Type Private Number of locations 10 (2017) Headquarters London Borough of Enfield Founder Ian Ferguson | Industry Telecommunications Revenue US$156 million (2011) CEO John Lazar (Jun 2012–) Founded 1981 | |
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Key people Martin Lund, CEO
Graeme MacArthur, EVP
Martin Taylor, CTO
Tom Cronan, CFO Products Virtualized Software solutions for service providers, network protocol stacks for equipment manufacturers Subsidiaries OpenCloud, Metaswitch Ltd Profiles | ||
Paul drew metaswitch networks
Metaswitch Networks is a private UK-based company that designs, develops, manufactures, and markets telecommunications software to communication service providers, equipment manufacturers and large enterprises.
Contents
Metaswitch s new ceo martin lund discusses his role
Corporate history
Metaswitch (formerly Data Connection Ltd) was founded in 1981 by seven former IBM employees led by Ian Ferguson, who remains on the board of directors. The company's earliest business areas included IBM Systems Network Architecture (SNA) and retail point of sale systems. In the 1990s, the company began developing network protocol software.
In 2000, the company launched the Metaswitch brand, which provided softswitches and network management systems designed to enable telephone service providers to migrate to Voice over IP (VoIP) networks while still supporting legacy telephone technologies. By 2008, the Metaswitch division was responsible for 78% of the company’s revenue.
In April 2009, the company announced intentions to consolidate all of its products and business operations under the Metaswitch brand, with two business units: the Carrier Systems Division and Network Protocol Division. In October 2009, the company rebranded itself as Metaswitch Networks, to reflect the growing focus on the products and services that it sells to telephone service providers.
In August 2011, the company formally changed its name from Data Connection Ltd to Metaswitch Networks Ltd.
Acquisitions
In March 2010, the firm acquired AppTrigger Inc, a provider of service broker software in Richardson, Texas. In April 2011, it acquired Colibria AS, a provider of Rich Communication Suite (RCS) software in Oslo, Norway. In February 2017, Metaswitch acquired OpenCloud Ltd, a provider of an open mobile services platform.
Ownership and investors
In 1987, Metaswitch established the Employee Benefit Trust (EBT) to hold shares of the company on behalf of the employees, which enabled company-wide profit sharing.
In January 2008 Francisco Partners, a private equity firm, and Sequoia Capital, a venture capitalist firm, invested an undisclosed sum in Metaswitch.