A new company, calling itself Agito Networks and founded by a cadre of former Cisco Systems Wireless Networking Business Unit veterans, today tipped its hand and officially launched itself on the enterprise mobility scene.
Flush with $9 million in venture capital, Agito even unveiled its first product, a router it brags is «the industry’s first and only business mobile convergence platform that uses RF-based, location-aware technologies to better mobilize voice and data applications.»
Put more simply, the company’s premiere product, the «RoamAnywhere Mobility Router,» is a VoIP-to-cellular handoff solution that uses fancy new location-aware technology. The startup is, of course, wading into a market where some heavy hitters already are venturing, among them Aruba Networks and Siemens, not to mention such startups as DiVitas Networks.
However, Agito, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has put together what some might consider a «dream team» of executives bringing with them decades of experience at some of the heaviest hitters in the business in addition to Cisco, where the founders worked at one time or another. President and CEO Rob Markovich, who isn’t a founder, previously was president and CEO of Network Chemistry and a founding executive of Visual Networks. CTO and founder Tim Olson most recently was a technical leader for Wi-Fi products at Cisco. Regarding the rest of the hierarchy, Vice President/Marketing and Founder Pejman Roshan had been product line manager of Cisco’s Wi-Fi products; Vice President/Engineering Bill Miskovetz had been vice president/engineering and founder of Trapeze Networks, a role he also held at Redback Networks; and Vice President/Business Development Mark Cashman has business development and product credentials from IBM Global Services, AT&T and GoRemote.
Backing that team is Battery Ventures as lead investor of a group that’s put $9 million into the young company to get it off the ground.
The product that money has paid for, RoamAnywhere, is described as a system that provides «fast, automatic routing between the enterprise Wi-Fi networks and any carrier cellular network» using RF and location-aware technology. As with all of the emerging Wi-Fi/cellular solutions, one of the biggest selling points is the promise of slashing a corporation’s monthly wireless. Agito also promises that, with its offering, a cellphone can function as an enterprise PBX extension no matter where it is, on both Wi-Fi and cellular networks.
But Agito’s real claim to fame is its location-awareness RF technology in the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router. The company says that technology «ensures that ‘inside’ calls stay on Wi-Fi to maximize savings and eliminate dropped, choppy and missed calls.» In a swipe at the competition, it adds, «Simplistic, signal strength solutions fail and can cause network flaps, ruining the user experience.»
Agito claims RoamAnywhere will work with a large range of IP PBXs, including those from Cisco, Avaya and Nortel. Initially, RoamAnwhere works only with the dual-mode Nokia E- series phones, which use the Symbian operating system. A Windows Mobile version is in development.
Fuente: TelecomWeb
