On a mission: Amir Zoufonoun charts global territory for Western Multiplex - Company Business and Marketing

Communications News, Oct, 2000 by Sean Kelly

To Amir Zoufonoun, 1992 was a pivotal year in Western Multiplex's 21-year history--when the company took on what he called a "missionary" tour of the U.S. to promote the first T1/E1 wireless link in the unlicensed ISM band, dubbed Lynx.

Zoufonoun, Western Multiplex president and COO, was engineering director at the time, heading the development of Lynx. Because of the potential of the industry's first unlicensed link, the company launched Lynx into a world where only two connectivity solutions seem to hold sway--fiber-optic lines and licensed microwave radios. The initial response from customers and industry insiders was less than enthusiastic.

To plow ahead with the venture, the Sunnyvale, CA-based company needed faith, since experts in the field did not give the project a prayer. "We ran Lynx by our close associates who were, at the time, considered the experts in the industry," Zoufonoun recalls. "Every one of them said, `You will not sell more than 10 of these.' That was the biggest number I could come up with in terms of market analysis."

Zoufonoun also recalls the response Lynx received during the tour. "We went out and gave speeches," he says. "We would set up rooms to give speeches and 10 people would show up--and we had 100 chairs with materials sitting on them. People just weren't open to new ideas."

Zoufonoun, who emigrated from Iran in 1976, persevered in his mission--he even went so far as to dress up in cowboy attire for a Lynx ad campaign. "You don't need no stinkin' license" was emblazoned on the Western-style ads. "That became really popular," he says of the campaign.

In time, Western Multiplex attracted more than enough customers to Lynx, with its ease-of-installation and spread-spectrum technology that uses the 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands--which, unlike other wireless bands, do not require Federal Communications Commission licensing. "There were more than 30,000 (Lynx) nodes out there before the beginning of 2000," Zoufonoun says. What about the expert opinions back in 1992? "They were a little off," he muses.

Lynx, in fact, drastically transformed Western Multiplex, then a 30-employee company. "The moment Lynx was born, the company completely changed," Zoufonoun remembers. "We went from a sleepy-time company that was growing at a 5% to 10% rate, to a much higher growth rate."

Western Multiplex, now a 200-employee company that recently went public, is expected to double sales annually over the next several years. The company posted $44.8 million in sales in 1999, and according to analyst estimates will reach $82.2 million by the end of 2000 and $134.6 in 2001--growing rapidly from the $3.5 million in sales the company posted in 1989, when Zoufonoun joined.

JUMPING SHIP

The wireless market of which Western Multiplex is a part is now a $7 billion to $14 billion industry, and growing--a far stretch from the $3.5 billion mode it stayed in for years. Zoufonoun credits the Internet's growth for this transformation.

"In the early 90s, we had no idea the Internet was going to be around the way it is now," Zoufonoun says. "The Internet has a lot to do with this growth. The demand drivers on the data side are certainly much bigger than on the voice side, causing the rapid growth in the last few years--and it's going to accelerate even further. It's going to double and triple in the next few years."

Western Multiplex's rapid growth over the last 10 years is rewarding to Zoufonoun, who was hired away from Harris Corp. in 1989 with the specific aim of building a radio group for his new company. The company had been associated with microwave since its start in 1979 but was concentrated on baseband treatment that supported microwave products.

Zoufonoun, 40, began working for Harris in 1979, while he was still earning a bachelor's degree at San Jose State University (he received a BSEE in 1982, and an MSEE from Santa Clara State University in 1986). "I was developing microwave radios at that time," he recounts. "I was very much involved in wideband radio development.

"Over the 10 years I was at Harris, I progressed through different management levels and headed various radio development groups. I was always in the group that was pushing the edge."

He became acquainted with Western Multiplex's people at one of its annual events. "They had this legendary Christmas party they threw," he says of Western Multiplex. "They invited all their associates, including the competition. A lot of us from Harris would go. They had an open house; you would go and party and walk through their offices and lab."

When the company asked him to be their engineering director in 1989, he jumped at the chance. Zoufonoun was already impressed with the company's close relationship with customers and the quality of the people working there. "What got me to really jump ship was that they wanted me to basically come in and establish a radio group and develop it into a business," he says. Western Multiplex's goal was to be "a leading provider of microwave radios, not just a me-too provider. At the time, we didn't know what kind."