GoAhead slashes staff, broadens focus

"Our customers expect the market to remain down for another 18 to 24 months. We have to size ourselves as well," O'Brien said. "What we've done is acknowledge the reality of the telecom market."

GoAhead's job cuts were spread evenly across the organization and included some engineers, O'Brien said. The company's SelfReliant middleware required heavy engineering resources to get to market, and now those workers are required for maintenance, support and continuing development, O'Brien said. With those requirements in mind, the cuts were spread evenly, he said.

GoAhead is also looking to move its products into other markets. The company is discussing a new offering, SelfReliant 9500 , due later this year that will target the server market. Additionally, GoAhead is looking to push its high-availability (HA) software solution into the Web infrastructure space, O'Brien said.

"HA middleware is a horizontal play," he said. "Telecom was a good first vertical. Now we're adding to that."

To succeed in this area, GoAhead will look to deliver more ease-of-use features and to require little programming by customers, O'Brien said.

Telecom will continue to be a big end market for GoAhead. Motorola employed the company's software in its 2.5/3G equipment, and is extending the software's use into other projects, O'Brien said. "We're not diluting our telecom focus," he said.

GoAhead will also keep up its work with board developers like Force Computers Inc. and Radisys Corp., which are still focused on the telecom market.

GoAhead received $26 million in funding in July 2000, and the recent restructuring will extend its runway by two years, O'Brien said. That's m ore than long enough, he said. "We will be profitable this year."

It's unclear how many people are left in the GoAhead organization, as O'Brien declined to answers questions on that topic.