Workday 30 Report

March 24, 2006 marked the 30th workday for Blade Network Technologies (BLADE) – the industry’s #1 supplier of Ethernet, IP, and Application Switches for blade server systems.

20 work days have passed since my workday 10 report; and I wanted to reach out and give you an update on how things are progressing at BLADE.

Our typical workday begins at 5:00 am and ends at about 9:00 pm. Despite the long workdays, the energy levels at the company are at an incredible high; and the desire to delight our customers is intense. You can feel this, quite literally, as you walk the halls and talk to the employees.

Following is a list of what we accomplished since I last wrote you:

• Our employee strength is up to 62 with an additional 6 employees slated to start over the next few days. Approximately 52% of our employees are in the Engineering function (Hardware, Software, and Test).
  
• We plan on hiring another 28 people over the next few months. 18 of the 28 open positions are in the engineering function (Hardware, Software, & Test). This would bring our total employee strength to about 96 in the not so distant future, with 52% of the employees in the Engineering function.
  
• We’ve successfully migrated our bug database from Clarify to Bugzilla, thus demonstrating that you can indeed run your business using Open Source technology.
  
• We’ve conducted a number of product training sessions and SE Labs around the world – launching new features and capabilities of our blade server switches. These sessions allowed us to touch thousands of sales personnel and resellers around the globe and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.
  
• Our dedicated manufacturing lines at Solectron in Charlotte, NC have moved from running 2 shifts a day to a 24*7 (3 shifts per day operation). Bob Murden, our VP of Supply Chain Operations and myself visited the plant on 3/24 and I am pleased to report that BLADE has very quickly addressed our customer’s supply capacity requirements.
  
• Today, BLADE shipped RoHS compliant switches for the HP BladeSystem and the IBM BladeCenter, making us the industry’s first network equipment vendor to ship RoHS compliant products for the IBM BladeCenter and HP BladeSystem. We’re proud to say that BLADE’s RoHS products shipped from the Solectron Charlotte plant, the day after Solectron announced that its Charlotte facility was the First EMS Site Worldwide to Earn IPC RoHS Certification.
  
• Remodeling work at our HQ facilities in Santa Clara is progressing to plan and I plan to be writing you my next update from our new home.
  
• Remodeling work at our BNR (Blade Network Research) facilities in Ottawa is proceeding very well too; and very soon this facility will be equipped with our very own Thermatron Temperature Chamber, giving us the ability to perform DMT (Design Maturity Testing) on a 24*7 schedule. This we believe will have a significant and positive impact in our ability to better serve our customers.
  
• We’ve been quietly working away in the background on a website for our company. We plan to go live very soon. Look out for an e-mail from me on this in the coming weeks.
  
• We have defined a set of core values for the company that will guide our every action every day.
  
• We’ve put in place a companywide “DASHBOARD” that allows us to track weekly progress on many fronts – engineering, sales, supply chain operations, finance, and human resources. We’re very proud of this dashboard and how it helps us steer our way towards becoming the industry’s most valued supplier of blade server switch.
  
• We had the company’s first Board of Directors meeting on March 21, 2006 and here is what our Chairman, Mr. David Helfrich had to say
  “We have come out of the gate on solid footing. I am extremely pleased with the focused and meticulous execution demonstrated by the BLADE team under Vikram's leadership since the closing of the transaction. The transition is ahead of plan and progress has been very steady. The bar set by our customers is high, and we have a tremendous amount of work still ahead of us. But I am confident of the ability and dedication of this team to deliver. With the continued support of our customers and continued hard work by our team, we intend to make a deep impact on this market."
  
• Last, but not least we are instituting a new commitment process to help us ensure that we deliver on our commitments to our customers – on time, every time. This is a new and very rigorous process; but one that I am very committed to. I request our customers to please bear with us as we work towards making this process an integral part of everything we do at BLADE. In due course, as this process takes hold and sets deep roots in our company, our customer’s will see a material improvement in the quality of our work and our responsiveness.