Scaling a relative startup is one of the primary tasks of Jef Graham, the incoming chairman & CEO of RGB Networks, a digital video specialist based in San Mateo, Calif.
Graham most recently spent about eight months as EVP of the application products group at Juniper Networks . Before that, he was the chairman & CEO of Peribit Networks, which Juniper purchased for $337 million in mid-2005.
At RGB, Graham has been brought on board to grow the company's product line and to expand into sectors other than cable.
RGB got out of the blocks with the Simulcast Edge Processor (SEP), a dense device that handles decoding, modulation and upconversion for up to 48 channels. In the simulcast world, the box takes digital in and spits analog out. Because of its density, an operator can replicate most if not all analog channels with just two SEP units.
That product's entry was well timed, considering cable's rapid rollout of digital simulcast, a long-term bandwidth reclamation technique whereby analog channels are replicated in the digital domain.
According to Graham, RGB shipped 400 SEP units and generated $9 million in revenues from August 2006 through the end of that year. In the U.S., its customers include Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Adelphia Communications, and Charter Communications.
Graham acknowledged, however, that the window on the digital simulcast market will open and close rapidly. He expects most operators to have simulcast deployed within the next year to 18 months.
Although its non-exclusive partnership with Motorola Inc. has given RGB a "useful leg up" in the cable market, Graham plans to grow RGB internally (doubling its existing employee base of 40) and to move ahead with new products and approach new markets.
On the product front, RGB will remove the RF "spigots" of its existing device to provide several other functions, including targeted ad insertion, switched broadcast and video-on-demand stream multiplexing.
In addition to launching new products, RGB also plans to enter the telco and IPTV markets, Graham noted.