CREDIT: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun Irfhan Rajani’s company Apparent Networks specializes in network intelligence and solutions.

Today, in the second of a series on the players that topped the B.C. Technology Industry Association’s 2005 technology impact awards, BusinesBC looks at Vancouver‘s Apparent Networks, named for excellence in product innovation.

Computer networks are like highways. When all the signals are operating, the lanes wide open and the pavement smooth, traffic zooms through at top speed.

Throw in a malfunctioning signal or a little construction and the whole business slows to a crawl.

When it comes to network traffic, Vancouver‘s Apparent Networks makes the software that acts as traffic reporter, traffic cop and tow truck all rolled into one.

It could be a computer network in a storefront insurance office or a corporate network that circles the globe.

When things start to slow down, Apparent’s software can pinpoint the problem and offer up the solution, presenting a virtual X-ray of the system that lets the network engineer troubleshoot without even leaving his or her desk.

“We’re the guys who can tell you don’t cross the Lion’s Gate bridge because there’s a lane out and we don’t have to have a person on every street corner to let us know that,” said president and chief executive officer Irfhan Rajani. He started Apparent Networks along with Fred Klassen, the brains behind AppareNet, the company’s network intelligence software, and Kelly Daniels, another serial entrepreneur and a co-founder of Mainframe Entertainment.

That talent for troubleshooting makes Apparent’s products a valuable commodity in a corporate world where network slowdowns and inefficiencies can translate into huge costs. It has propelled the company into prominence, most recently earning it the BC Technology Industry Association’s annual award for excellence in product innovation. That marks the second time Apparent Networks has topped the BCTIA awards list. In 2003, the company won most promising start up.

For Rajani it’s a hat trick, with Apparent Networks being the third company he has nurtured from start up to success.

“They’ve all been Canadian and it’s so far, so good,” said Rajani, chatting in the Gastown offices that he managed to score for a great price simply because Apparent launched in the midst of the tech meltdown when dot-com offices complete with foosball tables and refrigerators full of pop and junk food were going begging. “We seem to be doing reasonably well.”

The modesty belies the client list that includes such heavyweights as Veritas Software, the B.C. government, Telus, which is also an investor, and others. A new deal in the works to be announced this week is promised to bolster that list, although Apparent is keeping mum on the identity of the latest client while the details are wrapped up.

For the 42-year-old Rajani, it’s a far cry from the days when he first graduated with a bachelor of commerce degree from the University of Calgary in 1986. The oil patch wasn’t booming at the time and the job market there wasn’t conducive to paying off a hefty student loan.

Rajani started his apprenticeship as an entrepreneur working in sales with a Toronto tech company, but probably about the time in his career when others would be burning out from the 24/7 schedule, Rajani took off for a year-long travel sojourn.

The global education couldn’t have hurt. He came back and co-founded Zentra Computer Technologies, supplying storage solutions and services to companies like PMC-Sierra and Macdonald Detwiller before selling it and moving on to his second start up, the software company Telebackup Systems.

It sold in 1999 for $143 million, allowing Rajani and his wife Brenda to take a year off to travel before returning to Vancouver where they launched both a new company and a family.

Their children are now two and four. The company is five years old and definitely standing on its own two feet.

“When we returned it was a case of, ‘let’s do this a little differently,’ ” said Rajani. “I had financing from the last company, we put together a management team and we spent a great deal of time up front identifying where the market need was.”

At the time, it was bucking a trend. Everyone else — well not everyone but a substantial number of dot-coms and techno wonder wannabe companies — were closing their doors. The entire industry was, as Rajani points out, “in its nuclear winter.”

“So while they were going splat, it seemed a bad time to start, but in retrospect, the timing was good,” he said.

Not only was space like the Gastown premises plentiful, but so were tech employees.

“We were able to get good engineers,” said Rajani. “We weren’t competing with fly-by-night dot-coms.”

At the same time, the devastated tech economy demanded real products and a real prospect of profits instead of mere promises.

“It was a time that required discipline,” said Rajani. “Our technology was not overly sexy but it was needed.”

The things that didn’t disappear in the dot-com demise were the networks, and Apparent took on the job of making them work more efficiently, more effectively and without problems that could slow and stop applications.

If you’ve ever sat at your computer and grumbled at the time it takes for it to work, or grind through a process, chances are you’d appreciate Apparent’s dedication to solving those problems.

“This is something that resonates with everyone, be it CEOs of Fortune 500 companies or consumers,” said Rajani. “We’re all dependent on these networks that have proliferated over the past five years.”

The 40-person privately held company had a 300-per-cent top-line growth in the last year and Rajani says the challenge now is to keep it up.

“It’s about how do we manage the growth and keep the momentum going,” he said. “We really are playing in the land of the giants and we have to do sure we don’t get crushed inadvertently.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2005