Corrections or additions?
Published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on May 3, 2000. All rights reserved.
EcomServer’s Ascent
Business to business software is in its infancy, says
Nixon Patel, co-founder of eComServer, the fast growing Route 1 software
firm. “But once you open up a portal, it is like climbing a mountain.
As you go higher, you see more. There is an immense opportunity just
to automate the way different businesses talk to each other. As you
climb, you see more things to be done.”
Nixon Patel, Raj K. Salgam, and Rakesh Patel (no relation) founded
eComServer two years ago in shared office space at HQ in Princeton
Forrestal Village. Now eComServer has about 80 employees in 10,000
square feet in the Guest Supply building at 4301 Route 1 South, and
120 workers in India in 10,000 square feet at a high tech city park
in Hyderabad, the huge software development center with such neighbors
as Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle. The firm opened a 30-person office
in Madison Square Garden on May 1 and has plans to expand to Europe.
But eComServer keeps its “presence” at HQ in Princeton Forrestal
Village, not only for the Princeton mailing address but also because
of emotional ties. “It is where the three of us spent night after
night after night, wondering how to make this happen,” says Patel.
He notes with irony that the post office does not deliver to the company’s
new location in Monmouth Junction. “That is so surprising in this
day and age, in the heart of New Jersey, in a building that has two
publicly traded companies (Guest Supply and Ikon Document Services)
that the post office does not deliver mail.” Everyone in
this building gets mail through a box at the Monmouth Junction post
office.
The founders report that the company is well-funded by both angel
investors as well as venture capitalists, some located in the United
States and some in Spain. “As per our business plan we will be
profitable by the end of this year,” says Salgam. “Unlike
other Internet companies we have a very strong services division that
is enabling us to break even. We are building up the business to business
E-commerce and believe it will also be profitable by first quarter
of 2001.”
Products to improve automated voice response systems are prominent
in the eComServer lineup. Many deal with the Lucent Conversant platform,
an interactive voice response (IVR) system with customer service applications,
usually for automated information giving and receiving. Users navigate
these self-service systems by pressing buttons or saying something.
The Conversant platforms start in the $20,000 range and are being
used by Fortune 1000 companies ranging from banks to catalog companies,
says a Lucent spokesperson.
Here are some of eComServer’s products:
1. Netwatch SNMP Monitors for Simple Network ManagementProtocol using manager stations of HP, Tivoli (an IBM-based product),Castle Rock, and the Web. eComServer has partnered with Lucent Technologiesto devise alarm systems for the Conversant platform. These platformsmonitor inbound voice calls and Lucent has sold more than 300 $2,500licenses for them.These programs can page or E-mail support people. Real-time alarmreporting is triggered by such potential problems as low disk spaceor no dial tone. The system can do “triage” and put problemsin categories of critical, major, minor, or informational.2. A Remote Administration Package eliminates the needfor supervisors to log onto individual Conversant systems. eComServerlicenses these $1,000 packages to Lucent. Potential clients for thisWindows-based package might be Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 companies3. OneManage works with Script Builder to create workflowapplications for Lucent’sConversant IVR to consolidate reports,deploy software, and do version control. Lucent sells this add-on.4. VConnect is just being launched, the first VXML (voiceworkflow management) for telecommunications switches and for IVR.This lets voice mail messages be heard from the Web. “In the futurewhen you call for bank balance and mortgage information, you willbe able to administer the menus and adjust the workflow so that youwon’t have to go through five different menus. We have a 12-memberteam working on the product and believe it will be ready in four months,”says Patel.”Creating self help options is moving in the right direction,and it is good to be a little company that provides a product fora big company,” says Gary Pudles of AnswerNet on Witherspoon Street (www.answernetnetwork.com).Founded by William Robertshaw, AnswerNet has bought a majority sharein Signius Corp. (another telemessaging processing firm founded byRobertshaw) and is now the largest telemessaging firm in North America.”eComServer is taking the existing paradigm for old technologies— alarm systems and systems control — and moving them to thenew platform, which is a Lucent system. The platforms will continueto change, but the concept is tried and true,” says Pudles.Salgam, the CEO, graduated as an electrical engineer from JawaharlalNehru Technological University in 1984 and did his master’s degreeat Villanova. He then worked at Bell Labs in Lincroft and Holmdelas a consultant. He was a key manager at Web Sci Technologies on Route1 North for nine years and co-founded the company as an S Corporationwith Nixon Patel and Rakesh Patel in 1998. He had known Rakesh Patelfrom Bell Labs and met Nixon Patel socially. He is married and hasa school-aged son and preschool daughter. His father is an accountant,and he has two brothers (one remaining in India) and a sister wholives in New Jersey.Nixon Patel, president and CTO, is an alumnus of the Indian Instituteof Technology in Kharagbur, known for its electrical and computerscience, Class of 1985. A native of Calcutta, where his father wasa chemist and had his own business, he went to New Jersey Instituteof Technology for his master’s degree then did networking researchat Research Triangle Park for IBM. He has been married for almost15 years and has two school age children.”About the time I started my thesis, I took a job on Wall Street.I started the derivatives group for Smith Barney and worked for otherbrokerages,” says Patel. He did the first foreign exchange Web-basedsystem for J.P. Morgan, reconfigured the derivatives system for DaichiBank, and was one of four consultants to structure the “valueat risk” program for the merger of Chase and Chemical. He helpedfound one company that grew to 80 people by the time he left, andhad another small company that worked on real-time distributed riskmanagement systems.Patel’s vision in March, 1998, was to address the business to businessE-commerce market. At the time he was working with Dresdner Bank;he knew Rakesh Patel. Between them, they have strong ties with Lucent,Oracle, and Netscape. “I knew all these old relationships andpartnerships in the application server market were going to boom,”says Patel.”We are looking for hyper-growth, $45 to $50 million revenue by2002,” says Patel. “What we see now is just the tip of theiceberg. The production group in New York has an exciting XML technologydriven by intelligent agents to make businesses work more efficientlyand create systems to make everything more open.”The company refuses to be worried about lagging tech stocks. “Webelieve that there has to be a healthy correction and that it is goodfor the economy,” says Salgam. He says he has “incentified”his employees with a strong stock option plan. “The only thingthat can affect our business is the core inflation rate.”Salgam compares the IT world with the manufacturing industry and predictsthat more of the intellectual property and creative work will happenin the United States but that the actual programming will get pushedoff in the future: “The important thing is that the creative highend will be done in the United States. The U.S. is the most productivenation in the world and they have the most creative workforce. Inthe leading force of all adopting and using technology, the U.S. isalways ahead, and even more so in the electronic and information age.”That the company gets labeled as being Indian because its officersare from India is understandable, he says, “but it doesn’t reflectthe truth. No work we get here has been shipped to India, though wemay do that obviously in the future.”Salgam emphasizes that most of his workers are citizens or hold greencards. “We are an American company,” he says, “and mostof us have been here for 15 years. We have chosen to locate here ina 50-mile radius of the major pharmaceutical, financial, and telecommunicationsfirms. America is a melting pot.”eComServer Inc., 4301 Route 1 South, PrincetonExecutive Center, Suite 220, Monmouth Junction. Mailing address: 116Village Boulevard, Suite 200, Princeton Forrestal Village 08540. 800-348-9664;fax, 888-979-8800. Home page: www.ecomserver.com.Top Of PageStart-UpsPC Service Network Inc., 397 Ridge Road, DaytonProfessional Center, Suite 3, Dayton 08810. Wayne Kaminski. 732-329-9495;fax, 732-329-9590.The computer repair service has opened at this location. It has corporateclients, mostly in north Jersey, New York, and Long Island, for whichit repairs big printers, PCs, and networks, usually on maintenancecontracts.Top Of PageCrosstown MovesB&R Industrial Automation Corp., 7 Centre Drive,Suite 1, Jamesburg 08831. Peter Mathe, sales manager. 609-395-9912;fax, 609-395-9916. Home page: www.br-automation.com.This firm has moved from 211 North Center Drive, North Brunswick.Based in Georgia, it sells operator panels, PLCs, and industrial computers.Prudential Insurance, Princeton Meadows OfficeCenter, Suite 600, Plainsboro 08536. Robert M. Dilatush, special agent.609-799-1920; fax, 609-799-1646. www.prudential.com.This insurance office moved within Princeton Meadows Office park fromSuite 308 to Suite 600. Robert Dilatush offers homeowners, auto, andlife insurance.Top Of PageLeaving TownADT Security Systems, 2540 Route 130, Suite 100,Cranbury 08512. 609-655-2200.The retail seller of electronic burglar, fire, card access, and CCTValarm systems has closed this 120-person office and divided the accountsthree ways, between Edison, Pennsauken, and Moorestown.Systems Fulfillment, 666 Plainsboro Road, Suite600, Plainsboro 08536. 609-275-7120.The computer leasing company has moved to larger space in Neptune.A staff person declined to give further details.Top Of PageLegal ManeuversH. Gross Outfitters, 51 Hulfish Street, PalmerSquare, Princeton 08542. Henry Gross, owner. 609-924-6088.Henry Gross filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. Court papersshow that he owes about $200,000 to Starbare Associates, which hasliens on his equipment, merchandise, and his home.The store had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992 and four yearslater moved from a prime walk-in location at One Palmer Square toa smaller store at 51 Hulfish Street. It sells sporting goods, manywith the Princeton name or university logo.Top Of PageCorrectionTachyon Systems LLC, 47 Hulfish Street, Princeton08540. Home page: www.tachyonsystems.com.In the April 19 issue of U.S. 1, the photo of Keith Danko at his deskshows a Bloomberg terminal, not a proprietary product of TachyonSystems, as the U.S. 1 caption suggested. U.S. 1 regrets the error.Top Of PageDeathsIssa I. Edmonds, 67, on April 21. She worked with J&J Temporary,Total Research, and Department of Environmental Protection.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
