Jack Cicon President and chief executive officer, Integral Access Inc.

Making telecom experience integral to the job

By C. A. Soule
October 30, 2000

There has been no shortage of Lucent Technologies executives leaving the company to run New England startups, as the New Jersey giant attempts to battle its way back from a weak stock price and attrition of key executives.

The latest example is Jack Cicon, who this week takes over as president and chief executive officer of Chelmsford telecom startup Integral Access Inc.Integral Access founder Jeff Wake becomes chairman, and plans to continue his involvement in the company.

Integral Access is developing devices that sit between businesses and emerging "SoftSwitches" being built at the farthest outreaches of networks to carry voice and data traffic using Internet protocol.

"Jack Cicon has built and managed Lucent's multi-service access business into one of the company's fastest growing and most successful units," Wake said. "Jack's extensive business, operations and technical management background, deep knowledge of the carrier market, and proven execution skills will play a central role in steering Integral Access to its next level of growth and development."

The company hit an important technical benchmark under Wake's watch. Originally designed for use in copper-based DSL systems, Integral Access recently announced that its product now supports traffic carried over fiber-optic links to customer premises.

The company's system includes a software-based management system that allows for the creation of new telecommunications services at a customer's premises, which promises new revenue opportunities for service providers looking for an edge.

Cicon has held a number of executive positions at Lucent, in the access products division, switching systems department, and data networking business unit. He was director of data networking at the AT&T Bell Laboratories, and managed multiple engineering and software development centers at Lucent. Much of his recent experience at Lucent involved selling the company's access devices internationally. He built Lucent's "AnyMedia" access device from scratch into a revenue-generator in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Those are my skill sets, execution and focusing a company to build out a product to meet the expectations of the marketplace," Cicon said. "I guess the reputation in the company was that if there was a tough job, I was a person who could step into a job, get them focused, and lead them through that period."

He faces that scenario now at Integral Access, with the added challenge of keeping the company's coffers full until it is ready for an initial public offering of stock.

"I became a director at AT&T in 1984, and thought I had the greatest job in the world," Cicon laughed. "A month later, the company broke up after the government changed all the rules."

Nevertheless, he landed a project to build the scheduling and messaging systems for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and followed that up by working on AT&T's internal networks following the breakup.

Cicon wrestled with the decision to leave Lucent, he said.

"At one point I was getting calls every week from companies," he said. "It came down to either staying at Lucent a few more years and then watching golf balls going down the fairway, which wasn't really interesting me, or going this route.

"Golf is in fact a huge hobby for Cicon, having grown up on the sport, although his handicapped has sagged from 10 to 14 in the last year, he ruefully admits. He also enjoys traveling with his wife and two daughters.

"There is a little excitement, and a little trepidation," Cicon said. "The fun part of a startup is getting to make decisions right away. I like doing that."