Jan 6, 2017

stumbleupon The Israeli communications startup Trellis Photonics laid off 20 employees at its research and development center in Jerusalem earlier this week. This is the third round of redundancies at the company in the last year, leaving it with 35 employees compared to 160 a year ago. As part of its restructuring program, Trellis also appointed Amnon Yacoby as its acting chairman. Yacoby, one of the founders of Floware, served until January 2002 as co-CEO of Alvarion, which was formed by the merger of BreezeCOM and Floware. Trellis' current chairman, Aharon Mankovski, will become a member of the board of directors. Yacoby will be placed in charge of completing the company's restructuring program, including a change in its business model and the development of a completely new product that is due to be released in 2003. The optical networking magazine Light Reading said recently that as the result of the emergence of strong competitors in the market, Trellis had been forced to cancel its plans to manufacture big switches that handle up to 1,920 wavelengths. Light Reading wrote that Trellis would focus on smaller switches and, rather than building complete switches, shift toward making electro-holographic components that could be used by system vendors to build their own. Trellis refused to release details of its new product, but did confirm that it would operate as a Fabless company contrary to its original business plan. Trellis was once considered one of the most promising optics companies in Israel and its name had been connected with communications giants Nortel Networks and Alcatel. The company was founded in 1999 by Prof. Aharon Agranat with the aim of developing products based on a scientific discovery called electroholography. Using the discovery, Trellis hoped to create the world's fastest optical switching technology by eliminating the conversion of light to electricity. To date, Trellis has raised a total of $37 million. In its last financing round in August 2000, Trellis raised $25 million at a company value of $150 million. Several leading venture capital firms including Pitango Venture Capital, Yozma Venture Capital, Carlyle Group and Skypoint Capital took part in the financing round. Another investor in the company was the collapsed energy giant, Enron. Since then, however, things have gone downhill for the company. The global communications market crisis led Trellis to cancel a planned $100 million fundraising round and cancelation of plans to build a factory in the United States. At the same time the company's management came under heavy criticism, particularly its American CEO, Tim Cahall, a former senior executive at Lucent Technologies. Critics claimed that Cahall was not capable of dealing with the unique challenges posed by managing a startup. Development of the company's technology also ran into trouble, and the commercial launch of its product was postponed from 2001 to mid 2002 and then again to the beginning of 2003. In mid-2001, Aharon Mankovski of Pitango Venture Capital was appointed chairman of the company in order to carry out a restructuring program. Cahall was dismissed as CEO and replaced by Eviatar Halevi. At the end of 2001, Trellis shut down its Yokneam center and laid off another 60 employees in Israel and the U.S. Industry sources believe the company's cash reserves are running low, but sources close to the company said that the existing investors plan to pump more funds into Trellis to complete the restructuring program. Want to enjoy 'Zen' reading - with no ads and just the article? Subscribe today