Banyan Becomes ePresence

Banyan, a long-time presence in the enterprise networking market, has reformed as a pure-play Internet services company. Banyan put its legacy products, such as Banyan Vines, on maintenance and acquired ePresence (a privately held e-services company that specialized in Web design, development, and integration). Then, the company moved its developing service business to ePresence. This new larger company plans to leverage its core competencies in directory services, network design, implementation, and management, competing against companies such as the Big 5 consulting firms. ePresence is a $50 million company with 300+ employees and a 65 percent growth rate. Much of Banyan's focus in the past has been on the developing Windows enterprise-networking segment of the Internet marketplace. However, Banyan has seen its product-based business shrink in recent years and its services business expand. Switchboard.com, an Internet directory service, was a profitable Banyan venture that the company spun off this year as part of a successful IPO. Banyan and CBS are the major owners of Switchboard.com, one division of the new ePresence. The other two divisions are ePresence Solutions and ePresence Ventures. With a new management team, ePresence set up a Ventures Group to build its Services Group through strategic acquisitions. According to Scott Silk, senior vice president of marketing for business development, and Mari Ryan, director of services marketing, ePresence plans to provide solutions that maximize the company's contact with its customers (a boardroom-to-back-office approach), leverage its worldwide structure, and continue to compete in high-growth projects. ePresence is particularly interested in pursuing Internet and e-commerce projects to add adaptive personalization to clients' Web sites, leveraging its core competency in Active Directory and directory services. Lucent and Sony are among ePresence's early big clients.