Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/59881
covered with fast-moving trains. The man in the lead locomotive is VeriSign's Stratton Sclavos. I've been trying unsuccessfully to coin a simple expla- nation of VeriSign. Do you have your own shorthand description of the company's services? We've been trying to come up with one for nine years! The simplest way to describe us is that we provide intelligent infra- structure services for the Internet and the telecom networks. In essence, we sit above the pipes of the Internet and the tra- ditional voice networks, and we provide services that make those networks more reliable, more secure, and more scalable. On the Internet side, our domain name services help peo- ple find Web sites as well as send e-mail. We handle about 14 billion interactions a day. On the telecom side, we help mobile professionals roam on cellular networks. We handle about 50 percent of all the roaming traffic in North America. Our services are designed to help people in business find each other, connect, securely communicate, and transact. We think those four things—find, connect, secure, transact—are the equivalent of the dial tone in the phone networks. This will be the infrastructure that services ride on for the digital wave. Exactly what do you mean when you call VeriSign part of the Internet infrastructure? Look at the railroads of the mid-1800s. Look at electric power grids and air transportation industries of the 1900s. Today, look at telecom and the Internet. Each time a major econom- ic shift happens, a new intelligent infrastructure has to be put in place. We believe VeriSign is the company to build that intelligent infrastructure for this generation's economic shift. The wonderful thing about infrastructure businesses is that, once you build them, you really are enabling hundreds or thousands of opportunities to succeed. It may be Internet commerce or it may be Internet telephony, but it's all riding on the same infrastructure, so our investments can be lever- aged across them. We don't have to make a live-or-die bet. We sleep better at night knowing that infrastructure is adapt- able to many other opportunities. At the same time, we have to have some courage, because the infrastructure has to be built before the market exists. It really is a "build it and see if they come" phenomenon. The market can't get started until the infrastructure is there, but once it does get started, then the infrastructure better be very scalable and very reliable. You started at VeriSign in 1995 as one of its first employees. What drew you to the company? BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005 19