Bye bye happy NuVox/NewSouth circle thing!

Today it is official: Windstream has acquired NuVox. Right now we’ve been told this means business as usual. As I said in my last post, Sara and I are both looking forward to the coming changes and being part of a larger company. One thing is for sure, the NuVox brand will be going away and the new company will officially be Windstream. NuVox came into life with a million other CLECS as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and continued to grow through a flurry of mergers and acquisitions. I think the management team and the people we worked with to build this company are second to none and some of the best in the industry.

We’ve accomplished a lot here in the last eight and a half years, and I expect there will be a period of rapid growth and expansion in the not too distant future. The new company has a much larger footprint and is a financial powerhouse, both of which will position Windstream as a leader in the new markets. With the pending acquisition of Iowa Telecom in the pipe, the company seems poised to compete with the likes of AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and Qwest.

Looking back on our time at NuVox and toward the future at Windstream, it doesn’t feel like the last chapter in the NuVox story but the first chapter of a new book. Here are some things about the acquisition I find really exciting:

• Windstream’s annual revenue is now estimated to be approximately $3.7 billion dollars. That number is just mindblowing to me. When I started at NuVox we weren’t even EBIDA positive. 8 years later we are free cash flow positive and netting $565 million in revenue a year with $115 million in operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBDA). Now our total revenue is just 15% of what they expect the combined company to produce.
• Windstream is investing $20 million into building out their fiber network. This is great, I hope the trend continues as it could make the new company incredibly competitive in the wholesale access market with the huge increase in demand for bandwidth for all applications, mobile in particular.
• Windstream is very excited to be able to sell our products and services. I cannot wait to build out our network to provide them to the entire footprint.
• Working for a company that has traditionally been an ILEC as opposed to NuVox (we were a CLEC) should provide a unique perspective into the other side of the business

I probably won’t post too much specific information (NDAs, etc.) but I will try to keep posting the big news as it comes out over the next few months. Thanks to everyone who has sent us their well wishes over the last few months, Sara and I are very excited to find out what opportunities the next year will bring.

Bye bye happy NuVox/NewSouth circle thing!

Sara and I have been extremely busy this week so I’ll have to ask you to cut us some slack for being a few days late with this news.

Wednesday November 3rd NuVox, Inc. entered into an agreement to be acquired by the Windstream Corporation (NYSE: WIN).

The purchase has been valued at over $643 million dollars. Windstream expects to issue 18.7 million fixed shares of stock valued at $183 million dollars, pay $280 million dollars, and assume a net debt of $180 million dollars as part of the proposed transaction.

You can read the official statements on press releases at BusinessWire or on the Windstream or NuVox websites. For my unofficial, not in anyway representative of my employer statement, keep reading.

I have worked for NuVox since July of 2001 and Sara was hired on in April of 2002 to prepare for the One.NET acquisition. My initial thought, being a veteran of a large number of mergers and acquisitions at NuVox was, “We’ll see what happens.” After reading some more about Windstream I have to say I am very excited about the prospects for the combined company. I assume Windstream hopes to deploy NuVox’s products across it’s footprint and vice versa although I haven’t heard anything to definitively confirm or deny this. If this is the case I am interested to see how NuVox’s product set would be deployed on Windstream’s network and vice versa not to mention the possibility for new products we could deploy on both networks. I could definitely see the benefit in developing an IPTV product that could compete with AT&T’s U-Verse and Verizon’s FIOS offerings.

In my time at NuVox (I started just after the Trivergent and Gabriel Communications merger) the company, our network, and our products and services have grown tremendously. I’ve gotten to play a part in the convergence of our network (MPLS roll out, Sonus VoIP deployment, QoS and Multicast roll out, etc.) development of some of our coolest products and services (VoxIP, VoIP product, and VoxNET, MPLS VPN product with optional QoS and Multicast) , and helped integrate multiple networks into the NuVox network as a part of our various mergers and acquisitions. (See the timeline below…) With the amount of the time and effort I’ve invested in the last eight and a half years I’ll admit that it’s been hard not to get attached. I work with a great group of people that have worked some miracles over the years to build NuVox’s network.

At any rate, here’s a time line I’ve put together to try to document all of the mergers and acquisitions over the course of NuVox’s history. I am missing some exact dates so if I got something wrong or missed something feel free to comment and I’ll update it. It was hard enough to track down dates (much less precise dates) for all of the constituent parts of NuVox so I’ll let someone else who is more inclined do the Windstream piece. I think NuVox’s M&A history is a drop in the bucket compared to their’s.

1995:

Sometime in 1995 – Carolina Online, Inc. is founded to provide internet access to the businesses and residents of South Carolina.

1996:

January 1996 – Nicky Smith starts the Internet/MCR Corporation to provide internet access to the businesses and residents of North Carolina.
February 1996 - ISAAC.net is founded to provide internet access to the businesses and residents of Wilmington, NC.

1997:

Sometime in 1997 – NewSouth Communications is founded to service business customers in the Southeast.

1998:

Sometime in 1998 – Florida Digital Network is founded to service businesses and residents in Florida.
November 1998 – Bob Brooks of Brooks Fiber and Cencom Cable Associates (Charter) fame founds Gabriel Communications to service business customers in the Midwest.

1999:

Sometime in 1999 – The Houser family founds State Communications to service businesses and residents in the Southeast.
April 1999 – State Communications acquires Carolina Online, Inc. and becomes Trivergent. Trivergent continues to provide residential and business internet and phone service to customers in the Southeast.

2000:

February 2000 – Trivergent acquires ISAAC.net and Teleco of Wilmington.
March 2000 – Gabriel Communications and Solutech launch WebBizApps, LLC venture to provide an array of web based business applications.
April 2000 – NewSouth Communications and UniversalCom, Inc. announce intent to merge.
June 2000 – Trivergent and Gabriel Communications announce intent to merge.
July 2000 – Trivergent acquires Internet/MCR Corporation.
NewSouth Communications and UniversalCom, Inc. merger closes. The new company will continue to operate as NewSouth Communications.
November 2000 – Trivergent and Gabriel Communications merger closes.

2001:

February 2001 – NuVox Communications is chosen for the name of the new company created through the merger of Trivergent and Gabriel Communications.
May 2001 – NuVox acquires the remaining 50% of WebBizApps, LLC from Solutech.

2002:

February 2002 – NuVox acquires One.Net from US.net.
April 2002 – LecStar purchases the resale residential phone service customers left from the State Communications days from NuVox.
NuVox acquires Edge Connections, Inc.

2003:

March 2003 – FDN acquires the Florida assets of MPower Communications.

2004:

February 2004 – NuVox and NewSouth Communications announce intent to merge.
May 2004 – NuVox and NewSouth Communications merger closes. The new company will continue to operate as NuVox.

2005:

March 2005 – FDN and HIG Capital jointly acquire Supra Telecom.

2007:

March 2007 – NuVox and FDN announce intent to merge.
June 2007 – NuVox and FDN merger closes. The new company will continue to operate as NuVox.

2009:

November 2009 – Windstream to acquire NuVox.

Wow, what is their marketing department thinking?

I’ve read several articles on Forbes.com and Network World this week about Juniper rebranding as they try to make a move deeper into enterprise space. I guess part of this change is hiring the same elementary school class who made Cisco’s crayon logo a few years ago to make over their logo.

All joking aside, Juniper has been pushing hard all year to make a big move into the enterprise space that Cisco has ruled comfortably for years. There is a fair bit of competition in the lower end enterprise space but when you start looking at medium to large sized businesses, they are more or less dominated by Cisco. Jim Metzler and Steve Taylor in this Network World article about a possible Juniper acquisition of Riverbed seem to have missed all of the clear indications that Juniper is heavily invested in making a move into enterprise space. Check out this quote from the article:

We doubt it in part because we don’t see the two companies being a good fit. Although Riverbed certainly does sell into service providers, it is primarily a fast moving enterprise-focused company. Juniper’s DNA is clearly in the service-provider market. In addition, the cost to of acquiring Riverbed would be very high – probably around $2 billion.

Now, I don’t disagree that Juniper completely failed to properly leverage their Peribit acquisition to remain market leaders in the WAN acceleration space, but Riverbed could be the jewel in Juniper’s enterprise offering. $2 billion is a hefty price to pay, but just look at a few of the things Juniper has done in the last few years to prepare for a large move into the enterprise space:

• Offered 100% discount on certification testing and introduced an entirely new line of enterprise certifications as part of a new Fast Track program
• Earlier this year there were multiple job postings on Juniper’s website for a new Transition team (including Chief Transition Officer) that would work to rapidly shift the focus of the company and work to help integrate the new focus into Juniper’s existing company culture
• In the last five years Juniper acquired NetScreen, Peribit, introduced the J-Series routers and low end EX switches for enterprises, and versions of their IDP and SRX specifically aimed at the enterprise space
• Juniper Partner program that is becoming geared specifically towards companies that will sell their enterprise equipment

The writing has been on the wall for awhile and to anyone who has been looking in the last two years it should be very obvious that this is the next step for them. The Service Provider market has been rapidly shrinking in the last 10 years as a result of all of the consolidation and consequently Juniper’s primary customer base is shrinking. The next logical step is into the enterprise space.

Cisco’s heavy focus on enterprise space (higher profit margins) allowed Juniper it’s start in the Service Provider space and also let them grab a large chunk of the core router market. The JUNOS (Juniper Router Operating System) was developed on a BSD kernel for their hardware based routers that offered better throughput and faster switching (and the same OS across all of their router platforms!) as opposed to Cisco’s IOS based routers. (The Cisco Router Internet Operating System has so many different revisions and forks you’d need a historian to keep track…) In the last few years, Cisco’s acquisition of Procket Networks led to a renewed focus on the core router market and included the roll outs of the ASR and CRS-1 series hardware based routers running a brand new IOS XR. (IOS XR is based on the QNX Neutrino microkernel which may actually mean better longterm stability, read this link for more information.) As a result they have cut further into Juniper’s main source of income.

Let’s just hope this rebranding and shift to enterprise focus doesn’t compromise the excellent service provider quality routers and software they have developed. If anything, let’s hope enterprises can now (affordably) benefit from JUNOS in their wiring closets.