After years of organic growth, the optical networking technology maker bought Vancouver's Versawave Technologies Inc. in January for an undisclosed sum, giving it access to employees and relationships on the west coast.
With an overall employee count today of 170 - about 155 of those workers being local - the firm anticipates needing to hire more digital-side research and development workers to help Optelian push its packet products to the 100-gigabyte barrier and beyond.
This is all the more important given that the firm has doubled the size of its Ottawa research, development and manufacturing facility, and is seeing customer growth overseas, particularly in southeast Asia, where demand for networks is increasing.
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The 35,000-square-foot facility supports manufacturing of Optelian's products, LightGAIN and LightMUX. New hires were mainly in engineering with a few in manufacturing.
The firm, a Fastest Growing Company recipient in 2011, has hundreds of clients in North America, mainly in the United States. Internationally, it also has customers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Asia Pacific region. The firm also has offices in Dubai and Delhi.
"We're very pleased to see the work we've been doing over the course of many years start to pay off. It takes a long time to start to establish ourselves internationally," says Optelian CEO David Weymouth.
The company targets telecom, utility, enterprise and multi-platform and service operators who are looking to bump up their capacity on optical networks.
Listening to customers. That’s so important. It never goes away, and everyone in the organization has got to be customer-focused. - CEO David Weymouth
Optelian works with its customers individually to figure out what features and capabilities they want the most, then implements plug-and-play fibre-optic network systems to fit the clients' needs.
"Everybody (at Optelian) sells value by getting a quality product to the customer on time. It's a simple thing, but a lot of companies forget about that," Mr. Weymouth says.
Year founded: 2002
Local head count: 155
Product/service:
Fibre-optic network and transport systems
Revenue growth: 199.6%
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