Meltdown? There's still liquid gold! -- I

Bharat Kumar

TWO things strike you when you walk into the office of Vijaya Verma, Founder and Vice-President of Engineering at Alopa Networks Inc and Managing Director of the India development arm: one, it is unusual for a technology specialist to meet the business press to talk about the company's performance and plans and two, that as head of technology, the casualness that most ''techies'' exhibit with regard to their dress and work was conspicuously missing. Clad in a formal suit, she leads you into her office with a business-like shake of her head.

The first thing she talks about corroborates the image you get of her. She stresses on the need to help her clients increase revenues. This, from a technologist, is fresh air. No eulogising technology here, no psalms sung. Just plain, dear, old money. Her point: if I need to make money, I must help my client make more money.

Alopa was founded in 1999, with an investment of $18 million.

It has development centres in both the US and in Bangalore. Being close to the customer (in the US) is crucial, she says. Alopa started within Wipro and was later spun off. It took with it the CyberManage intellectual property that it created and for which Wipro got a small stake in the company.

Alopa provides network management software products for broadband service providers such as AT&T, MCI WorldCom and multiple service operators (MSOs) in the areas of cable, wireless and DSL. Excerpts from a chat with Vijaya Varma:

Has your focus changed in the last two years due to a changing scenario?

Then, provisioning was a problem. Manual processes took time in enlisting a subscriber. He had to call into the service provider's centre. Then a technician would manually set up a cable modem and actually call the knox centre to find out the IP address. These details would be manually entered into the billing system. Our software allowed a plugged-in cable modem to talk to our server and the IP address would be read automatically. It also sent required information that the subscriber inputs at our portal to the billing system. What took a couple of weeks, we did in a few hours.

Reducing costs is not as much the key as the ability to increase revenue. We do this by enabling operators to offer high-value added services. We help reduce costs with automated provisioning, and by assuring quality which is a challenge in the cable system, a shared system.

When we went to market, we found that the MSO's priority was to just get the data-over-cable services running and to reduce deployment costs.

Finally, he wanted to enlist subscribers faster. So, we did the provisioning piece first. Next came the assurance phase, including bandwidth monitoring, capacity planning, subscriber services level monitoring. This we have done over the last quarter. Service modelling is our focus now.

Is this tool a framework on which operators build?

This is a piece of software that helps them choose the services they want to offer. This can be adopted module-wise so that the investment is not huge at one go.

The opportunity for us is: Services for subscribers is not lacking. You also have adequate bandwidth. What is missing is proper software solutions to enable services go over this bandwidth to subscribers. For, legacy systems are not geared up for such services.

Our modelling tool is a simple data service as well as a complex piece of software. When you want to deploy a service, you have to understand what devices you need.

If it's a voice over cable service, then you need a call management server, a back-end voice system, a cable-modem in the house (MTA) and a cable modem head-end equipment.

You have to configure these accordingly so that voice can get to the end user. You have to look at issues such as bandwidth, quality of services, etc.

The tool helps model the device and specify parameters accordingly. With it, you can package your services accordingly - either combine them as data, e-mail and voice. A subscriber can make a choice of the combination he wants and the equipment is configured accordingly, automatically. The billing is also taken care of according to the choices the subscriber makes. Also, it defines business rules. For instance, you can specify that subscribers in a certain pin code area will have a specialised service, etc. This helps in load-balancing. As a result, there is very less integration to be done by the MSO.

In the last six-eight months, have you seen orders taking their time coming?

Decision-making is taking longer. But in the cable world, sales cycles have always been long. Our advantage is having a centre in Bangalore. Further, our burn rate is tight compared to competition. A good product and low burn rate is the recipe for success. We have had to push back revenue estimates further by a quarter. That's not so much because of a downturn, but due to our own estimation of decision-making. We felt no need for downward revision of estimates due to the slowdown.

Have you achieved operational cash-break even?

No. That will take a few quarters more. We have started generating revenues and have customers. We are closing the second round of funding - about $10-12 million - in the next couple of months.

Are you active in the domestic market?

No. We haven't seen broadband cable picking up as yet here. The number of subscribers for data (not even voice) over cable is low. Over a year, it should pick up. We are actively looking at the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America and Mexico for fixed wireless. With our new funding, we will be opening offices in Europe.

What is your revenue model?

It is on a per subscriber and even per-site basis. Down the line, we will be looking at transaction-based charges. That is, every time a subscriber comes in to use the software, we get a cut off the charge made by MSOs.

Pic.: Ms Vijaya Varma, Founder & Vice-President, Alopa Networks Inc.

Picture by G.R.N.Somashekar

bharatk@thehindu.co.in

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