Advent of a global brand in the product space

AdventNet, a niche product company promoted by IIT-Madras graduates is scripting a success story in the global arena with its network and systems management products enjoying market leadership. G Sankaranarayanan has the details

With an undiluted focus in products, AdventNet develops solutions for the global network and system management market, in which its products like Web NMS claim an overwhelming 80 percent share.

Saying a firm ‘No!’ to the lucrative services business, AdventNet has been primarily into building element and network management (EMS/ NMS) applications; solutions for remote operations management, SNMP management and embedded agents, apart from recent offerings related to network management.

AdventNet is a recognised player in providing EMS solutions for network element vendors, and a leading provider of network and system management software in the element management category.

AdvenNet’s EMS solutions, the management framework for building custom element and network management applications, cater to the requirements of networking equipment vendors and other management solution providers for the development and deployment of various management applications.

“It’s a niche segment with the total market size for products accounting for about $100 million,” says Sridhar Vembu, CEO.

The company, incorporated in 1996, emerged as a strong player by providing viable and rapid solutions for a variety of IT and telecom management needs, at a time when “OEMs were getting increasingly dissatisfied with similar US product companies that failed to show benefits in terms of time-to-market and cost.” Vembu says, “We sensed the opportunity and moved into the market, offering attractive value propositions.”

By 1997-98, most competing firms had fallen by the wayside, and AdventNet became a partner for leading names in the industry.

Its clientele includes Lucent Technologies in the telecom space, BEA WebLogic in the application middleware space, EMC in the storage space, TriActive in the managed service provider space, Sprint in the telco service provider space, Telcordia in the OSS space, Fidelity Investments in the financial space, Sixth Dimension in the energy space and Forgent in video conferencing management solutions.

The company sells its products either directly or via resellers to OEMs and has also taken a direct route to cater to end-customers directly.

“EMS and NMS applications need to deliver scalable, reliable and highly available management solutions with a rich set of features. The engineering effort to deliver and evolve these solutions is often underestimated, and it’s advisable to start with a proven framework and applications that include all the productivity benefits of recent software technology advances,” says Vembu, elaborating on why the OEMs buy solutions instead of developing them in-house.

A substantial chunk of business comes from start-ups. “We have a 1,000-strong customer base with a whole bunch of start-up companies in the networking area. Roughly, 50 percent of our total product revenue comes from start-ups because they need fast solutions,” he says.

In India, AdventNet works with system integrators like EDS, Infosys and Wipro. He says that Indian companies like Infosys and Wipro, who provide consulting, product design and system implementation services to major telecom vendors, have worked on AdventNet’s software as a speciality service line.

Headquartered in California, the company has its R&D and product development centre in Chennai, and sales and support centres in several North American locations, as well as in Japan, UK and China. Besides its network of resellers, it has integration partners in countries like Korea, Israel, Taiwan and Brazil.

Around 20 percent of revenue comes from partners in countries like China, Taiwan and Japan. “We are leaders in the markets we cater to in China. Hardware companies like UT Star are our customers,” says Vembu.

AdventNet’s recent major diversification is into enterprise management software, a sector with a conservative worth of $10 billion—at present, 30 percent of the company’s revenue comes from this section. The solutions are centred on cost-effective end-to-end management of networks, systems, and application ecosystems. Besides targeting end-customers for these solutions, AdventNet also pitches with hardware vendors, who by bundling in these solutions can achieve additional revenues and offer remote monitoring and management services.

Here again, the company’s focus remains on products.

Its premium product, ManageEngine OpManager, a comprehensive network, system and application monitoring software, offers advanced network monitoring functionality for enterprises.

Under its enterprise management services, AdventNet provides business-level application management solutions based on open standards. Vembu says, “With the growth of enterprise applications on application servers and networked infrastructure, the need to monitor and manage these applications is growing. For applications driving key business processes, enterprises need to manage the applications as well as the underlying infrastructure.”

According to him, one of the major challenges in managing these applications has been the difficulty of instrumenting these applications for management.

AdventNet bases solutions on Java Management Extensions (JMX) standards, which provide new and simpler ways of making applications manageable, while achieving integration with existing management tools using SNMP, HTTP, CIM, etc.

For enterprise solutions, AdventNet is trying out the ASP model. “Software as a service is where the future is. We are working with US-based management service providers like TriActive and Sixth Dimension in this regard,” Vembu says.

AdventNet has recently introduced its network management product, OpManager, in the Indian market, targeting small and medium enterprises. The product offers a live view of routers, switches, servers and printers using special maps which show the status of interfaces (ports) and services.

The privately held AdventNet has achieved consistent and profitable growth in the past five years, and now has about 450 employees. As for technologies, AdventNet is strong in Web, Java and Linux technologies, with a focus on XML and Web services.

sankar@expresscomputeronline.com