Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 18, 1994 TAG: 9401180032
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The wholly owned unit, NetEdge Inc., was formed in December and will be headquartered in Research Triangle Park, N.C., FiberCom said Monday.
Fifteen of FiberCom's 215 employees in the Roanoke Valley will move with the new operation.
Al Bender, one of three partners who left ITT in Roanoke to form FiberCom in 1982, becomes NetEdge's president and chief executive officer. He will remain on the FiberCom board.
The new company will provide computer networking equipment that permits simultaneous transmission of voice, video and data on a single cable system. The equipment will be manufactured in FiberCom's Roanoke plant, Bender said.
NetEdge will provide equipment to manage the traffic on the much ballyhooed information superhighway. It can be used in such applications of high-tech communications as virtual offices, which can bring together workers all over the globe to work on a single project.
The company expects such customers as telephone companies interested in providing data services and large computer and communications networks such as those on university campuses.
One reason for forming NetEdge was to allow for more focus on this emerging commercial market, Bender said. "There is tremendous growth potential in the commercial internetworking market," he said.
The major reason for putting the headquarters of the new business at North Carolina's Research Triangle is to give the company access to more technical talent, Bender said. It's easier to attract technical employees to a location that offers other technical employment, he said. FiberCom has said it was having trouble hiring scientists for jobs in Roanoke because of the lack of other, similar companies with employment potential in the region.
NetEdge plans to introduce itself and commercial products that the company has already developed next week at a Washington, D.C., trade show, Bender said.
A key executive on the NetEdge management team is Chairman of the Board William G. Pfeiffer, 59. From 1990 to 1993, he was senior vice president at U.S. Sprint, where he was responsible for the development and management of data products and strategy.
He also has held executive positions at Northern Telecom and ITT involving computing, data and voice communications products and services.
All of the NetEdge employees moving to North Carolina are engineers.
Robert Martinet, another of the company's founders, will lead FiberCom after Bender's departure. Jack Freeman, the third founding partner, stays on as sales and marketing manager.
FiberCom's core contracting business designs and builds customized networking systems for such clients as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Defense and the Boeing Co.
FiberCom's employees had been told of the planned changes in the company's structure in November.
The company still is pursuing the sale of a line of business, involving five employees, that provides networking equipment for IBM mainframe computers. An employee buyout of that portion of the business is under consideration, Bender said.
by CNB