Posted: Wed, June 28, 2006
Profile: Newport Networks
by Sali Earls
Headquartered in Caldicot, Newport Networks have expertise in IP networks and offer secure products and services to the ever expanding IP communications market. The company was founded in
2000 and has offices in Europe, USA, Canada and Asia, employing 120 people worldwide.
Sali Earls spoke to Mike Wilkinson, VP of Marketing to find out more about the company.
 What's the history of your
company?
Newport Networks was founded in 2000 by John Everard and Terry Matthews to develop new infrastructure equipment for the rapidly expanding Voice over IP (VoIP) sector. The company's vision was
develop a carrier scale network device that could do much more that act as a router or a firewall, in fact it would need to analyse packets on the wire in real time. During the initial development phases
of the product there was not even a name for this type of device, however, the product became known as a Session Border Controller.
As the development proceeded and the company
grew it became clear that the session border controller would be a device that virtually every provider of Voice over IP service would need in one
shape or another. Newport focussed its attention on the requirements of the Tier-1 providers who require extremely scalable and resilient solutions. The company drew on its staff's expertise who had
extensive experience in delivering carrier grade products, and created the 1460 session border controller.
In 2004 the company was listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange. The company has grown to over 120 employees and has offices in the UK, Europe, USA and
Far East. The company has been awarded the Frost & Sullivan 2006 IP Communications Next-Generation Carrier Infrastructure Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award.
What unique products/services does your company provide?
Newport Networks produces the 1460 session border controller which has won the International Engineering Consortium's (IEC) InfoVision Award for Network Core Innovation and Advances and
Internet Telephony Magazine's Product of the Year 2005. The 1460 delivers the required scalability and resilience that is demanded by the Tier-1 service provider community.
The 1460 session border controller enables peering and interconnect between operators. In addition it allows managed IP-based voice and multimedia services to be securely delivered to consumers
and businesses. Key capabilities provided by the 1460 are:
- The ability to traverse corporate, consumer and core network NAPT and Firewall devices for SIP services
- Quality of Service enforcement via session admission control and policing
- Security protection for the core network, for customers, and for service revenue
- Regulatory compliance providing Lawful Intercept and Emergency Call Handling
The 1460 can scale between from 5,000 to over 100,000 concurrent calls in a single, 19" chassis; call processing performance can be scaled independently to achieve over 750 calls per
second.
What's been the key to your success?
Success has to be attributed to the people who have created the company formed the vision and had the skills to make the vision a reality. Along the way we have had to review and refine our goals
as the technologies and markets developed. I think that much of the success has a lot to do with avoiding distractions. With an extremely powerful processing platform at our disposal it sometimes
takes a lot of will power to keep focused on the main goal and not be drawn into lots of interesting side projects.
What one piece of outside technology has benefited your company most?
Global standards for delivering voice and multimedia service over IP. SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is allowing manufacturers from the consumer device to the core network infrastructure suppliers to
interoperate globally. Without widely accepted standards our industry would only be able to develop in small islands that cannot easily connect, SIP allows the creation of a unified network.
Ironically, one of the pieces of IP technology that has allowed the Internet to expand, the NAT device, also impedes SIP communications. This problem was one of the major drivers in the initial
development of the session border controller, so I guess we owe the NAT device a vote of thanks for getting in the way.
What one piece of advice would you give to start-up companies in your field?
Research, and more research. Create your plan and take it to your prospective customers and see if it still holds water in the real world. Don't set out to sell a product, set out to solve someone's
problem.
Where do you see your company going in the future?
Newport produces a key component of the Next Generation of Multimedia networks. Many of these networks will be based around IMS architecture which are built from many different types of
elements. Newport's partnerships will play an increasingly key role in delivering our solution into these networks.
Find out more about Newport Networks at www.newport-networks.com.
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