Normally, you do not associate the Valley with professionalservices. But that is what this Larkspur, California-based company has found aniche opportunity in. The reason to feature Convergelabs in the first in thisseries on convergence start-ups is its unique positioning. It is targeting toidentify and close the gap in the operational process of the carriers usingtechnology-related professional services.

The carriers can now mix, match, and experiment variousemerging technologies and their combinations before taking a decision, withoutfear of gaps and mismatches.

It will not only show them what can be done, but will helpbuild services with those technologies. This is only part of the solutionportfolio of Convergelabs, promoted by Ajoy Khanderia and Amol Patel. Khanderia,who is also its CEO, feels that this will give the company its initialbreakthroughs in the market. Its true positioning in the long run, however, willbe as a consultant who will engineer an optimum business process for a carrierand then implement that process through technology integration.

This involves identifying both issues/problem areas andopportunities arising out of new technological developments and mapping them tothe carrier’s business vision. This would help to engineer a suitable businessprocess, design and build a system. The components can come from multiplevendors. It has to ensure that the system runs efficiently in a real-lifesituation.

In simpler words, it promises to repeat in the carriernetworks what successful systems integrators like EDS, PwC, and Logica have donein the enterprise IT space. It requires understanding of both the technology andbusiness processes of carriers. There is one more need. The complete familiaritywith what is being developed. Because, unlike the enterprise network manager,the carrier network manager does prefer reliability to adventurism.

Deregulation, emergence of IP as the all-pervasive standard,and bandwidth crunch have created two fundamental shifts. One, telecom is nomore a game of the blessed few. Number of specialized, small carriers like CLECsand ISPs has gone up dramatically. Two, many traditional telcos are looking attransforming themselves completely to cope with the new challenge.

The new architecture that is emerging is an IP-centric, opennetwork with products and technologies from multiple vendors. Multipletechnologies and their smooth integration to one another is a complex task. Thisis where Convergelabs promises to make life simpler for the carriers.

It plans to bridge the gap between companies developing newtechnologies and carriers that will ultimately deploy them in their networks.That way, it is playing the role of a catalyst.

Though the company plans to target both the new and oldcarriers, it is obvious that the business that it will get from the newoperators will be projects of a higher value add. For old operators, it willhave to be content with piecemeal technology migration and upgradation kind ofwork.

Fortunately, in India, apart from DTS, there are not many oldoperators around. "Reliance, Enron, HFCL…they are all starting fromscratch. It makes tremendous sense for us to show them the value of the newprocesses created around new technologies, right now," says Khanderia.

While people take "great" technologies from SiliconValley for granted, it remains to be seen how professional will be theprofessional service of a Valley start-up. Both Patel and Khanderia talkconfident, though.

Shyamanuja Das