CEO Chat With Colin Doherty, BTI Systems

Data Center Interconnect, or DCI, is one of the hottest sectors in telecom currently. Since coming back to Light Reading last year, prodigal-son style, I've consistently heard about one player in the DCI space punching above its weight: BTI Systems.

Recently I took the Acela, (a.k.a. "the world's slowest high-speed train") up to Boston to meet BTI Systems Inc. 's CEO, Colin Doherty, to hear more about what makes his company tick.

Colin is an industry veteran who joined BTI after selling Arbor Networks to Danaher Corporation in 2010. Previously, he served at Mangrove and Nortel.

We covered a lot of ground in a short space of time -- from customers' preferred purchasing criteria for DCI platforms, to the overabundance of standards for virtualization (turns out you really can have too much of a good thing), to the coming shakeout in the metro optical market.

The interview took place at the Boston offices of one of BTI's chief investors, Bain Capital Ventures, and for bonus points Bain Partner Deepak Sindwani popped in to chat about some other interesting topics -- including the prospects for a telecom IPO, the nascent drone communications market and the absolutely critical issue of whether cellphone service on planes would be a good or a bad thing.

Enjoy.