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Revolutionizing
how businesses use the Internet.
By Pam Droog
Michael Gaddis Founder, CEO and Chairman of CoreExpress, Inc.
Mike Gaddis, founder, CEO and chairman of CoreExpress, says as a
kid, he had a habit of taking things apart and putting them back
together. Later, that habit extended to companies—like SAVVIS, as
in SAVVIS Center. In 1996, Gaddis, an internationally recognized
Internet expert, was asked by potential investors to evaluate the
struggling regional Internet company, then called DiamondNet. “Basically
I said this business won’t make it,” he says. “I gave it a thumbs
down.” But he was persuaded to join the company as executive vice
president and chief technology officer, take it apart and make it
right. “I cleaned house,” he says. “I hired all new people, ripped
out all the old technology and put in everything new.” The rest,
as they say, is history, as Gaddis helped the company become one
of the highest quality Internet backbones in the world.
Bridge Information Systems bought SAVVIS for up to $700 million
(dependent on an expected bridge IPO) in 1999 and Gaddis went on
to found CoreExpress, where today he’s involved in nothing less
than restructuring the Internet. Before now, he explains, businesses
had been reluctant to send critical data over the public Internet
and instead opted to use expensive private data networks. Now, CoreExpress
is well on its way to establishing a huge, nationwide network to
ensure business-class traffic gets delivered with quality guarantees.
The service, CoreExpress Extranet, will be based on CoreExpress’
22,000-mile fiber optic network and proprietary technology that
connects Internet service providers (ISPs), who receive financial
incentives for delivering each other’s customer traffic. The concept
is attracting attention, customers—and $600 million in capital from
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Benchmark Capital and other firms that
like the company’s innovative approach.
“We haven’t seen any competitors yet but we will because it’s a
great idea,” Gaddis says. “There’s a lot of rocket science in what
we’re doing.”
Gaddis, who was born in California and raised in Nebraska, began
his career as an Internet rocket scientist in the late 1970s, when
colleges were just starting to offer programs in computer science.
He attended college on a ROTC scholarship, and ultimately served
as a platoon leader, executive officer and company commander in
the United States Marine Corps, earning his masters in computer
science along the way.
“After 10 years in the military I decided it was time to go out
and seek my fortune,” Gaddis says. He ended up in St. Louis, where
his wife’s family lives, to work on a Ph.D. at Washington University.
There, he co-founded the Applied Research Laboratory. “That’s where
I cut my entrepreneurial teeth. We took faculty research and built
new products from it,” Gaddis says. He and his fellow researchers
developed the world’s first ATM switch, a key communications device.
“At that time the technology was very hot, so we licensed it to
SynOptics, which became Bay Networks, then Nortel,” he says.
Based on that success, Gaddis was recruited by Ascom Nexion to develop
a third-generation ATM switching system. “We really pushed the envelope
on that one,” he says. The company was ultimately sold to Fujitsu
for $135 million, “so that was relatively successful,” he understates.
Next stop was SAVVIS, where Gaddis started an Internet network interconnection
program called brokered private peering. “We went halfway where
I wanted to go with it. CoreExpress will finish the job,” he says.
The best analogy to brokered private peering is telephone service.
“You can pick up a phone and dial any number and expect the same
quality whether you’re calling Timbuktu or Cedar Rapids, Iowa,”
Gaddis says. “There are thousands of telephone companies involved
in that transfer, but you never see that. The quality is uniform
and it’s pretty amazing that it works the way it does. That’s the
idea behind CoreExpress.”
Gaddis says that CoreExpress’ success is tied to creating a true
business-class Internet. “That doesn’t exist today,” he says. But
he expects the network to complete testing and be fully functional
in early 2001. “Then the real fun begins!” he says. “But we built
a company for that,” including 120 employees in Herndon, Va., and
220 in St. Louis. He anticipates employing 500 people next year.
Gaddis notes, the beauty of building a company in 2000 versus 1996
is, “then, you couldn’t find people with experience on the Internet.
You had to grow that. I had to grow myself.” He was “an equipment-manufacturing
kind of guy then,” he says. “I got into this thing and learned on
the job.”
One important thing he learned was, “always hire people smarter
than yourself. They make you look smarter.” Any one of his top managers
could run the company, he says. “The worst thing I could do is micro-manage.
My role is to make sure we’re all marching to the same drum and
share the same vision.”
Beyond CoreExpress, Gaddis has a vision for the region. “I think
we’ve started some pretty amazing things here,” he says. “I’m afraid
there will be some casualties but the spark has been lit and there’s
no way to stop it.” He helps keep that spark lit through membership
in the RCGA’s Technology Gateway. Also, he enjoys mentoring other
entrepreneurs on an informal basis.
Before the story ends, Gaddis offers a confession: The name “SAVVIS”
doesn’t really mean anything. “We were in a room, batting around
names from a list we had purchased from a naming company,” he says.
“SAVVIS struck us as kind of neat. It was palindromic, kind of catchy.
Nothing more complicated than that.” Recalling the company as he
first encountered it, he adds, “It’s kind of funny now to see SAVVIS
all over Kiel Center.”
Pam Droog is a St. Louis-based free-lance writer.
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