Sound Diagnostics Still Surviving
From Nasdaq Meltdown Comes Software Downturn
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Barbara Fox were prepared for the
April 11, 2001 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
NEC Pulls Plug On Eulix Spinoff
Just two months after Michelle Kuplic, above, accepted
the job as president and CEO of Eulix Networks Inc., an NEC
telecommunications
spinoff, the Eulix technology was declared not quite ready for prime
time.
From 35 to 40 Eulix employees had occupied two floors of the NEC USA
building on Independence Way, and their offices and lab benches are
empty. Kuplic is back in North Carolina and is reportedly waiting
to be assigned another NEC division. No formal announcement of the
company’s closing has been made, and Kuplic did not return a
reporter’s
call.
“I love pressure,” she said for a January interview for U.S.
1 Newspaper; she was featured on the cover for the Women in Business
issue on January 31. “I thrive on change. I like the
pressure,”
she said then. “It’s like putting together a puzzle — how
fast can I put it together?” At that time, the company reported
it had 100 people, including 45 to 50 people in Princeton, an office
in Colorado, and three overseas locations.
When Eulix was founded last fall, NEC USA had poured $15 million into
it. Kuplic was hired in December, 2000. “Speed to market is
essential
for Eulix Networks,” Kuplic was reported as saying. “Within
my first few weeks at the helm, I had five venture capital firms
calling,
analysts searching out online information on us, and stories about
Eulix activity running in Dow Jones, Bloomberg’s and the Financial
Times globally.” She unveiled the DeltaX switch at the Comnet
Conference & Expo in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, January 30.
Then Kuplic reportedly told Eulix’ board of directors that unless
the company could get substantially more investment, it should shut
down. The board chose to close the firm in mid February. As of Monday,
April 9, neither Eulix nor NEC USA had announced the company’s demise,
nor had any notice appeared in the media.
The company’s chief product, the DeltaX switch, was supposed to
expedite
the routing of information between cable wires, telephone lines, and
cellular signals. “In the lab the switch was singing just
fine,”
says an insider. “But telecommunications protocols are such a
hodgepodge, it would have taken nine months or a year for the switch
to be ready.”
“The product required considerably more investment to ready it
for the marketplace,” says Lourdes Cogswell, spokesperson for
NEC USA. “Michelle Kuplic assessed the business outlook and the
products they were working on and made two recommendations, either
to seek substantial capital commitment or to close the operations
down. As the chief shareholder, NEC looked at the business plan and
the timetable required and made its decision based on that.”
For her work with Eulix, Kuplic was commuting to Princeton from Chapel
Hill, North Carolina, where her husband has an architectural
engineering
business, and they have children ages 11 and 16. A 20-year veteran
of the information technology industry, Kuplic majored in computer
at the University of Wisconsin (Class of 1982), worked for MCI in
its youth, and then went to Sprint, Ericsson, and most recently was
senior vice-president of global sales and services for Gai-Tronics.
Asked how she made the decision to leave Gai-Tronics for Eulix, she
told the U.S. 1 reporter that she called industry contacts, asking
them whether the Eulix product could work in the marketplace.
“When
I got three heads to nod, I knew I was onto something.”
At that interview, Kuplic acknowledged that even a spin-off from a
company with deep pockets is not a dead certainty. She used the highly
publicized problems at communications giants AT&T and Lucent
Technology
to make the point that startups aren’t the only companies that can
trip up. The key thing, in Kuplic’s view, is whether a company has
a product that solves a problem and fulfills customers’ needs. Eulix
had but 10 potential customers.
Kaoru Yano, president of NEC USA Inc., had said that Eulix would be
part of NEC’s strategy to launch new entrepreneurial business ventures
capable of bringing advanced new technologies and solutions to market
quickly.
This is not a “work on the technology and try again later”
opportunity. “Resurrecting Eulix is not under consideration,”
says Cogswell. “Michelle was brought in to run the business and
part of that involved assessing the business outlook and developing
a business plan. She determined she needed additional resources to
get the product to market. She did a great job in leading the
effort.”
— Barbara Fox
Top Of PageSound Diagnostics Still Surviving
Though the Eulix spinoff from its Japanese parent has
been canceled, a start-up that sprang from a German company is still
alive. For Sound Diagnostics, Raymond Watrous has his office in the
Siemens Corporate Research building on College Road East (U.S. 1,
January 17). Prompted by trademark issues, Sound Diagnostics has
changed
its name to Zargis Medical Corp.
Both Siemens Corporate Research Inc. (SCR), a subsidiary of Siemens
Corporation, and Speedus.com (SPDE) have a stake in the new company.
Zargis hopes to develop advanced diagnostic products and services
for primary care physicians and other healthcare providers to detect
heart abnormalities. If it can identify valvular heart disease that
might otherwise go undetected, yet improve the recognition of innocent
heart murmurs, it could reduce the number of unnecessary referrals
for more expensive diagnostic evaluations.
Speedia Wireless, a wholly owned subsidiary of SPEEDUS, has signed
an exclusive contract with Zargis to design and develop the wireless
applications, as well as provide transaction processing to support
the commercial rollout of Zargis cardiac diagnostic products.
Four MDs have been appointed to the medical experts board: Alvin J.
Chin, Warren David Cooper, Lee D. Eisenberg, and Nathaniel Reichek.
Reichek has been involved from an early stage in the development of
the technology; he teaches at Hahnemann and the Medical College of
Pennsylvania and is director of cardiology at Allegheny General
Hospital
in Pittsburgh.
Eisenberg heads KJM Healthcare Consulting Inc., which advises medical
practices on coding and reimbursement issues, medical record
documentation
and compliance.
Cooper has a consulting practice, Coalescence Inc., that focuses on
Internet strategies for pharmaceutical and related businesses. Chin
brings a perspective on neonatal and pediatric cardiology; he founded
and has directed the Non-Invasive Laboratories at Children’s Hospital
of Philadelphia and now teaches at Penn.
On the management board are two officers of Siemens Corporate
Research,
Silvano Dall’Asta, chief financial officer, and Shahram Hejazi,
director
of strategic business development. Other board members are William
F. Leimkuhler of the Paice Corporation, a privately held developer
of advanced vehicle power trains, and Shant S. Hovnanian, now
chairman,
CEO, and president of Speedus.com, previously managing director of
V.S. Hovnanian Group, comprised of land development, home building,
mortgage banking and private utility operating companies.
Watrous is the only full-time employee, but he is looking for the
second, a senior level processing engineer for analysis of heart
sounds.
Zargis Medical Corp., 755 College Road East,Princeton08540. Ray Watrous, chief technology officer. 609-734-6596; fax,609-734-6565.Home page: www.zargis.comTop Of PageTelecom Sale: Commtech to ADCAnother Central New JErsey telecommunications companyhas been acquired by ADC Telecommunications. Frank Fawzi, founderof the Route 130-based Commtech, has completed the sale of his firmand is now chief technology officer of ADC’s integrated systems group.Fawzi’s $187 million deal was a stock-for-stock transaction, with13.25 million shares of common stock issued; some employees got stockoptions. Updata represented Commtech in the February acquisition.Fawzi founded Commtech Corporation in 1990 to manufacture telephonyswitching products and building control systems. Fawzi, 34, isoriginallyfrom Turkey; his father owned a business in Istanbul that distributedpharmaceuticals throughout the Mideast. He got both his BS inengineeringand a masters in MIS from Stevens Institute of Technology (1984 and1987, respectively), and worked with AT&T Bell Labs, Sun Microsystems,and the Associated Press.At the time of the sale his company had more than 280 employeesincludingthose at the 25,000-foot Cranbury headquarters. Others were in Brick,New Jersey, Columbus, Ohio; Toronto, Canada; and London. Its morethan 60 customers and partners include BellSouth, Qwest, Adelphia,Comcast, SBC, Verizon, Network Plus and CableVision Lightpath, andit had an early investment from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter VenturePartners.ADC is a publicly traded supplier of fiber optics, network equipment,software, and integration services for broadband multiservicenetworks.Its stock (ADCT) is tracked in the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index andthe Nasdaq-100 Index. It has annual sales of $3.2 billion andapproximately21,000 employees worldwide.In 1998 ADC Telecommunications had bought Princeton Optronics, thefiber optics component firm on Phillips Boulevard that was foundedin 1993 by Barry Zhang (U.S. 1, August 23, 2000). As part of the fiberdivision within ADC’s Broadband Connectivity Group (BCG), it helpsADC offer a single source for high-quality optical components.ADC began in 1935 in Minnetonka, Minnesota, with the invention ofan audiometer, to test hearing. It flourished in the 1980s when theregional Bell companies were empowered to shop for their equipmentin the general marketplace. It pioneered in the shift from analogto digital and became the industry leader in digital signalcross-connectdevices.Just before the company sale was announced, Fawzi won an innovationaward for his FastFlow software, which integrates service order entryand management, provisioning (including inventory management), andactivation. This software has flow-through provisioning solutionsfor DSL and cable service providers. Billed as “multi-tierthin-clientarchitecture that offers flexibility for end-to-end order managementand service activation,” it will be integrated into ADC’sSingularit.esuite of end-to-end solutions.ADC’s Singularit.e product is intended to allow Communication ServiceProviders (CSPs) “to focus on business imperatives and grow thebottom line rather than expending resources on costly and lengthyintegration and infrastructure projects.”ADC Telecommunications, 2555 Route 130 South,Cranbury08512. Frank Fawzi. 609-655-2277; fax, 609-655-2292. Home page:www.comm.comADC Telecommunications Inc. (ADCT), 250 PhillipsBoulevard, Suite 255, Ewing. Barry Zhang, director, optical componentsdevelopment. 609-771-4370; fax, 609-771-9790. Joe Latore,manufacturingmanager. 609-671-2714; fax, 609-771-4371. www.adc.comTop Of PageSoftware ExpansionValaran, 214 Carnegie Center, Suite 106, Princeton08540. Andrew Maunder, CEO. 609-716-7200; fax, 609-716-8463. Homepage: www.valaran.comJust six months after moving into the Carnegie Center, ValaranCorporationhosted a three-day event, co-sponsored by Sun Microsystems last week.The conference was on the flexibility and productivity of Sun’s Jininetwork technology.Aiming to integrate complex business systems, Valaran works withdynamicsoftware infrastructure and business solutions for globalcommunicationsand Internet markets. Valaran is using Jini network technology inthe telecommunications industry for back office integration andbusinessprocess control applications. Valaran’s chief product is Vista, anapplication integration software for communication services providersand vendors of operations and business support systems.Sun’s Jini technology provides open end-to-end solutions for creatingdynamically networked products, services, and applications that scalefrom devices to enterprise (www.sun.com/jini). “Jini networktechnologyhas made incredible headway over the past year in different typesof business applications,” says Aleta Ricciardi, executive vicepresidentof product development for Valaran.Andrew Maunder is the CEO and Michael Ogg the chief technologyofficer.Recent hires are George Timmes as senior vice president of sales andmarketing, Eric Fleischer as vice president of alliances and businessdevelopment, and Paul Rabin as director of technical marketing andsales support.The company is funded by TL Ventures, EnerTech Capital Partners,CelticHouse International, and Kinsman Capital LLC.Top Of PageFrom Nasdaq Meltdown Comes Software DownturnLike many software firms associated with Wall Street,Tachyon Systems has had to react to the bear market. In JanuaryTachyonSystems moved out of its space on Hulfish Street and is refocusingits efforts. Keith Danko, the president and CEO, says the companyis still seeking opportunities and continuing to work on a pilotprogramfor a major Wall Street firm. Tachyon’s co-founder, Sasha Migdal,invented software for real-time Nasdaq analysis (U.S. 1, April 19,2000.) “I personally remain a big believer in our technology,”says Danko. He co-founded the firm with Migdal, the Russian-bornscientistresponsible for several other companies.Tachyon is built around FalconEye software, billed as an “anunprecedentedeffort to deliver real time data and analytics over the InternetthroughJava applets,” giving traders a useful method to analyze the kindof information that the Internet makes possible, and communicatingthe resulting content in real time in a convenient way. A live mapuses Java to plot and sort the entire Nasdaq market according to oneof nine technical indicators, and alerts can monitor a particulartechnical indicator and sound a warning.”Certainly our company has been affected by recent activity inthe stock market, but longer term I am convinced that the value ofour technology will win,” Danko says. “We remain the onlycompany with technology that can capture, clean, and analyze everytick of Nasdaq’s data in real time.” In other words, when thebulls once again replace the bears on Wall Street, watch for a falconin the sky.Tachyon Systems LLC, Keith Danko. 609-921-2216.Home page: www.tachyonsystems.comTop Of PageManagement MovesHorizon Mercy, 275 Phillips Boulevard, Trenton08618-1426. Velvet G. Miller, president. 609-393-4300; fax,609-538-0833.Velvet G. Miller is the new president of the HorizonMercy managed care program, a partnership of Horizon Healthcare ofNJ, a subsidiary of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Mercy HealthPlan. The agency has 2,500 members, a budget of $500 million, and245 employees on Phillips Boulevard and another 25 at offices inBloomfieldand Camden. It focuses on the publicly insured, those with incomefrom the state or the federal government.Bertram L. Scott, former president of the HMO, is now president andCEO of TIAA-CREF’s life insurance subsidiary.”Of the six HMOs that service the publicly insured, we have thelargest number of members,” Miller says, pointing to the largenumber of KidCare and FamilyCare clients who have chosen the HorizonMercy program over the other five programs.With a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Wagner College, a master’sfrom Temple, an MBA from Harvard, and a PhD from Boston University,she has been state director of medical assistance and health servicesfor Medicaid and state deputy commissioner. With Cal Davis she hadfounded a eldercare advisory service, My Parent’s Concierge, and hadalso headed a development project for the Robert Wood JohnsonFoundation.”I’ve been committed to this population for a long time,”says Miller. “This is all about access to healthcare. This isanother way, from my end, of making sure they get good care.”Top Of PageExpansions: Hovione BuildsHovione LLC, 475 Wall Street, Princeton 08540.Dave Hoffman, vice president of U.S. Operations. 609-497-0506; fax,609-497-0507. Www.hovione.comThe Portugese chemical maker, now in offices at Research Park, isbuilding on eight acres on Lake Drive in East Windsor with a plannedmove-in date of spring, 2002. The 30,000 square-foot facility willdo development and testing of active ingredients used inpharmaceuticalsas well as sales and marketing. At its opening, there will be 12employeesbut that number is expected to climb to 45. CUH2A is doing the designwork and Turner Construction the building.The company had international sales of $60 million last year, andthe United States represents 55 percent of its chemical sales. Theactual manufacturing of the chemical ingredients will take place inLourdes, Portugal, and Macau, south China. Hovione is now supplyingingredients for Phase III clinical trials but wants to get involvedin Phase I and Phase II. Paula Weissberger is marketing director.The Portugese company is investing $15 million in what is being calleda technology transfer center.Broadbeam Corp. (former Nettech Systems), 100CollegeRoad West, Princeton 08540-5052. Boris Fridman, president.609-734-0300;fax, 609-734-0346. Home page: www.broadbeam.comBroadbeam has expanded from 45 to 75 people and moved from AlexanderRoad to the Patrinely building at 100 College Road West. It doesmiddlewaresoftware development, particularly wireless communications, withofficesin Chicago, Boston, California, and Texas. Walter Schoenberg ofCushmanWakefield in East Rutherford represented the tenant.Top Of PageNew in TownAdams Business Consultants Inc., 5 IndependenceWay, Princeton Corporate Center, Suite 300, Princeton 08540. MarkTimothy Adams, president/CEO. 609-520-2147; fax, 609-452-8464. Homepage: www.AdamsBusinessConsult.comMark Timothy Adams has opened a consulting business to do programand project management in telecommunications, insurance, banking,brokerage, and pharmaceutical areas. A native of Long Island, hemajoredin business at Kensington University, in Glendale, California, Classof 1985.Genmab Inc., 707 State Road, Suite 208, Princeton08540. Lisa Drakeman, CEO. 609-430-2481; fax, 609-430-2482. Homepage: www.-genmab.comLisa Drakeman, CEO of Genmab Inc., has opened an office of theCopenhagen-basedbiotechnology firm next-door to Medarex, where her husband, Donald,is the CEO. Genmab was founded in Copenhagen and has a laboratoryin the Netherlands.Drakeman went to Mount Holyoke, Class of 1975, and met her husbandwhen he was at Dartmouth. Both earned their PhDs in religious historyat Princeton University.Using Medarex’ HuMAb-Mouse technology, Genmab can rapidly create highaffinity fully human antibodies instead of mouse antibodies. Genmabwants to use these antibodies to develop some of the new diseasetargetsthat are being discovered through genomics and other scientificefforts.The transgenic mouse technology bypasses complicated geneticengineeringand some of the time consuming tests on humans. These fully humanantibodies contain no mouse or other animal proteins that can triggerallergic responses or other complications. Genmab has four productsin development to treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and otherinflammatoryconditions.Top Of PageCrosstown MovesFirst Horizon Home Loans (FTN), 2 Tree Farm Road,Pennington Point West, Suite A-210, Pennington 08534. Gary Shambaugh,branch manager. 609-243-9161; fax, 609-243-0127.Www.mnc-mortgage.comFirst Horizon Home Loans Corp. has moved from 12 Roszel Road toPennington.It was formerly known as Maryland National Mortgage Corp.Top Of PageLeaving TownMonitor Capital Advisors, 51 Madison Avenue, Room201, New York 10010. 212-576-6400.Six years after moving from Madison Avenue to the Carnegie Center,this organization has changed its name from Monitor Capital Advisorsto New York Life Investment Management Quantitative Strategies andreturned to Manhattan. At one time the company had 12 employees at504 Carnegie, on a sublease from Educational Testing Service.When known by the Monitor name, it was an independent money managementfirm with a quantitative management style and was wholly owned byNew York Life. It managed a portfolio family of six mutual funds,plus pension funds sold by New York Life Insurance sales agents andby broker dealers.Jim Mehling, an ex-Merrill Lynch employee, brought Monitor toPrinceton,partly to find leading edge programmers from among those who workfor Dow Jones, Merrill Lynch, and Bloomberg.and other financial institutions. “One of the reasons we cameto Princeton is that we hope to find `our type’ of people downhere,”said Mehling then. “We know there is a big pool down here.Princetonis a bit of a sleeper for investment management.”www.hitlogger.com/cgi-bin/nstats-bin/do/link.cgi?id=mc[fioenr[obfxpictnno]o”>www.hitlogger.com/cgi-bin/nstats-bin/do/stats.cgi?j=u&r=u&id=mc[fioenr[obfxpictnno]o”BORDER=0>Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
