Solidum Systems is talent. Lots of talent.
The fabless semiconductor firm designs chips that speed up the Internet by
classifying data packets as voice, e-mail or video. Solidum landed the US$16.5
million during its third round of financing in January. Investors included Intel
Capital, the venture cap arm of chip giant Intel Corp.
Solidum used part of the money to boost its engineering staff. More recently,
however, the company has focused its headhunting strategy on top management
talent.
In the past few months, Solidum has hired new vice-presidents in its marketing
and sales divisions, plus picked up directors for its software, operations and
integrated circuit teams. Many of the new hires come from Mitel Semiconductor
(now renamed Zarlink), Nortel Networks and the failed Sedona Networks. Solidum
also added heavyweights Antoine Paquin and Cisco Systems VP Scott Marshall to
its board of directors.
One of Solidum's co-founders acknowledged that recent tech layoffs have made it
somewhat easier for his company to pick up talent.
"I wouldn't say it's a piece of cake (to find talent), but it's back to normal," says
Misha Nossik, who helped launch the firm in 1996 and is now an executive
vice-president.
Now that Solidum's staff has grown from 50 to 87 since January, its big focus is on
generating revenues.
"Now the priority is to sell chips, which means finding customers," Nossik says.
"It's looking very promising."
Solidum has officially announced a deal with one paying customer so far: Transect
Networks of New Jersey, which uses Solidum's PAX.port 1100 as the classification
processor for its Internet and wireless application switches. Solidum is trying to
drum up orders from the telecom giants it's also targeting, including Alcatel, Cisco
and Nortel.
Nossik says, despite the current downturn faced by those telecomm players,
Solidum's technology would find strong sales channels soon.
"The telecom buyers have all stopped buying other chips, but not ours. Our chips
are the new era, so for us it's only the beginning. We're fixing the problems that
exist in the traditional chip technology."
Analyst Jim Metz agrees Solidum has strong sales prospects, but says they may
not ramp up until the economy bounces back.
"When the market recovers they'll be in a very good position to capture a lot of
business," says Metz, president of Metz International in Harvard, Mass. "Theirs is
really a classifier that can be used in conjunction with traditional chips like ASICS,
plus other network processors (of the new generation). So you don't have to throw
out what you already have. That makes it a very viable proposition."
To provide clients with a total network processing solution, Solidum started
shipping its PAX.works 3.1 software development kit (which can be used to
program Solidum's classification processors) on Aug. 6.
A week later, Solidum unveiled a deal with San Jose-based Teja Technologies to
market a line of programming and software development tools that cuts in half the
amount of time needed to create next-generation network processing
infrastructure.
Nossik says Solidum will aim for a final round of financing by the end of this year,
but the timing of an IPO "depends on market conditions," he adds.
Industry publications have pegged Solidum as an alluring takeover target. When
asked if Solidum has already fielded acquisition offers, Nossik was coy: "Good
companies always get them."
