CRN Interview: Howard Bubb -- Dialogic

Howard Bubb, president of Dialogic and vice president of Intel's Communications Division, sat down with editor Stephanie Green during CT Expo in Los Angeles.

Green: What percentage of your sales goes through solution providers?

HOWARD BUBB Dialogic president talks about company's future plans and its relationship with parent company Intel, as well as Bubb's view on the economy.

Bubb: Intel's strategy is to always go through the channel. We do not sell directly to end users or service providers. Our revenue is through OEMs and through VARs. OEM sales today make up probably 80 [percent] to 85 percent of our revenue. The other 15 [percent] to 20 percent goes through the VAR channel.

I am talking about our Communications Division. At Intel the percentage is much higher for OEMs. We believe that the channel plays a critical role in defining solutions and in delivering the value to the customer.

Green: Have there been any additions to your channel program recently?

Bubb: Out here at the show we announced that Catalyst Telecom would be integrating and delivering our new Intel Converged Communications Platform. Catalyst is a very successful distributor of communications solutions with a wide range of communications products that are bringing that expertise to bear, working with many of our independent software vendors and providing those vendors [with] a very cost-effective and knowledgeable channel to move their software solutions along with our [platform].

Green: Tell me about the direction Intel is going with its products, and the areas where Intel plans to expand.

Bubb: Our goal at Intel is to create building blocks for solutions. We are focusing on making sure those building blocks have a tight fit. What we mean by a tight fit is that they go together very rapidly, enabling time-to-market effectiveness and a low cost of ownership. We also believe the building blocks should be very extensible, so we are focusing on the application program interfaces--our middleware software such as CT Media and CT Connect--that allow the building blocks to be rapidly hammered in new markets.

Green: What acquisitions have you made to add to these areas?

Bubb: Last year we made a series of acquisitions to expand our building blocks. In the SS7 arena we acquired a leader in SS7 signaling gateways, called DataKinetics, a company we have worked with for several years and deployed products worldwide. We also acquired Voice Technologies Group, and with them we are creating a product we announced here at the show called iPOD--which lets you integrate legacy PBXs with the Internet. The iPOD is a complete Internet gateway for connecting existing PBX systems to a packet voice network. The third acquisition was Picazo Communications. Picazo played a key role in advancing our CT Media products and turning it into a full-functioning enterprise communications platform. Certainly we plan to work closely with our customers to make sure we have the technology to fit all of the building block needs for next-generation networks.

I should mention our acquisition of Parity Software Development as well. Parity provides a set of ActiveX programming tools that make it easier for people to rapidly develop solutions.

Green: What differentiates your company from a competitor such as Cisco or Nortel?

Bubb: I think the important distinction for Intel is that we really believe in full open systems at every level of the standard. Therefore, we provide to the marketplace solutions at the silicon level and software protocols that run on that silicon. We provide solutions at the board level, allowing people to rapidly integrate our server platforms' unique solutions for next-generation networks. And we also work at a third level we call reference systems. We really show our partners how to build these very flexible, extensible, scalable solutions. Here at the show we have media gateways, soft switches, signaling gateways and media servers, which are the key building blocks for next-generation networks, all built on open technology, working closely with about 3,000 different software partners that build our technology.

Green: What are your plans in relation to Linux?

Bubb: Intel's position on Linux is that we support the diversity and openness of the Linux operating system. Our products are all available on Windows 2000, Unix and Linux. All of the Intel Dialogic board-level products are supported on all three major operating systems.

Green: Is the economy today affecting Dialogic and Dialogic sales?

Bubb: I think that in the short term, people are trying to curtail capital expenditures. However, I think we're already seeing that in times of pullback, people always want to invest in areas that make them more efficient and better able to serve their customers. The kind of communication technology we provide really is fundamental to businesses operating more efficiently at a higher level with higher levels of customer satisfaction. So over the years, as the economy runs in cycles, we've always seen our business moving very strongly, even during times of a slowdown. I think temporarily people do pull back. It's a knee-jerk reaction. But as people then take a longer-term view of how they compete, they realize that they have to invest in technology to make them more competitive.