Pipeline Q&A: Telcordia (cont'd)

Pipeline: The Granite-Telcordia marriage is a favorite topic of discussion in the OSS sector. How do you respond to those who say the relationship is challenged and that Telcordia will have trouble adopting ideas and learning from the much smaller Granite team?

Desch:I would expect that my competitors would say this and that they would hope it was true. First, this is not a relationship - Granite is Telcordia, not a separate company. In some ways internal people say it’s feels like a reverse integration of Telcordia into Granite, rather than the other way around. The people who were Granite’s executives are now in key, high impact roles for product development, product management, and sales and marketing around the world.

The Granite way is becoming the Telcordia way in those places where the companies have come together. The Granite team is excited to draw on resources they didn’t have before. Telcordia is moving faster, taking more smart risks, and we are reacting faster to opportunities. We’ve announced successes with customers since the acquisition, and I only hear positive things internally and from our customers. I am thrilled with how it’s going.

Pipeline: As a chief executive, it’s impossible to make everyone happy with every decision you make. There are those that say, however, that Matt Desch is a consensus builder and won’t make the tough decisions that ruffle other people. What do you have to say to these people?

Desch: I’m not sure that being a consensus builder is a terrible thing to call somebody. But it’s inaccurate to say that I don’t make the necessary decisions – even when they are not popular decisions. I think it’s possible for a manager to be able to get people to work together and to debate an issue, but not let the debate go on longer than necessary to be able to make a decision. I think respectful debate is important. I am worried about managers who only hear themselves, and this industry had real challenges in the late ‘90s with people believing themselves too much. I want to get the best people around me and help them to be successful.

You can imagine that when you have applications that can work on traditional and new systems, wireline and wireless networks, services-led versus product-led strategies, you have a lot of debate. We would not have come up with excellent approaches if we just demanded what the answer needed to be. We’re going through a cultural transformation and you can’t just tell people what they need to do to change. I’ve been very explicit about what I’m doing to get the best cultural transformation and true change Telcordia needs to make.

Pipeline: Speaking of change - what recent successes can you point to that demonstrate Telcordia’s growth in the mobile and cable sectors?

Desch: I’m proud of what our team has accomplished in less than 2 years. We’re now going to do more than $100 million in wireless and cable – mostly in wireless. The success has been on two fronts. One is the OSS sector where we’re leading in wireless service assurance, and the other is in the network services sector. We’ve had dramatic success in wireless.

Cable is in its nascent stages. We’ve had some success with Cox, but we are still in the early stages on the cable side and we’re looking at what more we can do in that area to accelerate our success.

Pipeline: What is your perspective on the future for the Latin American market, and what kind of growth or advancements do you expect to see there in the next two years?

Desch: We see a lot of exciting growth in Latin America, and a lot of emerging competition in the carrier space in wireless and IP services. We see a specific trend of managing inside and outside technicians more effectively. As an example, we had an announcement where we brought our Force product to Telmex. Prepaid and wireless data are exploding, so we think there’s room for our network services platforms there. We’re seeing an emerging need for service resource management also. We’ve opened two offices in Brazil just recently and have offices in Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Miami. Latin America is close to home and we have a good presence to build on.

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