sentitO to refocus strategy, name new CEO

CHICAGO--

sentitO, which had been rumored to be on the verge of collapse less than six months ago, will unveil a new strategy and CEO this week at Supercomm 2004.

Founded in 2000 by executives from Salix, sentitO, like many vendors during the telecom boom, chased the Class 5 replacement market. Now the company is focused on what Chief Strategy Officer William Flanagan says is a more services-oriented approach to the market. The change comes largely because carriers have realized that replacing a Class 5 switch with a soft switch doesn’t do any good with additional services.

“The mindset has fundamentally changed,” Flanagan said. “In the carriers mind they want to move to a more access-agnostic services. “It’s not about dropping in a Class 5 replacement. It’s about leveraging IP.”

At the center of that new strategy is the company’s newly rechristened Open Network Xchange as well as ElasticEdge, which according to Joachim Hallwachs, vice president of marketing for sentitO, makes any access infrastructure look like an IP network to sentitO’s switch.

“Over time, the network is bound to become more integrated between local networks and long-distance networks,” he said. “From a switch-side standpoint, ‘right-sized’ is the term that comes to mind. Convergence is about services now and not so much about the original transport.”

The new strategy also may mean a shift in customer targets, though the emphasis will stay on facilities-based carriers, he added.

“Opportunities that stuck out at first are suddenly looking very small,” Hallwachs said. “We’re positioning for the next opportunity. Our target market is not to make the Class 5 fall off the table, it’s to offer that next service.”

Leading up the new strategy will be Dennis Chateauneuf, who will be announced as the company’s new CEO this week. Chateauneuf most recently was president and CEO of Pelago Networks. Before that he was president and CEO of CopperCom.