Doing for others can be an admirable altruistic quality in people, but for companies, doing for others with profit in mind is what gets you to the top of Inc. Magazine’s annual list of the fastest growing private companies.
In the telecommunications sector, the fastest growing company was ClearAccess, a Vancouver, Wash.-based provider of remote management of customer premises equipment to broadband service providers. Service providers use this technology, in turn, to support home and small to midsize businesses while offering new managed applications such as parental controls and wireless home networking. The ClearVision management platform is deployed by more than 50 broadband service providers across the U.S., Latin America and Europe. Over the last three years, the company has grown its revenue by 3460 percent.
However, several of the top 15 telecom companies on the list are providing managed services rather than software. In one form or another, from managed high-bandwidth networks to managed cloud services, these companies are doing for others what others either don’t have the capital or inclination to do themselves.
CFN Services, ranked 189th overall, but sixth in the telecom sector, is a managed telecom infrastructure services company providing network services for the enterprise, public sector and carrier markets. It specializes in network design, planning, deployment, and managed services. It has grown by 1531 percent by serving U.S. carriers including AT&T, Verizon, Level 3 and Sprint.
Tampa, Fla.’s Telovations designs, builds and manages advanced communications networks for businesses over a "private cloud" that provides hosted services to midsize, multi-location services firms’ users on a closed network. It’s growth rate was 1392 percent over three years. It ranked eighth in telecom.
CallFire is a cloud telephony company that provides enterprise-level telecommunication services on a pay-as-you-go basis for clients including Boy Scouts of America, MoveOn.org, One.org, and FedEx. It rounded out the top 15 in telecom.
Vocalocity from Atlanta was acquired in 2006 by ZivVa. It repurposed the company's VoIP soft-switch technology into a distributed and redundant hosted environment where voice applications can be developed rapidly. It grew by 1217 percent and ranked eighth.
Connexion Technologies customizes and manages provider-neutral networks for single-family, multi-family, high-rise, resort and hospitality properties nationwide. It’s 1161 percent growth rate over three eyars earned it the No. 12 spot in telecom and 268th overall.
Most of these companies are realtviely small in the software or managed services space, but that doesn’t mean other, more established companies aren’t also doing well. Last week in Barron’s, Wedbush Securities said applications such as machine-to-machine (M2M) and vehicle-tracking driving subscriptions were growing fast as AT&T grew connected devices to 6.7 million, up 115 percent year-over-year and Verizon Wireless added another 7.7 million. The firm said companies such as Openwave Systems, Syniverse Holdings, Smith Micro Software and Synchronoss Technologies would benefit.
