Avici gives birth to Soapstone Networks

In a bid to become less reliant on its primary customer, AT&T, core router vendor Avici Systems has created a new business venture aimed at keeping services independent from the technologies of the networks that deliver them.

Called Soapstone Networks, Avici’s new business unit will sell software that creates an “abstraction layer” between services and network infrastructure, providing technology-neutral interfaces that allow applications to broker the network resources they need.

The first phase of Soapstone’s products will include a virtual control plane designed specifically for Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) networks, enabling automated provisioning and fault management. The control plane will also be compatible with Internet protocol (IP) and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), allowing a migration from existing MPLS networks to PBT.

“Soapstone makes PBT and MPLS a choice, not a dilemma,” Avici said in a statement issued today.

Soapstone’s software will also be designed to support IP multimedia subsystem architectures, fixed/mobile convergence applications and session-based wireline applications such as voice- and video-over-IP. The product will separate IMS architectures from network infrastructure, supporting the capabilities described by the International Telecommunications Union’s Resource-and-Admission Control Function definition.

“Soapstone registers network elements, selects the optimal transport elements, provisions the network, and monitors the actual characteristics for compliance of a service against a desired behavior,” Avici said.

Soapstone’s virtual control plane will also serve as an alternative to G-MPLS.

“The problem with G-MPLS is it’s gotten way to complicated,” said Bill Leighton, Avici’s chief executive officer. “It creates a huge bottleneck in the back end of IT systems.”

Soapstone aims to reduce that complexity by abstracting the traditional properties of a given service (for example, ports and permanent virtual circuits, or PVCs, in the case of frame relay service) and hiding those original properties from the business customer.

Soapstone will leverage the expertise Avici used to create the control plane for its core routers. “We’re building a virtual control plane,” Leighton said. “In order to build one, it helps to have one.”

So far, Avici, which employs 170 people, has assigned existing employees to Soapstone, but it plans to hire more people this year to bolster the effort. Avici expects Soapstone to generate “minimal” revenues this year and start to “ramp” next year, the company said.

Avici has long been searching for ways to broaden its business beyond selling core routers primarily to one customer, AT&T, which contributed more than 90% of Avici’s revenue last year. Reporting its 2006 financial results today, Leighton called that business “unsustainable.”

“We have benefited from the growth of AT&T’s network,” he said. “But it would be imprudent for Avici to rely on one revenue stream for the long term.”

Avici reported nearly $83 million in revenue for 2006, a 122% increase from 2005. But it expects annual revenue to drop down to between $45 million and $55 million this year.