MRV Communications
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[edit] Overview
MRV NASDAQ: MRVC is a company that designs, manufactures, sells, distributes, integrates and supports communication equipment and services, and optical components. The business is conducted along three principal segments: the networking group, the optical components group and the development stage enterprise group.
The networking group provides equipment used by commercial customers, governments and telecommunications service providers, and includes switches, routers, physical layer products and console management products as well as specialized networking products for aerospace, defense and other applications including voice and cellular communication. The optical components group designs, manufactures and sells optical communications components, primarily through the wholly owned subsidiary LuminentOIC. These components include fiber optic transceivers for metropolitan, access and Fiber-to-the-Premises, or FTTP, applications. The development stage enterprise group seeks to develop new optical components, subsystems and networks and other products for the infrastructure of the Internet.
The company was organized in July 1988 as MRV Technologies, Inc., a California corporation and reincorporated in Delaware in April 1992, at which time the company name was changed to MRV Communications, Inc. The company went public that same year.
[edit] History
MRV was founded in 1988 as an innovator in Metro and Access Optoelectronic components. MRV’s Metro and Access transceivers enable network equipment to be deployed across large campuses or in municipal and regional networks. To expand leadership, MRV established LuminentOIC, an independent subsidiary. Today, LuminentOIC is a world class leader in fiber-to-the-premises (“FTTP”) components, with a number one market share in North America.
MRV emerged in the 90’s as a networking equipment leader and innovator. MRV pioneered Gigabit Ethernet switching, WDM and Optical Transport for Metro and campus environments. MRV then began building switches and routers used by carriers implementing Metro Ethernet networks that provide Ethernet services to enterprise customers and multi-dwelling residential buildings.
Currently, thousands of network equipment products from MRV provide robust, reliable and secure access and aggregation solutions to some of the world’s largest optical Ethernet networks.
In 1998, MRV acquired Xyplex Networks, a pioneer and worldwide leader in Out-Of-Band Networking. MRV had deployed tens of thousands of Out-Of-Band Networking ports providing console management, power management as well as alarm and sensor monitoring to numerous enterprises including the world’s largest carriers and over 85% of the Fortune 100 companies.
By the end of 2002, MRV employed a total of approximately 1,400 employees.
As of December 31, 2005 and 2004, MRV employed approximately 1,330 full-time employees. Of these 1,330 employees, approximately 640 are in manufacturing, 200 in product development and engineering and 490 in sales, marketing and general administration. Approximately 975 employees are in locations outside the United States.
[edit] Products and Services
MRV provides integrated, secure network equipment and services to connect data, voice and/or video (both analog and digital), within single buildings, across private networks located in multiple buildings such as college or campus environments (“campus networks”) and in metropolitan areas.
At the access point to the network, MRV provides standard-based products, including Ethernet connectivity over telephone wires. Access speeds (data rates) vary, scaling up to Gigabits-per-second (“Gbit/s”), and providing security features such as intrusion control and traffic rate control.
The products aggregate network traffic using standard protocols to interconnect high-speed networks. Additional features enable new services such as virtual private networks (“VPN”), permitting remote private network access over the Internet and quality of service (“QoS”), permitting the ability to deliver time-sensitive data, control the bandwidth, set priorities for specific network traffic and provide an appropriate level of security.
For campus networks and metropolitan networks, where fiber optic cabling is not available, or cannot easily be deployed, MRV provides point-to-point connectivity using free-space optics (“FSO”) technology, a line-of-sight technology that uses lasers to provide optical bandwidth connections that can send and receive voice, video, and data information on invisible beams of light. These products can be deployed quickly carrying network traffic from building to building without digging up the street to install fiber optic cabling, or can be used in disaster recovery and back-up applications.
MRV also provides wave division multiplexing (“WDM”) technology to expand the capacity of existing fiber optic infrastructure by enabling simultaneous transmission of information over multiple wavelengths on the same fiber optic strand. In addition, MRV provides network management systems that allow users and network administrators to control remote network elements, including network equipment, temperature and alarm sensors and power supply.
[edit] Finance
More than 2/3 of the $284 m annual revenue (2005) is generated in Europe.
Largely a result of deflated economic conditions, the company has reported net losses since 2001. It has however managed to cut the losses from $326 m in 2001 to $16 m in 2005.
[edit] Worldwide Sales
MRV’s worldwide sales and marketing organization consisted of approximately 340 employees, including sales representatives, technical support and management. MRV has sales offices in more than 20 countries and sells its products and services both directly and through channel partners with support from their sales forces. MRV conducts international operations in branch offices located in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.
[edit] Competition
The communications equipment and optical component industries are intensely competitive. MRV competes directly with a number of established and emerging networking and optical components companies.
Direct competitors in networking products, switches and routers generally include ADVA Optical Networking, Alcatel, Allied Telesyn, Ciena], Cisco Systems, Enterasys Networks, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks and Riverstone Networks. The competitors in fiber optic components include Agilent Technologies, Avanex, Bookham Technology, Finisar, Fujitsu, Infineon AG, JDS Uniphase, Optical Communication Products, Sumitomo, TriQuint Semiconductor and Tyco International. Several of these competitors have recently introduced or announced their intentions to introduce new competitive products.
Recent consolidation is likely to permit several competitors to devote significantly greater resources to the development and marketing of new competitive products and the marketing of existing competitive products to their larger installed customer bases. It is expected that competition will increase substantially because of these and other industry consolidations and alliances, as well as the emergence of new competitors.
[edit] MRV Leadership
Board of Directors:
• Noam Lotan, President and CEO
• Shlomo Margalit, Chairman of the Board, Chief Technology Officer and Secretary
• Igal Shidlovsky, Director
• Guenter Jaensch, Director
• Daniel Tsui, Director
• Baruch Fischer, Director
• Harold W. Furchtgott-Roth, Director
Officers:
• Shlomo Margalit, Ph.D, Chairman, Chief Technology Officer, Sec
• Noam Lotan, President, CEO, Director
• Kevin Rubin, CFO, Corporate Compliance Officer
• Near Margalit, Ph.D., CEO of Luminent, Inc.
[edit] References
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