Ottawa company sees telecom slowdown as an opportunity for some firms

An Ottawa company is reaping the benefits of the telecom meltdown with a software product that helps carriers reduce operating costs by taking a more managed approach to their networks. Linmor Technologies Inc bucked the industry trend late last month when it announced a 14 per cent increase in fourth quarter revenue, and annual revenues of nearly $3 million – a 13 per cent jump over fiscal 2000 revenue. That marks the highest annual revenue in the company’s seven-year history. Newly appointed president/CEO James Cragg also credits his company’s strong performance to a stronger than expected Canadian economy. He agrees with those who say the panic in the American industry led to unfair comparisons with the Canadian sector. "I think what happened in the U.S. was to a certain extent a phenomenon," says Cragg, who comes to the company from PSINet Inc, where he was president/COO of North American operations. "Things were so frothy, so impromptu, I think some of the values and virtues that had been embedded in business practices up here prevented some people from going that far into it." Linmor sells a product that promises to help telecom carriers manage their networks more efficiently and cost-effectively. The company’s performance monitor software program – called Nebula – collects data from networks and translates it into real-time reports and graphs. End users need the information for problem detection, the monitoring of service level agreements and justifying network return on investment. The company has employed two approaches in its marketing. It has signed up large customers such as WorldCom Inc of Clinton MS and RSL COM Australia. In Canada, it struck a deal just recently with Telus Corp and is now targeting AT&T Canada as a new client. Linmor is also forming alliances with firms like Micromuse Inc of San Francisco, Cisco Systems Inc, Oracle Corp and NHC Communications Inc. "Our strategy, and the big differential for us, is to position our product into large-scale data networks," Cragg told Network Letter. "Traditionally anybody else that has competed with us started in that enterprise space. So they have an ability to manage objects but not nearly to the scale that we do."Our secondary will be through our strategic partnerships such as Micromuse. We will take our product and, for lack of a better description, will build a Nebula Lite that will be marketed to the enterprise marketplace." Cragg plans to concentrate on the network service provider market in North America, with a gradual move into the overseas sector. "We’re looking primarily at the IXCs and the IP-based providers. We do provide service to large CLECs as well, however there’s fewer and fewer CLECs today than there were," the new president notes. "We’ll be looking at the large RBOCs, the first tier CLECs such as McLeod and XO. But we will pick our targets very carefully." The new president expects to spend two days each week at its Ottawa headquarters, and a couple of days at the company’s sales office in St. Louis. The rest of his time will be spent on the road visiting financial analysts and potential customers. Linmor recently opened a new headquarters in Ottawa to meet its need for more space. In the last 12 months, the firm has grown from 65 workers to 101.

Ottawa company sees telecom slowdown as an opportunity for some firms

News | June 4, 2001

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Ottawa company sees telecom slowdown as an opportunity for some firms

News | June 4, 2001

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