To print: Click here or Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

This story was printed from silicon.com, located at http://www.silicon.com/

Story URL: http://hardware.silicon.com/servers/0,39024647,39169166,00.htm

VeriSign to narrow its focus
The internet is "our core competency"...

By Reuters

Published: Thursday 15 November 2007

VeriSign, which runs the infrastructure that directs most of the world's internet traffic, said it plans to divest several businesses and focus on its website-naming and internet-security services.

Businesses targeted for divestiture include VeriSign's communications, billing and commerce units, the company said. Once the strategy shift is completed, the company expects net income, profit margins and revenue growth "will be higher".

Minority Report

Always looking out for the underdog… click here for Seb Janacek's chat on all things Apple and other alternatives to dominant technologies…

The company did not detail the timing of the strategic shift, its cost, or how many jobs would be affected.

At the company's analyst day meeting, VeriSign CEO Bill Roper said: "Our company knows more about the internet infrastructure than anyone else. [We] helped design the modern internet - that's our core competency. We are going to focus on that."

VeriSign runs one of the key pieces of the infrastructure that makes the internet operate: namely 'switchboards', which direct every piece of traffic to web locations with a dot-com or dot-net at the end of their address.

Every time a web user enters an internet address, it first travels through a VeriSign server, which directs it to its final destination. The system also handles other types of internet exchanges, including ones originated via computer.