Pope Joins Hammerhead

Mahi Networks Inc. founder Kevin Pope has landed a new gig with Hammerhead Systems Inc.

Pope will take over as VP of engineering for Hammerhead, nearly the same title he held at Mahi. No word on whether he's being assigned a company car.

Pope was excommunicated when Mahi erased most of its Petaluma, Calif., operations, ditching its original Mi7 product to concentrate on the Vx7 reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM), technology garnered in the acquisition of Photuris Networks' assets (see Mahi Restructures & Swims East and Mahi Nabs $70M, Photuris Assets).

Hammerhead, meanwhile, wants to put a renewed focus on operations. The company has no announced customers but is in several trials with major carriers and is within months of getting a system into a U.S. carrier's live network, according to CEO Peter Savage.

"We have a significant ramp ahead of us in system builds," snarls Savage. (In the meantime, Hammerhead can keep making technology announcements -- see Hammerhead Cries XML). Help in the sales corner is likely coming from Fujitsu Ltd. (Tokyo: 6702; London: FUJ), which signed a reseller deal with Hammerhead last year. "The HSX was anointed 'Flashwave 6400' by Fujitsu at Supercomm 2005, indicating that Fujitsu is prepping it for Tier 1 accounts," writes Heavy Reading analyst Scott Clavenna in a recent report, "The Future of Multiservice Switching in Converged IP/MPLS Networks." (See Hammerhead & Fujitsu Team up and Switches Face IP Challenge.)

All that activity puts greater emphasis on operations, as opposed to product development. So Hammerhead is moving Kim Holmes, vice president of engineering and operations, to just the operations role, with Pope taking on the VP engineering title.

There's some connection. Mahi's Mi7 was an optical aggregation box handling multiple protocols and performing STS-1 grooming. Hammerhead is developing a multiservice aggregation box, too, with emphasis on using pseudowires to link access traffic to an IP/MPLS core. And it walks on water, according to the marketing department.

A more obvious connection is that Pope worked with Savage at Applied Digital Access, an early 90s company that developed monitoring equipment targeted at carrier points of presence.

Pope's arrival continues the parade of execs through Hammerhead. With the decision to focus on pseudowires rather than edge switching, the company has seen its share of turnover, with senior technical officers departing in June 2004 and Savage taking the CEO chair nine months ago. (See Hammerhead Retools MPLS Approach, Hammerhead Founder Steps Aside, Hammerhead Orders Dry Martini, and Hammerhead Names New CEO.)

Hammerhead is up to 77 employees with plans to add 24 more, Savage says.

— Craig Matsumoto, Senior Editor, Light Reading