On January 18th, 2008, Tekelec acquired substantially all of the assets of Estacado Systems, LLC, a software development company led by a team that has been instrumental in the creation of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and a number of its advanced features. By acquiring Estacado’s assets and retaining the Estacado team, Tekelec is extending its long-standing relationship, having tapped into their expertise for key product projects.

Estacado Systems was established in 2004 by a team of SIP pioneers including Ajay Deo, Ben Campbell, Adam Roach and Robert Sparks. Members of the company’s executive team are key players in the industry, promoting SIP as the broadly accepted standard for next-generation signaling. They continue to serve on the SIP Forum and chair several Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working groups, along with authoring over 20 Requests for Comment (RFCs). Their deep expertise also includes SIMPLE-based presence and instant messaging and broadband VoIP networking. In addition, they have substantial experience in related technologies, such as 3GPP IMS subsystems. The core team also contributed to the design, development and deployment of one of the earliest IMS networks in the United States.

Ajay Deo
Ajay Deo was responsible for overseeing the management of the company, and for establishing its strategic direction.

Ajay helped found Estacado Systems in 2004 with a goal to build a company from the ground up. Ajay is a results-oriented senior executive with more than 13 years of experience at corporate and divisional levels of public and privately held companies.

Prior to Estacado, Ajay worked as a director of engineering at Dynamicsoft, a provider of networking solutions, where he was responsible for the design of signaling products for wireless and wireline service providers.

Ajay has extensive experience in designing communication services and equipment. He held various positions within MCI, BT Labs, and DSC Communications, gaining experience in network design, server product development, and OAM&P. While working at MCI, he developed the SIP Servlet specification, which was standardized through Sun's Java Community Process (JCP). Subsequent to this work, Ajay was involved in the design and implementation of two different application servers that implemented the SIP Servlet specification.

Ajay holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Indiana University, and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, with a Minor in Business and Math from Western Kentucky University.

Robert Sparks
Robert Sparks was responsible for managing Estacado's research activities and development of products and product components for new markets.

Robert has over 20 years experience in the computer and communications industries. He was CTO at Xten Networks prior to joining Estacado Systems and has held management and research positions at Dynamicsoft, Lucent, MCI, and Texas A&M University. For the last seven years, Robert has focused on designing and developing SIP-based IP communications systems.

Robert is very active in standards and industry development. He coordinates the industry's premier interoperability event, the SIPit. Robert chairs the IETF's SIMPLE working group, which defines extensions to SIP for Presence and Instant Messaging. He was a contributing editor to RFC 3261, which defines the SIP protocol, and the author of several updates to the core protocol and its extensions, including RFCs 3515 and 3892, which extend SIP to allow a rich set of call transfer capabilities.

Robert is a member of the board of directors of the SIP Forum.

Robert holds a Master's degree in Mathematics and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University.

Ron Chambers
Ron Chambers was responsible for the Financial, Legal, and HR aspects of Estacado's business.

Ron has over 15 years of experience in all aspects of software development. Prior to helping start Estacado, he served in a variety of Management and Engineering roles including stints with Dynamicsoft, Lucent Technologies, Texas A&M University, and Andersen Consulting.

As a delegate to 3GPP, Ron contributed to the development of the TR 23.841 specification, which is the first functional specification of a Presence Service by the Wireless industry.

Ron holds a MBA, a Masters in Computer Science, and a BS in Petroleum Engineering, all from Texas A&M University.

Ben Campbell
Ben Campbell was responsible for managing the development of products for identified customers.

Ben has over 15 years of experience providing technical and managerial leadership at organizations including Dynamicsoft, Lucent Technologies, and JC Penny. In addition to architecting and deploying advanced communication systems, Ben has been very active in the IETF. He co-wrote the first implementation of a SIP based Instant Messaging and Presence system and demonstrated it at the Summer 2000 IETF meeting. Ben was one of the original contributors to the presence protocol proposals which became the basis for the current SIP-based presence protocols. He has been the the principal editor of the core messaging efforts in the SIMPLE working group, and has co-authored essential guidance recommendations for the use of these emerging real-time communication technologies (see RFCs 3087, 3428, 3824, and draft-ietf-simple-message-sessions).

Ben holds an MBA and a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science with a Minor in Electrical Engineering, all from Texas A&M university.

Adam Roach
Adam Roach was responsible for setting the technical direction for the company.

Prior to joining Estacado Systems, Adam held research and development positions with Dynamicsoft and Ericsson.

Adam has been working with the IETF in the area of real-time communications since 1998. Adam authored RFC 3265, which forms the foundation of presence subscriptions. Adam has been heavily involved with subsequent work relating to user presence (including a forthcoming RFC on subscriptions to buddy lists, draft-ietf-simple-event-list). Adam has further performed significant standardization work in the areas of SIP interworking with legacy telephony systems (RFC 3578 and RFC 3398) and signaling compression for mobile telephony networks (RFC 3485 and a forthcoming RFC on improving the efficiency of SigComp, draft-ietf-rohc-sigcomp-nack).

Adam currently co-chairs the XCON working group.

Adam holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University.