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The baby's only eight months old, but already it's worth $40 million, and it's hungry. Very hungry. This 'baby' is GiantLoop Network Inc.
Based in Waltham, Mass., it bills itself as "the first and only provider of Enterprise Optical Networking services for Global 250 business customers." Translate this into plain English, and what you've got is a new kind of business telecom carrier: one that combines and then transmits a company's entire voice, data and storage traffic across a single, high-bandwidth inter-city network
GiantLoop is hungry for huge volumes of business traffic and-in theory at least-there should be lots of it out there. After all, multinational corporations need reliable long-distance broadband connections. They also need them when they need them, as opposed to when the local telephone company can get them installed.
GiantLoop's game plan is to fill this void by offering a "soup-to-nuts customer care program all owned by us," says Jon Oltsik, GiantLoop's vice president of corporate marketing. This means GiantLoop takes care of everything, from leasing dark fiber to create its own virtual networks to providing planning, network design, and implementation for its customers. As well, GiantLoop supports a full range of network protocols, including IP, ATM, SONET, and Gigabit Ethernet, and is application-neutral. In short, it's a true broadband pipe, open to all those willing to pay for admission.
So how well is Baby GiantLoop doing? Well, the company's been able to attract $40 million in venture financing from EMC Corporation co-founder Roger Marino, Greylock, Optical Ventures LLC, and Pilot House Ventures, among others. It's also opened branch offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Dallas; and already has nearly 300 people on staff.
As well, GiantLoop has struck an alliance with 360networks, which is building an 88,000 mile network linking the Americas, Europe, and Asia; signed a $100 million dark fiber leasing deal with Metromedia Fiber Network; and made similar leasing arrangements with ACSI network technologies, Fiber Technologies, Global Metro Networks, and NEES Communications. Its goal: to provide redundant fiber paths throughout its network.
GiantLoop last week also announced a deal to work with Nortel Networks on enterprise optical networking offerings.
Finally, GiantLoop's executive roster boasts some heavy hitters. Among them are GiantLoop chairman and CEO Harry Dixon. Before co-founding GiantLoop, Dixon was EMC Corporation's senior vice-president of global sales and services where his 6,000-person sales force posted 30 percent annual revenue growth and topped 35 percent earnings growth.
Another big gun is GiantLoop co-founder, president, and COO Mark Ward. Another EMC alumnus, Ward most recently was the company's vice president of global marketing and professional services, where he built EMC's software business to $1.5 billion in revenue.
Thanks to the successes at EMC, "they have very good relationships with CIOs and CEOs at the world's largest companies," says Oltsik. "This gives us a ticket in the door that most startups don't have."
Wagner Rios, an industry analyst with AMR Research, agrees that having "a bunch of ex-EMC executives" at the helm is a real plus for GiantLoop. Add to this GiantLoop's other advantages, including being first to market, and one can see why Rios desrcibes it as "a real powerhouse".
But what about customers? Are multinationals actually using enterprise optical networking? Yes, says GiantLoop's Oltsik. "Right now we've got
6 to 7 customers, and every one is a Fortune 500 company," although he declines to name names.
With GiantLoop being privately held, the company has no obligation to say more than it wants. One thing is clear, however: it wants to be as big in enterprise optical networking as Microsoft is in operating systems.
"This is a classic example of a problem looking for a solution," says Oltsik. "As the only player in this space who has a focus on data networking and storage, we're well-placed to be that solution."
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