Multiven

Origins

Founded in 2005 in Palo Alto California by Peter Alfred-Adekeye., The absence of a company with a focus on maintaining the integrity of the world's Internet infrastructure without a hardware, software or political agenda led to the founding of Multiven.

Multiven's core mission is providing owners and operators of Internet networks with a single, independent end-to-end network maintenance, management and cyber-defence services.

Headquartered in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Multiven is today the world's first and only, independent provider of software management, maintenance and cyber-defence services for the world's Internet networks. Multiven has regional sales offices in Paris, France, London, UK, Dubai, UAE.

History of Market

The Internet, otherwise known as cyber-space, is the fifth domain after air, land, sea and space. Accordingly, its criticality to personal, corporate and national security cannot be over-emphasized.

The Internet infrastructure comprises of software-driven networked switches, routers, firewalls, servers and storage hardware that switch, route, protect and store all our voice, video and text data from our smartphones, tablets and personal computers, intelligently across the world.

The Internet, a short form of the word Internetwork, is the network of networks.

Prior to Multiven, Internet equipment manufacturers like Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, etc. had a complete monopoly on the multi-Billion dollar software maintenance services market for networking equipment and charged above-market prices for their inflexible and poorly-delivered services which owners and operators of Internet networks had no choice but to purchase.

Services

Multiven proposes different ranges of services depending on the need of their customers.

They handle software asset management through a free cloud-based application that simplifies the way organizations inventory and manage all their IT and network hardware and software assets, software maintenance by using features that include 24x7 direct-to-expert support, proactive solutions, AI-enabled knowledge-engine and lifetime software support. It can be deployed on a monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual basis for a customers' entire network install-base.

One of the most important service is network based cyberdefense, a service that guarantees to stop cyber-attacks within a network and restore service within 24 hours of an attack. The service (1) is neutral, impartial and independent with no allegiance to any nation state; (2) It focuses on eliminating Advanced Persistent Threats, which are the most intrusive and pervasive form of cyberattacks; (3) It is powered by an elite team of 1000+ network and security experts in 55 countries.

Software recycling is a service conducted through an online platform that provides owners of pre-owned Cisco software licenses with the unprecedented ability to recycle their unwanted Cisco software and resell it. Currently, only Cisco software licenses within the European Economic Area (i.e. the EU 28 nation states, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein) can be resold in the Multiven Marketplace. Buyers can come from anywhere in the world.

Antitrust lawsuit against Cisco Systems

On December 1, 2008, Multiven. filed an antitrust lawsuit^{[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} against Cisco Systems, Inc. in an effort to open up the network maintenance services marketplace for Cisco equipment, promote competition and ensure consumer choice and value. Multiven’s complaint alleges that Cisco harmed Multiven and consumers by bundling and tying bug fixes/patches and updates for its operating system software to its maintenance services (“SMARTnet”) and through a series of other illegal exclusionary and anticompetitive acts designed to maintain Cisco’s alleged monopoly in the network maintenance services market for Cisco networking equipment.^[10]

CEO criminal charges

Cisco in turn accused Multiven CEO Peter Alfred-Adekeye of illegal access to Cisco material using a Cisco ID. Alfred-Adekeye is a naturalised British citizen, a resident of Zurich, and a former Cisco employee. After several months in which US authorities prevented his entry into the country for participation in the litigation, a special hearing in the case took place at a Canadian hotel on 20 May 2010, involving a US special master and four Cisco lawyers. He was arrested from the court session by Canadian police based on a misleading US arrest warrant.

Alfred-Adekeye was released after 28 days in custody but was forced to remain in Canada for another year before he was allowed to return to Zurich. In June 2011, a Canadian judge stayed the extradition, ruling that the strict standard of "extraordinary misconduct" was met by the circumstances and speaking of the "audacity of it all", of "Cisco's duplicity", and the "shocking" act of preventing someone's participation in a judicial proceeding by arresting them to supposedly force them to participate. False material in the US attorney's letter had misled the judge who signed the Canadian arrest warrant. "Grotesquely inflated" charges and the unjustified portrayal of Alfred-Adekeye as a Nigerian-born scam artist and flight risk had misled the Canadian judicial system further. The underlying civil case by Multiven against Cisco had been withheld from them.

After the Lawsuit

Since the Cisco case, Peter Adekeye says, Multiven has recruited almost 1200 engineers to offer businesses various levels of assistance.^[13]

The company operates a free website which provides key information about a range of network equipment. The site highlights devices and support issues that are ‘trending’ – i.e. seeing a spike in support tickets – allowing users to address issues proactively.

Adekeye says the company has made a “humble" but "growing” foothold of customers in the US, and is starting to expand in Europe, Africa and Middle East.