Capacity exclusively speaks with Szlosarek to find out more about the restructuring of the company as well as his agenda for the upcoming year.
When did the shift to the new management team at Epsilon begin?
The Epsilon Group has been in transition over the last few months to define the management structure going forward. We have established a strong team with offices across Europe, US, the Middle East and Asia. We’ve been very much working on innovation and product management as well as speaking with our customers to understand the transition of the network.
As a business, Cataleya has gained traction and is firmly established in various tier-1 networks across North America. We are very confident that both companies are in good shape and look forward to working with our customer base.
Andreas Hipp previously served as group CEO across Epsilon and Cataleya. Why has this position now been divided into two positions?
We’ve been looking at our long-term growth path as well as how to manage our growth and bring more value to our customers. Both Epsilon and Cataleya share a lot of innovation ventures and technologies.
However, the roles of a network service company and technology vendor are very different. We realised that the value of both companies could be much better realised with the separate management structure.
Andreas has decided to take a break at this present time and take a step down to pursue life interests.
We remain committed to our shareholders and their investment into our operations. That will not change. Both companies will accelerate their business plans under separate management, as opposed to being controlled by one entity.
Which new markets will you be targeting with Epsilon and Cataleya?
For Epsilon, our roots are in supporting the wholesale carrier international business. That business is presently going through tremendous change. The industry is no longer focussed on traditional voice and data networks; it’s now more about big data and analytics, cloud and the transformation of the IT landscape.
We are seeing more virtualisation of networks and the development of the ecosystems of networking cloud providers internationally. That is very much what Epsilon has been focussed on, and will still be focussed on.
We will continue to support our carrier customers in transitioning their legacy networks. We will also use the cloud as an opportunity to scale and grow into what will be a really exciting landscape for us. The entire premise of cloud is essentially storage and the computer network. Epsilon is a leader in the network component and we will continue to innovate in that segment.
Cataleya, as a technology leader, has been focussing very heavily on the technical aspects of managing networks as well as working with carriers in providing analytics and enabling quality of services.
Both companies are very excited to be pursuing their core interests into different markets going forward.
What are your priorities for Epsilon in 2016?
80% of our customer base comes from the carrier wholesale segment. They are moving to an all IP environment in the face of the proliferation of data. That provides a very interesting angle for us. We would like to be part of that growth cycle and introduce products and services to support our carrier customers.
As we have built a community of carriers over the year, we are becoming increasingly well known in the cloud landscape. We are connecting more cloud companies and becoming a partner with many of these companies. We are leveraging our global network partner relationships, as well as our technical expertise as a network service partner for cloud companies.
We see ourselves as a key player in the carrier market, aiding the transition of cloud connectivity globally. That is something we’ll be very focussed on in 2016.
We’ve been working very hard to virtualise the transport network architecture. We are also following both SDN and NFV technologies closely, in terms of allowing access into our global backbone and working with customers to create a more collaborative networking arrangement.
