Telecom Valley vets join Red Condor

<p>SANTA ROSA – Red Condor announced today that telecom veterans Don Green and John Webley have joined its board of directors to speed penetration of the independent carrier market.</p><p>Red Condor also announced today that it will move from its Tesconi Court location into expanded quarters at Codding Enterprise's Sonoma Mountain Village development at the former Agilent campus in Rohnert Park.</p><p>Both Mr. Green and Mr. Webley are investors in the e-mail security and anti-spam service provider, whose executive team already includes several long-time telecom industry alumni. </p><p>"Don and John's moving to take an active part in the scaling up of Red Condor is an indication of the evolution of Telecom Valley into the broader, Internet-enabled communications industry," said Red Condor President and CEO Ron Longo.</p><p>"The time is right to participate," said Mr. Green. "The independent service provider market is a perfect target for Red Condor's service. Regional carriers already act as ISPs for lots of small areas. This will give them another way to be competitive."</p><p>Mr. Green founded AFC, which was acquired by Tellabs, and Optilink, which was acquired by DSC and later Alcatel. He sustained both companies by selling advanced telecommunications technologies to the independent carriers.</p><p>Turin Networks, founded by Mr. Webley, also targets that market with its optical transport technology. </p><p>Regional carriers, subsidized by the federal government and unencumbered by the regulations that burden the major Bell carriers, have always been the first to benefit from technological advances and new services.</p><p> Residents in rural areas served by competitive and independent carriers have enjoyed digital phone service, broadband data connections and video on demand over telephone networks well ahead of their urban cousins.</p><p>"Wherever advanced communications services are adapted, there's a heightened need for security and anti-spam measures," said Mr. Longo.</p><p>"This is a perfect market for us, and we couldn't ask for a better advantage entering it than the active support of two men so highly regarded by the carriers," he added.</p><p>Last year at this time, Red Condor had 500 enterprise customers for its e-mail firewall services, which evolve constantly to stay ahead of hackers and spammers. Today it has more than 1,300 enterprise customers and over a dozen service providers, or carriers, have switched to Red Condor in the last 45 days.</p><p>Founded in 2003 by software developers Jeffrey Aguilera, Dave Brounstein and Brien Voorhees, Red Condor got a boost of $2.8 million in Series A funding, mostly from local investors, in March of 2006.</p><p>The company also bulked up its executive team with engineers and managers from the telecom industry.</p><p>Mr. Longo was most recently vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Mahi Networks. Dyke Shaffer, formerly with Next Level and Cerent, is chief technology officer.</p><p>Alan DiCicco, formerly with Mahi, is director of worldwide marketing; Tim McAllister, former vice president of technical support at Broadlink Communications, is vice president of business development; and Mike Kovatch, a project manager with competitive carrier ATG, is vice president of sales operations.</p><p>"Red Condor is an example of the continuation and migration of the telecommunications industry to the service aspect," said Mr. Green.</p><p>"More and more companies are formed to add something to Internet communications. Red Condor is making significant progress in addressing the demands of the independent service providers, and I'm delighted to be joining the board," he said.</p><p>Also delighted with Red Condor's expansion is Brad Baker, president of Codding Enterprises. He's looking for high-tech and green-tech tenants for Sonoma Mountain Village and also for high-tech startups to join an incubator headed by Jerry Gladstone. Next month Red Condor will be moving into an initial 6,500-square-foot location at the development, with an option to expand into 10,000 square feet.</p><p>"Red Condor and Jerry's incubator are going to share a building. They'll be great neighbors for one another. Red Condor has made the jump from startup to growth-stage and is now scaling up. It's a fine example for an incubating company," Mr. Baker said. "I can picture brainstorming sessions among us at Codding Enterprises, the incubator tenants and Ron Longo and Dyke Shaffer. What a great interchange that would be."</p>