We spoke to Martin Taylor, CTO at Metaswitch Networks about his career, the company itself, what it’s like to work at Metaswitch, the industry and SDN/NFV.

Martin joined Metaswith around 13 years ago and said Metaswitch is the kind of company that has incredible loyalty. People join and tend to stay, it’s a fabulous place to work. The average employee at Metaswitch has been working there between 10 and 15 years. Our engineering staff turnover is incredibly low, which is amazing.

Before Martin Joined Metaswitch he had been working at a start-up in Silicon Valley, called Copper Con, a company that was active in the space of voice over DSL. He had been working in the United States for around 5 years in the telecom space. It was all about the modernisation of voice networks, which was really his area of expertise. On his return to the UK he didn’t want to work for any of the big companies. Metaswitch was very active in the space and starting to take off, it seemed like a really good fit and it has turned out to be just that.

“I didn’t join as a CTO, I actually didn’t join in a specified role initially. It was really just to help the development of the product and technology strategy. The company is incredibly good at finding ways to really leverage people’s talents and help develop careers and move through roles. I moved into running all of product management for a few years and after that I became CTO.”

 

 

What does Metaswitch focus on?

At Metaswitch we focus on software for network operators. We mostly do this in the area of real time communications. That means voice telephony, video calling, messaging, SMS and rich communication messaging services.

What do you love most about the company?

I think most people at Metaswitch would say, It’s the people. We have an incredible pool of talent in the company and it just means that we can be extremely productive. We get stuff done fast. It’s really about what’s right for the company and what are the best technical ideas. We have no politics, it’s a very meritocratic company. For new graduates joining the company, if they are really good, they will make progress really fast through the ranks.

Mainly on the Engineering side we tend to recruit straight from university. We are not looking for people that necessarily have a very strong software or computer science background. We are just looking for smart people who can learn. We have a huge emphasis on training. Team sizes are quite small and first line managers spend a lot of time with new recruits, bringing them up to speed and learn a lot.

When did you first hear about SDN/NFV?

One of the things that makes us different from our competitors is that we are and always have been a software company. We think like software people, not like telecom equipped people. We started building telecom systems for the Cloud back in 2011, before NFV was even a thing. So, we really anticipated the whole movement – to us Cloud was inevitable. We made our first steps before the industry recognized it. We got a very good first mover advantage in our space.

When the original NFV whitepaper was published which was in October 2012, we were all over it. Because it was absolutely playing to what we have been doing. We were already through the starting gate because we already made very substantial steps in developing completely next generation systems for Cloud environments and that had an incredibly positive impact on our top line as NFV sales finally started to take off.

It took other companies some time to develop the product because It’s difficult stuff. For equipment vendors where software is a necessary but subsidiary part of the product, this is a tough thing to learn. There are many fundamental differences between a box and a Cloud environment. There is also a whole other kind of world around Cloud software. Webscale, architectural practices and lots of open source components that are absolutely relevant to many telecom systems solutions. But are completely ignored by equipment vendors because it wasn’t relevant. We saw it as relevant years ago. Embracing those open source components, in many cases contributing to those open source projects to help make it better and better suited to everyone’s applications. That’s very much part of our DNA.

For the traditional telecom vendors this is massively disruptive. Not only do they have to learn and to do things in a fundamentally different way but they are exposed to much greater competition now, from software companies like ourselves. And their top lines have massively changed because they are not making hardware sales to the same sense anymore. Their business models have to be turned on their heads.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of SDN/NFV?

To us this is all opportunity. The main challenges for us are about how quickly the network operators can actually move to embrace this, because the longer it takes them the more opportunity the competitors have to catch up. Our success depends quite heavily on network operators successfully embracing NFV and SDN and being able to put it to work. If they are held back by internal issues, their ability to build the infrastructure then that limits their ability to successfully deploy the kind of software solutions that we offer.

Who do you see as the biggest adaptors in the industry?

AT&T is well known as a very early mover in this space, making a very strategic and top down transformation approach to NFV. We were selected by AT&T very early on as one the original 4 vendors to help them make this transformation. They are clearly an early mover and one of our largest customers. Then more recently we had a big break through with a deal we did with Sprint. Sprint is one of the big four operators. They chose to go with our solution for their voice over LTE transformation across their entire network.

We’ve seen virtualisation all up and down the food chain. You can’t generalise NFV in terms of operator size. There are some very large operators who made very early moves but equally some that have been conservative about moving to NFV. Likewise, amongst the small customers who have embraced NFV very seriously. Manx telecom is a great example of this. They chose to go with our solution fully virtualised about three years ago and modernize the whole of the Isle of man telecom network. They were one of our first referenced customer for that kind of next generation cloud solution.

Apart from Metaswitch who would you say are the biggest innovators in the space?

There haven’t been a huge number of emerging challenges in the ecosystem that we play in. One company that we partner with very effectively is Affirmed Networks and they are based in Boston. Their speciality are the virtual solutions for the mobile broadband network. They focus on the packet core which is complementary to what MetaSwitch does. We are doing the voice infrastructure and the voice services applications that sits on top of the packet core. So, together we are like two layers of the stack.

Who are your biggest competitors in the space?

We are mostly present in the infrastructure and applications space, where our biggest competitors would be Ericson and Nokia. Outside of North-America that would be Huawei.

What do you like most about the SDN/NFV industry?

It’s a fun space because it’s so much a part of peoples lives. The whole smartphone industry, mobile networks, mobile broadband, mobile voice and even fixed telephony. Even though it might have been eclipsed by mobile, it’s still an important part of the world and important for our business. Particularly for business customers. Because enterprises still need a good fixed telephony system and we are a very strong player in that space.

This industry is something everyone can relate to. But behind the scenes the technology is very complex and it’s evolving very quickly. One of the nice things about the space is that in the past the telecom equipment space has been very specialized and very different from the rest of the technology world. It was its own little world. Now with the whole softwarization it’s kind of opening up to much more general software and software componentry and open source. It’s trying to bring in skills from that world and it’s a much more engaging place to work because of that. It exposes you to a much wider software world.

Where do you see the future of networking going?

There’s still a need to understand what telecom services are all about. But there is now a need to blend that with an understanding of Cloud and Cloud software systems. Because that’s how all these new telco services are going to be implemented.

What implications does this have on our modern-day Network Engineers?

For an experienced network engineer that’s grown up in the industry it means learning new skills. For someone new in the industry I think it means learning about the cutting edge of large scale software systems.

The traditional telecom sector is facing huge competition from the Webscale world. It’s well-known and understood that for example WhatsApp had an incredible effect on telecoms. And it frankly showed the way for smartphone messaging. While SMS is still hugely relevant it’s not the revenue generator it used to be. Telcos have to move with the time and they got to get their cost base more in line with the Webscale players. And that means operations and automations is hugely important for their future. Clearly operations and automations does mean that some jobs that would’ve been quite a lot of manual effort over the years will be diminished. The jobs will become a lot more interesting because they are going to be about developing the software that forms the operation and automation to replace the drudge from that traditional telco operations.

So, you could say, yes, the industry certainly needs fewer people in the future but the networking jobs will be upskilled.

Would you say it is better to be a generalist than an expert?

We absolutely are generalists at Metaswitch! We certainly do identify occasions where we need a subject matter expert in areas where we need a quick infusion of skills.

We have massively increased our investment in the mobile space over the last few years. We bring in a lot of people that have very specific mobile skills to help us make that pivot. But certainly, for new entrees coming in we don’t expect any telco experience at all. We don’t even require a technical STEM based degree. We had some great software engineers who had backgrounds in mathematics or philosophy. Software is all about logical thinking. It’s not about maths.

It’s about raw intelligence and ability to think logically.

What’s the recruiting process like at Metaswitch?

We set the bar very high. It’s not easy to get in but once you are there you appreciate the fact that everyone else that is there, equally met that bar. We have tests that we have developed over the years that are based on IQ that new recruits will have to take. It’s quite an intense process.

We also have a very active intern programme. A lot of people that join us have been interns. Not only did we have a chance to look at their work, but they also had a chance to see how it is to work for Metaswitch.

Looking for an internship? [email protected]

If you could give one piece of advice to a Network Engineer what would it be?

Understand that networks are changing massively. At every level it’s becoming a software driven world. Except that reality and get clued up on it.

Want to know more about Metaswitch? Visit their website here.