Bucking up

There is money out there for the right idea. Raviant Networks, for example, has pulled in $12 million from an investor group led by Apollo Management and Crest Communications Holdings to further develop a software platform bridging call control and service creation. The money also will help Raviant build up its sales force.

“We bring two initiatives to our clients: software capability and a testing, architecture and planning capability,” said Jim Mullin, Raviant's chief technology officer. “At the very top there are applications and data that feed into the call control and transmission layers.”

Raviant's technology enables applications and data to be made available to the call center layer so those layers can be separated. The software doesn't care if it interfaces with a conventional switch or packet-based equipment.

“We are completely unbiased when it comes to legacy and next-generation networks,” Mullin said.

“There's a real challenge when you think about replicating service control logic in existing environments today across multiple platforms — working in both the public network environments as well as either an ATM or IP softswitch environment,” he said. “We've really tackled the challenge of separating that intimacy required between call control and applications.”

The second piece is more esoteric: Assist customers as they test and deploy the products.

The combination drew Cisco Systems' attention. The networking giant licensed Raviant's Preform Data Engine and eXtensible Dial-Plan technology for use within its call agent products, helping pave the way to the $12 million investment.

“That's a huge reason why we have caught the attention of people in what is obviously a downturned market, and I don't just mean capital-wise,” said Matt Cullen, Raviant's CEO.

Cisco licensed a routing translation dial plan with the complexity that might be found in a Class 4 or 5 switch but instead is layered on a softswitch.

“Some of the things they're doing with the Cisco [Virtual Switch Control] product are going to help bring that product back to life,” said Christin Flynn, program manager for carrier convergence infrastructure at The Yankee Group.

Flynn is impressed with Raviant — and not just because of its technology.

“In this area some companies have good ideas, maybe they have good products, but they don't necessarily have the leadership to bring it to the next step, and these guys really do,” she said.

Raviant expects to start making money by the end of this year and be profitable throughout 2002, said Cullen.

“We don't anticipate the need for any further capital infusion,” he said.

The $12 million, he said, will not lie around gathering dust.

“This capital infusion is all about accelerating our software development and solution development and taking a much broader sales force, a full North American sales force, to the market,” he said.

Licensing to firms like Cisco “creates great market momentum for us and provides a huge sales force that we're leveraging,” Cullen said, but direct-to-service provider involvement is “a significant piece of this additional investment.”

It's a wise move, Flynn said.

“If you can get volume from the service providers, that's really where the long-term money is,” she said. “I think it gives Raviant a little more control over their destiny than relying on other vendors' customers.”

The money, the recognition and the sales force should help establish Raviant's brand, Cullen said.

“We have this framework that is almost like a magic suite of tools to bridge call control and create service logic that can be circuit-based or packet-based,” he said. “The core of that [knowledge] has allowed us to develop software at least three times faster, sometimes more, at five to 10 times the performance. That's what's getting people to be interested.”

Good ideas will do that.