A New CEO for Ensim

A "godfather" of Silicon Valley has joined Ensim as president and CEO, promising to bring a new customer focus to company that he says has industry-leading technology.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [December 9, 2002]

Today Ensim Corporation announces that it has appointed Kanwal Rekhi as president and CEO. Frequently referred to as a "silicon valley godfather" for his role in venture capital, Rekhi founded his first company to take advantage of the then-new TCP/IP and Ethernet protocols.

"When I told Janice Roberts [founder of Bridge Communications and former CEO of 3COM] that I was going to merge TCP/IP and Ethernet, she said that since TCP/IP was designed for low bandwidth networks, and Ethernet was blazing fast, that was like attaching a fully tuned up race car to a single horse," recounts Rekhi.

Founded in 1982, Excelan was sold to Novell in 1989. A serial entrepeneur, Rekhi's most recent venture was founding and running The IndUS Entrepreneurs Association (TiE). It was in this capacity that he built the connections that earned him the honorary title of "godfather." As a venture capitalist and advisor to young entrepeneurs, his investments include now-defunct Exodus (which he left in 1999) and, of course, Ensim. He is very bullish about Ensim.

"Ensim is positioned to become a major player in the software industry," he says. "Our goal is to build an honest software franchise. We expect to be a powerful and profitable player."

Rekhi does not bring to Ensim the sort of technological insight that got him started in 1982 with Excelan. He says, "I do not consider myself a technology person any more. I am by and large a business and financial person. Ensim was founded by a high quality technology team that included a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University."

One of those Cornell computer scientists, the former CEO Rosen Sharma, has left the company to become an entrepreneur. "We had a friendly parting of the ways and spent eight or nine weeks together before he left," says Rekhi.

Ensim has the technology. Rekhi will bring a business focus to a company that has not made as much out of its technology as it might have. In order to underline his commitment to sales, Rekhi spent several weeks in the field meeting customers, and has asked his current managers to meet customers.

"The company has been in business for years and it has good technology, but my impression is that we need to listen to our customers better. We need to match customer needs better and be more customer driven. We start by listening to what our customers need," says Rekhi.

Rekhi says that the webhosting automation software marketplace serves two types of customer, the low end and the high end. At the low end, service providers need reliable software that will reduce customer support calls. "At the low end, one support call can seriously cut into profits," notes Rekhi.

At the high end, service providers are looking for ways to earn more revenue per customer. Ensim is in talks with major companies to provide groupware and other offerings, but was unable to provide details at this time.

In addition, Rekhi says that parts of the Ensim package that were part of a bundle may be unbundled and sold or licensed to other product developers. While the founders were professors concerned with husbanding intellectual property, Rekhi sees potential alliances that have not been explored. Again, details were not forthcoming, but the general idea that, for example, technology that allows one server to function as several independent machines could be sold, paints an intriguing picture of possible future arrangements.

Rekhi, who is close to the pulse of Silicon Valley, is optimistic about the possibilities at the end of the bubble. "The bubble is behind us now and entrepreneurs who predate the bubble have an advantage. The bubble encouraged a get rich quick mindset that was detrimental. A real self-sustaining company has to be able to survive the ups and downs of the business cycle. The bubble created companies without revenue or profit and none have withstood the test of time. They never filed for patents or refined their technology or talked to customers."

Returning to his own core competence, Rekhi notes, "this silly notion of 'Internet time' was an excuse to do shoddy work. Good software takes time. It requires a field test. You have to listen intently to customers and learn what doesn't work. It takes several iterations to go from experimental software that has bugs to reliable software that has been tested. We want to offer mature software. In this business, everybody's a vendor. Our customers are vendors. Everybody's also a developer. Our customers provide feedback."

For his first executive appointment, Rekhi brought in Steve Dauber as vice president of marketing. The two first worked together at Rekhi's original company, Excelan. Now, Dauber will help Rekhi bring a customer focus to Ensim.

It's a competitive arena, filled with companies ranging from startups like SWSoft to established players like Plesk and Sphera. Sphera recently signed a deal with IBM. Sun purchased Cobalt. Of those companies, Rekhi is most watchful of Sphera. He feels he has the technology advantage, but that they attained a temporary marketing advantage. "The technology that they sell, we have too. They're an Ensim wannabee," he claims.

Rekhi expects results soon. "Please keep an eye on us," he says. "We're going to build an old fashioned software franchise. We plan to be the player in this industry with a whole slew of offerings for our channel partners."

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