2005 Fierce15 - Where are they now?

Spotlight: M5 Networks

M5 Networks is alive and well four years after receiving a 2005 Fierce15 award. Heather Bennett, vice president of marketing, told me the company has thrived due to a very strong sales organization. She said it experimented with different processes and developed different types of sales associates for different needs. In the last year, the company hired a senior vice president of sales and marketing tasked to take M5 networks national. 

M5 Networks still conducts the lion's share of its business in New York and New Jersey, but it's experiencing success selling into the Midwest, the Southeast, and parts of New England, according to Bennett.

She said the company learned early on that: "You can't throw sales people at a problem." She said the company built an internal sales team that sets up meetings to take the prospecting burden off of the outside sales force, who now strictly meets with promising clients. She said this organizational structure has delivered good results. 

"We really need to follow through of our plan to offer the product nationally and make it as appetizing as it is in New York," Bennett said. "We need to learn some things along the way, for instance, how to do distance sales better."

Bennett said culture is still key for the company, and CEO Dan Hoffman still sits out in cubicles with the rest of the team. "We want the best people, and we want them to want to work here," Bennett said "That has allowed us to maintain to this point, and will help us stay through to next phase."

Here's what the the other 14 2005 Fierce15 winners have been up to and a link to the full list [1]: 

Still-fierce 

Boingo Wireless -With the explosion of WiFi capable smartphones showing no signs of slowing, Boingo Wireless is thriving, with significant rollouts of its WiFi hotspot technology. Recently, Boingo rolled out 4,000 hotspots [2] in Sweden, and Verizon Wireless added 30,000 Boingo hotspots [3] in the U.S. to its network. 

Clearwire - After some rough patches where it appeared the venture might fail, Clearwire merged with Sprint's WiMAX business and drew down a $3.2 billion funding [4] round in November 2008. 

Empirix - The VoIP testing and security firm is still alive and well.  It got some additional working capital from the sale of its e-TEST Suite to Oracle [5] in 2008.  

Meru Networks - The company has been named the "most visionary WLAN vendor [6]" three years in a row. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but Meru is still alive and kicking, as its VoWLAN solutions have caught on and been accepted in the marketplace. 

SPIRIT DSP - Still in the game making high definition audio codecs, including the embedded Voice Engine in the snom 870 [7].

Towerstream - The company is still doing a healthy business in broadband wireless technology, and it is competing for stimulus funds [8] currently. Towerstream partnered with Vonage in 2005, which was a major part of its award, however it seems that since then, the company has gone away from any concerted activity around VoIP.

Veraz Networks - Though the company recently received a Listing Compliance notification [8] from NASDAQ giving them 180 days to raise its stock price back above $1.00, Veraz still remains in business.

The Acquisitions

Atreus Networks, bought by Sonus in 2008 [9] 

BorderWare Technologies, bought by WatchGuard in 2009 [10]

Sylantro, bought by BroadSoft in 2008 [11]  

The Flame Outs

Azulstar Networks, failed to raise seed capital for muni WiFi and VoWiFi network in Silicon Valley, pulled out of several high-profile municipal WiFi projects 

CopperCom - In December 2007 the company discontinued its product line due to a lack of demand for the softswitches it produced, according to a Light Reading report [12]. In August 2008 the company's remaining assets were sold to the Martin Group [13].

Popular Telephony - The link to the company's present website [14], found on its LinkedIn page, goes to a shell site selling solutions from other companies. It appears Popular Telephony is not a service provider any longer.

Zultys Networks - This is a tricky one, because the company is in existence today and I met up with them at IT EXPO West to discuss their new SBCs and SIP trunking products. But the Zultys we gave the award to in 2005 entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy [15] in 2006, and was bought at auction by a group of the company's former engineers. Technically, we're going to count this as a flame-out, though we acknowledge that Zultys, the new entity, is still in business.