NexTone Gets Khan

Industry veteran Malik Khan is taking the reins as CEO of the session border control vendor NexTone Communications Inc. (see NexTone Claims Stellar Q2).

The leadership change was decided jointly by its board of directors and outgoing CEO Hank Fiery, NexTone says.

Khan is a veteran of General Electric Co., Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT), Indus River Networks, and Converged Access Inc. (see Converged Access Shuffles Execs) And, natch, Khan sees big things for the session management space, and for NexTone. "I don't believe there's anyone else that I could see in my due diligence that had the breadth of services and the flexibility of services available at Layer 5," he told Light Reading on Thursday.

Khan says NexTone's existing 300 customers are "early adopters," and the bulk of the market is still up for grabs (see NexTone Wins Deals. "And now, as large enterprises and larger carriers are looking at really deploying VOIP, you look around and NexTone is in pole position."

Yankee Group Research Inc. expects the market addressed by NexTone to reach $1.4 billion by 2008 (see VOIP Equipment Revenue Up 18%).

Khan says he was asked to come to NexTone because the company felt it needed him to usher in a "slightly more structured approach to growth."

One of Khan's former startups, Sitara Networks, raised more than $100 million in venture capital between 1997 and 2002 before the startup stalled. Converged Access was formed in May 2004 through a management buyout of Sitara.

NexTone was founded in 1998 and began selling gear in the session border control market in 2001 (see NexTone Unveils Session Manager).

— Mark Sullivan, Reporter, Light Reading