June 2, 2005 Stockholm, Sweden and Plano, TX -- Transmode, a global provider of optical networking platforms, today announced its entry into the North American market. To lead the company's North American business, Anders Lundberg, the former CEO of Lumentis, with whom Transmode merged in March, will take helm as CEO of the newly established Transmode Inc., and will relocate to Plano, Texas, where the company has established a sales office.
According to a press release, the company has secured more than 100 customers in Europe, including a recently-announced contract with Telenor, a tier 1 Norwegian PTT and global service provider. The company also recently received recognition from the investment community, winning an award from Red Herring magazine. The company says it believes the time is right to build on these successes by fully entering the North American market.
"Developing our business in North America is the next major strategic step for Transmode, following our merger with Lumentis," explains Isaac Olasoko, Transmode's CEO. "The region represents 39% of our global addressable market of $1.7 billion and is growing at 20% CAGR. We see strong signs of a sustained recovery in the WDM market, driven by triple-play infrastructure build, demand for business Ethernet services, and the growth of storage area networks. Now is the time to capitalize on this trend, and Anders Lundberg is the ideal person to execute our strategy, having successfully led Lumentis since its foundation in 2000. In addition, we intend to leverage the support of our US-based investor, HarbourVest, which can help us build stronger relationships with North American customers and partners."
"I am very excited about Transmode's prospects in North America," comments Anders Lundberg. "Our sales team has already built a healthy pipeline of opportunities, and my first priority is to secure our 2005 revenue objectives. In parallel, I will be executing our three-pronged channel strategy: driving direct sales with regional operators including our existing U.S. customers, expanding our network of value-added resellers, and developing our relationship with OEM partners. I will also be forging partnerships with companies in the data and storage networking sectors, to further strengthen our position in vertical markets."
Through its merger with Lumentis, the company says it now offers a broad portfolio of optical networking products based on WDM technology that is suitable to the needs of the North American market. The company says its WDM platform allows network operators to build metro rings in densely populated urban areas that require a high number of wavelengths to be delivered to a large number of network nodes.
The company says its patented DWDM system architecture can support up to 20 nodes and 40 wavelengths per ring, without requiring amplification. According to the company, this can lower first deployment cost by up to 60%, as compared with other metro DWDM systems, while allowing between 3 and 5 times as many nodes per ring as other systems. Also, the company says its platform can lower operational costs by 25% to 30%, due to the reduced complexity of unamplified systems and the ease of capacity upgrades.
At next week's Supercomm 2005, the company plans to introduce a product which it says enable deployment of small-footprint, fully-integrated, low-cost metro WDM nodes, to allow efficient backhaul of Gigabit Ethernet traffic generated by DSL and Cable-based broadband access systems.