Can an Irish upstart save the internet? - Irish Independent

The world's broadband system is bursting at the seams. Intune Network's invention may just rescue it, writes Roisin Burke

IT'S not every fledgling tech company that gets name-checked by Bono. Twice. In a recent Hotpress interview he praises "the wealth of technological geniuses that we have here. People like the Intune Networks -- there's two young PhD students who could change the world, literally". He bigged them up again on Today FM.

The two "geniuses" are John Dunne and Tom Farrell, who started Intune as a campus company in 1999 as young UCD research boffins. They've come a long way.

At a launch party for Intune's game-changing new product line, Verisma, which went commercial last week, high-flying investors and supporters mill around. Bono's brother, Norman Hewson, pops in, Google and Bebo investor, Balderton's Barry Maloney, is there, and goldmining legend Sam Jonah, also an investor, is there.

There's no sign of Dermot Desmond, or anyone from Twitter investor Spark Capital or Acorn Computer pioneer Hermann Hauser's Amadeus Capital, but they're all Intune backers.

To give a context to Verisma's potential: just as early computers filled entire rooms and were shrink-rayed down to tablet size, Verisma compacts down miles of fibreoptic cable and thousands of silicon chips, into something the size of a small fridge. This unprepossessing-looking grey box of switches and cables stands in the launch party room at the Gibson Hotel, as trays of wine and canapés fly by all around.

Take say, the Olympics 2012. There'll be a storm of internet TV watching, YouTubing, tweeting, mobile video and digital image sending: a gigantic data-gobbling power surge over 15 days. Verisma can wing these massive amounts of data to where it needs to go, way faster -- about 80 per cent faster -- than existing broadband. It's all done with different coloured lasers, or Optical Burst technology.

The target customers are the telco giants: O2, Vodafone, BT et al, "The guys," says CEO Tim Fritzley, "who run the biggest networks in the world, that operate in the biggest cities and areas where fibre networks are just bursting at the seams."

After the science comes the selling. This is where seasoned Silicon Valley pro Fritzley comes into his own.

Lured here five years ago by Dunne and Farrell, he's become progressively paler but retains his white-toothed Californian smile and boundless enthusiasm.

Fritzley was sales VP at Microsoft TV. "With Microsoft I travelled the world, and I could see that the networks were going to collapse under all of this video that was coming along in 2003-2005 when social networking and YouTube hit. They are going to have to completely transition -- new architecture, new technology, new software.

"I just felt that John and Tom's was the right technology. What really attracted me to them was that they'd done a phenomenal job on patenting all their intellectual property."

The likes of multi-billion-dollar revenued Cisco are now playing catch-up and Fritzley says Intune is five years ahead of the posse.

He has built up a sales team with "fantastic" contacts. "If you're a start-up, you can't depend on another equipment vendor like an Ericsson or an Alcatel or a Cisco to represent you at early stage -- their goal is to burn you out of cash so that they can buy the technology cheap.

"With your own sales force, you go after their customers, then you get traction and the big guys think 'we better partner with them before somebody else does'. It's a balance of fear and greed." A global distribution agreement has just been inked with one large equipment vendor and another is close to signing.

Would Alcatel-Lucent or Cisco not just save themselves the trouble and buy Intune out? "They will always look at that," says Fritzley, "but we don't want to sell early, we want to create this very valuable company. We would love nothing more than to go all the way through to IPO, so we're in no rush to sell.

Meanwhile, Intune is gearing for profitability. "We're not cashflow positive yet, but we are in revenue. We did about €10m last year, we hope to do €26m this year, in 2012 we're looking to do about €100m and we'll go up to €200m-€300m after that. We are targeting that for 2012 we're cashflow positive."

As well as selling Verisma, Fritzley is drumming up more money. "We're just doing our series C round right now, targeting €30m-plus for this round. I would hope to raise more than that." Intune is currently funded at €49m.

Fritzley didn't expect to be here this long. "In a few more months I qualify for permanent residency!" But he's certain the Californian sunshine deprivation will be worth it.

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Intune Networks' Verisma optical burst switch/transport platform now available... (LIGHTWAVE)

Irish upstart Intune Networks says its Verisma platform, which combines optical packet switching with packet-optical transport, is now commercially available. The company also revealed its use in a second European networking project – and may have hinted at one Tier 1 carrier who may be evaluating the product for use as well.

As reported previously, Intune Networks’ Verisma platforms feature a highly distributed optical packet switching fabric – so distributed, in fact, that the fabric can perform both switching and transport functions simultaneously (see “Intune Networks readies carrier-class optical packet switching and transport”). The switching fabric comprises an optical ring network connecting multiple input/output nodes. The nodes can be 65 km apart. The nodes use lasers with extremely fast tuning capabilities to transmit packets among each other on various wavelengths. Meanwhile, a Web-based operating system offers simplified management.

The technology has been validated through use in the Irish Government’s Exemplar Network project. Intune now says the Verisma platforms will be part of a second European research project. The FP7 Metro Architectures Enabling Sub-wavelengths (MAINS) project, led by Telefonica I+D, will seek to define and develop new architectures for next-generation metropolitan networks. Intune’s technology will be part of a field trial in Cyprus in Q3-Q4 2011 within the project.

Meanwhile, Intune Networks CTO John Dunne told Lightwave earlier this year that the platforms also were in line for first office applications with a pair of Tier 1 carriers this summer. While the company has not provided further details on these applications, it may have dropped a hint by including a quote from Stu Elby, vice president, network and technology at Verizon, in the press release that trumpeted Verisma’s commercial availability.

“The ‘cloud’ promises to cost-effectively provide infrastructure, applications, and services wherever and whenever they are requested,” Elby says in the press release. “The ability to dynamically move virtual machines and/or data sets among data centers will allow us to address hot spot issues while potentially enabling new services. Current network constraints do not permit this capability to be exploited cost-effectively, so to this end virtualized, dynamic networking will accelerate the adoption and profitability of the cloud.“

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Intune Networks annouces the commercial release of the Verisma product line...

Delivering the world's first whole network convergence with IT, Cloud & Web Services Dublin, Ireland, 23rd May 2011

Intune Networks announces the commercial availability of its Verisma product line, the world’s first carrier class converged switch and transport solution based on optical burst switching. Built on Intune Networks’ Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) technology, the product line takes on the global challenge presented by the massive increases in on-demand data traffic and delivers new levels of network efficiency, operational simplicity and service delivery agility.

Verisma is the world’s first web-enabled network platform, unlocking the full potential of network operators’ assets and virtualising the network to provide liquid bandwidth. Recognizing that the software architecture used by Web services companies to support millions of customers can be applied to the network, Intune Networks has incorporated a new operating system into the Verisma products based on the latest web services technologies. This operating system delivers an application programming interface that will allow operators to take full advantage of the flexibility of their networks to deliver an array of on-demand network-based services and prepare their networks for the applications and services of the future.

Tim Fritzley, Intune Networks CEO said “Before today’s commercial launch we have focused on validating the technical capabilities of our technology and performing early trials with large operators. We are now moving into a new phase of commercialisation as we prepare for multiple global first office applications in the second half of this year. So far the feedback from the market has confirmed our assertions and we have deep and broad engagement with the major players in the industry.”

The commercial release of the product is the culmination of a journey started over a decade ago by John Dunne and Tom Farrell, who founded Intune Networks in Dublin in 1999. Intune Networks’ technology has already under-gone extensive operator validation, including deployment in the Irish Government’s Exemplar Network and as part of the MAINS project, led by Telefonica I+D, the research & development branch of Telefonica. The MAINS program is an European research project composed by universities, companies and research centres which aims to define and develop new architectural solutions for next generation metropolitan networks able to absorb new traffic demands generated fixed and mobile broadband access technologies.

The Exemplar Test-bed Program is a communications services test-bed provided by the Irish government’s Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR) as a magnet to attract and expand leading edge research and development in Ireland for next generation Web and ICT services. Intune Networks’ Verisma product family was selected as the foundation for the Exemplar lab Test-bed and allows the test bed to provide the flexible network architecture and simplified software operations and control interfaces required by the next generation of carrier services.

In the FP7 MAINS project, which is planning an OPST field trial in Cyprus in Q3-Q4 2011, the underlying driver is to develop a response to the fact that the current network architectures were never designed to cope with the new demands driven by emerging broadband Internet services like over-the-top video delivery, social networking and cloud computing. MAINS project leader, Juan Pedro Fernandez-Palacios Gimenez from Telefόnica I+D Ultrabroadband Networks area, commented “The proposed MAINS (Metro Architectures Enabling Sub-wavelengths) architecture targets a new architectural solution that will be able to face the huge expected traffic increase in a more cost-effective way. This architecture will be needed in order to assure a low cost broadband Internet access in Europe”.

With its commercial launch, the Verisma product line will begin to be deployed in the field to support a number of applications, such as cloud computing, mobile backhaul and metro optical aggregation. With its ability to provide mesh networking, dynamic bandwidth allocation and software-defined networking, the solution has been attracting attention for data centre interconnect and network-as-a-service applications.

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Exemplar Network to go live in four weeks...

The Irish Government-backed Exemplar Network – a smart communications network that will serve as a magnet for foreign direct investment and help to incubate indigenous job creation – will go live for test and trial in four weeks, Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte, TD, explained.

Rabbitte was speaking at the TM Forum Management World conference, an influential global telecoms industry conference that is being held in Dublin this week.

“The Exemplar Network will give Ireland a true competitive advantage in the key area of information and communications technology. It will raise the reputation of Ireland as a leader in technological innovation, act as a magnet for foreign direct investment and serve as an incubator for indigenous job creation.

“We will now bring together ICT companies who wish to be involved in and are willing to invest in the development of a Test and Trial Network.”

The minister has asked the ESB, through its telecoms subsidiary, to assist in the establishment of the forum and to support the implementation of the Trial Network.

The purpose of the Test and Trial Network
The purpose of the Test and Trial Network will be to install the Exemplar technology on fibre in a live environment, so companies can test new products and services with real customers and users.

The Exemplar Network, in which the State invested €10m with Intune Networks, has already created 140 jobs and by the third phase thousands of jobs, from digital media to high-end computing, green tech and life sciences, could be created as organisations will be attracted by the speed and capability of the network.

The Test and Trial Network is phase II of the Government’s Exemplar project. It follows the establishment of a test-bed site, in phase I of this project, where companies could test products in a laboratory type environment.

The first phase of the Exemplar programme, the Exemplar Test-bed, which is 100pc owned by the State, was opened in July 2010 and provides a laboratory environment, open to companies and researchers, to develop, test and demonstrate products and services of the future. Current industry partners using the Exemplar Test-bed include BT, Ericsson, Openet, Amartus, HEAnet, Cybercom, Imagine, ESB Telecom, Sensecom and Digiweb.

The Exemplar Smart Communications programme is based on an advanced optical communications technology. It exploits the innovative and disruptive optical packet switching and transport (OPST) technology developed by Irish company Intune Networks. This technology has the capacity to revolutionise the transmission of data across fibre networks by allowing data to be transferred more efficiently across these networks. The technology, if successful, will put Ireland firmly on the technology map worldwide, in terms of next-generation communications networks.

The ESB is a commercial semi-state energy company which operates under the aegis of the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. Through its subsidiary company, ESB Telecoms Ltd, ESB has optimised the use of electricity assets to establish itself as a vital participant in the wholesale telecoms market in Ireland.

Companies interested in investing in the Exemplar Test and Trial Network should contact the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources at exemplarnetwork@dcenr.ie.

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BT to test ‘liquid bandwidth’ cloud developed by Irish firms

Telecoms giant BT will be the first telecoms firm to test the Exemplar Dynamic Desktop, a cloud solution to enable firms to deliver bandwidth on demand, developed by Intune Networks, Openet and Amartus.

The project will be showcased during TM Forum Management World, a global telecoms exhibition, taking place in Dublin next week (23-26 May 2011). The TM forum serves a specialised niche in the telecoms world, the systems end of telecoms, or as one industry person says: “where the network meets the dollars.”

The Liquid Bandwidth solution created as part of the Catalyst Project by Intune Networks, Openet and Amartus (a company created by ex-Ericsson and Marconi workers in Ireland) allows operators to increase a customer’s bandwidth remotely from a desktop.

The Catalyst project is based on Intune Networks' Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) technology, Amartus Service Commander and Openet’s Policy Charging and Control (PCC). The project is a pre-cursor to developing the toolset needed to create a distributed data centre based upon cloud services.

The battle for bandwidth
Bandwidth demands on carriers’ networks are growing exponentially while revenues and profits are decoupled from the cost of delivering the network. Carriers are able to respond to this challenge through service innovation and new revenue generating products.

The demonstration next week will show how carriers can offer innovation and network monetisation via a programmable network API linked to the TM Forum MTOSI Services standards.

“Liquid bandwidth services will empower customers to purchase bandwidth when needed in a cost-effective and timely manner that closely tracks their real hour-by-hour and day-by-day bandwidth requirements with the comfort that the network can 'flex' to meet any unanticipated demands,” said Peter Willis, chief data network strategist from BT Innovate & Design.

“It allows network operators to monetise these services and optimises revenues from its network investments. This Exemplar Catalyst illustrates technology that can achieve these aims, allowing more creative commercial relationships with customers that better meets the vicissitudes of emerging traffic patterns and customer expectations.”

Intune Networks co-founder John Dunne said that BT, which is one of Europe’s largest telecoms carriers, will be looking at the technology in terms of how it will help operators generate more revenue and how the technology can scale within networks.

“If a user isn’t happy with their quality of service for video, for example, operators can use the interface to increase the quality of that video. They can also take a calendar-based approach to deploying bandwidth quality based on certain times of the day."

The coming together of three Irish technology companies to create a product that will be showcased in front of some of the world’s most senior telecoms executives has been praised by Enterprise Ireland’s head of research and innovation, Fearghal Ó Móráin.

“Openet, InTune and Amartus are three of Ireland’s most dynamic and innovative companies. It is an exciting development to see such leading technology firms collaborating on this ground-breaking technology.

“Showcasing this cutting-edge technology at the international TM forum is important for the companies themselves but it will also highlight Ireland’s significant technological capabilities on a global stage.”

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Intune shortlisted amoung Entrepreneur of the Year finalists... Irish Times

TWENTY FOUR leading business people in Ireland have been shortlisted for this year’s Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.

The nominees have been chosen across three categories – Emerging, industry and international.

Nominees include Ray Coyle of Largo Food Exports, which makes Tayto crisps in the Republic; Galway developer Miceal Sammon of Sammon Contracting Group; Conor McCarthy, founder of two-year-old aircraft maintenance group Dublin Aerospace; and Domini and Peaches Kemp of Itsabagel.

They were chosen from a record 140 nominations by an 11-strong panel of judges chaired by Pádraig Ó Ceidigh, chairman of Aer Arann and winner of the award in 2002.

The 24 businesses have a combined turnover of about €600 million and employ 11,000 people.

The entrepreneurs will be offered the opportunity to participate in the awards’ annual CEO Retreat, which this year involves a week-long trip to India in June.

The Entrepreneur of the Year award was won in 2010 by Brian Conlon, chief executive of First Derivatives. He will represent Ireland at the World Entrepreneur of the Year awards in Monte Carlo in early June.

Profiles of the finalists will appear in The Irish Times over the next six weeks.

The winner will be announced at a televised awards ceremony in October.

Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year: The Finalists

Emerging:

Annadale Technologies – Denis McCarthy
Blue Insurances Ltd/ Multitrip.com – Ciaran Mulligan Rowan Devereux
Bubblebum UK Ltd – Grainne Kelly
Joule – Ronan Ginnell Ian Barrett
Crospon – John ODea
Crowley Carbon Ltd – Norman Crowley
The Now Factory – Tom Morrisroe
Dublin Aerospace – Conor McCarthy

Industry:

Homecare Independent Living – Mairead Mackle
PFH Technology Group Limited – Paul Hourican
Itsabagel Ltd – Domini Peaches Kemp
Largo Food Exports – Raymond Coyle
Noonan – John ODonoghue
Argento – Peter Boyle
Centre For English Studies – Justin Quinn
Version 1 – Justin Keatinge

International:

Openet – Joe Hogan Niall Norton
Telestack Limited – Adrian McCutcheon
Texthelp Systems Limited – Mark McCusker
MJM Group – Brian McConville
Munster Simms Eng Ltd (Whale Water Systems) – Patrick Hurst
XSP – Brendan Farrell
Intune Networks Ltd – John Dunne
Sammon Contracting Group Ltd – Miceal Sammon

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Intune Networks receives European funding in £1.7M - Radio-Electronics.com

Belfast based optical transport technology provider, Intune Networks has secured funding in a £1.7million multinational initiative aiming to deliver ultra-high-speed internet access to meet the growing needs of homes and businesses across Europe.

Intune Networks’ Active Distributed and Dynamic Optical Network Access Systems (ADDONAS) will aim to develop photonic technology and systems that would enable widespread broadband access of at least 1 Gbit/s by 2015-20. Intune Networks will receive £520,000 funding as part of the wider programme.

The PIANO+ initiative, spearheaded by the European Commission (EC) and co-funded by the UK government-backed Technology Strategy Board, called for collaborative research and development proposals under the EC’s ERA-NET Plus scheme[i]. PIANO+ aims to promote investment in the development of next-generation optical access technologies that will significantly reduce the operational and capital costs of super-fast broadband by removing local exchanges.

Using the funding from PIANO+, Intune Networks has developed a low-cost, lower energy technology that will enable ultra-fast broadband speeds in the future while still meeting the short-term needs of the system operators and users. ADDONAS architecture was selected because it aims to bring faster broadband connections while reducing the total energy bill for operators and users by over 50%.

A similar programme was initiated by Google in 2010. Google has started building and testing ultra-fast broadband access networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States including Kansas City, aiming to offer communities up to 100 times faster broadband than most Americans currently have[ii].

“It is apparent with the roll out of Google’s Kansas City initiative that ultra-fast broadband is becoming increasingly important as demands for bandwidth multiply”. “The ADDONAS architecture will change today’s concept of access networks relying on passive transport elements into distributed networks using elements in the delivery services,” commented John Dunne, CTO, Intune Networks. “ADDONAS will achieve this by using a three stage distributed ‘Layer 2’ switch to compress the metro and access networks.” The ADDONAS architecture aims to make the network programmable and allow it to be engineered to deliver quality of service, QoS, guarantees for end to end users. As well as be scalable up to 64TBit/s of total capacity to enable economical end to end support for symmetrical 1Gbit/s access to end users, it aims to provide full transmission for both point to point and switched services.

“A wave of applications is driving the need for the internet to deliver guaranteed quality of service which it is unable to do at the moment,” said Greg May, Technology Strategy Board. “This joint transnational approach towards supporting developments in fibre access technology is harnessing the collaborative expertise of Europe’s most innovative companies to facilitate a common technology platform. We want to see photonic technology and systems for a scalable, future-proofed and energy-efficient access network.”

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Intune raises €2.5m in additional funding - Sunday Business Post

Telecoms equipment developer Intune Networks has raised another €2.5 million in equity funding. New filings for the firm indicate that it received a €2 million cash injection last month from Dartbridge, a British Virgin Islands registered company. It also received €500,000 from Enterprise Ireland, writes Dick O’Brien.

Intune last year raised €2 million from Erine, another Virgin Islands registered firm.

The company declined to comment on who was behind these companies or whether the two had a common ownership. Intune has raised a significant amount of capital from investors in recent years. In 2009, it raised €22 million from financier Dermot Desmond, Kernel Capital in Cork and its existing investors.

This followed a 2007 funding round which saw it receive €13 million from Amadeus Capital Partners, Balderton Capital and Spark Capital.

Early stage backers of the firm included ICC Venture Capital, latterly Bank of Scotland (Ireland), Enterprise Ireland and technology investors Leonard Donnelly and Bernie Dillon.

Intune develops technologies to improve the performance of fibre-optic networks and is currently bringing a family of telecom switch products to market.

The firm now employs over 120 people and has offices in Dublin and Belfast, with sales offices in Britain and the United States.

The company was founded in Dublin in 1999 by John Dunne and Tom Farrell and it is currently led by Tim Fritzley, who was formerly head of Microsoft TV in the US.

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