No sooner did I break the news that Howard Bubb was leaving Dialogic – I just found out that Mike Ross left Aculab a few days ago. Mike was another major player in the DSP resource board space. Mike worked as VP of Sales at Dialogic in the 1980s and was instrumental in their success.

He later left to found Rhetorex, a Dialogic competitor. Under his management Rhetorex grew to be a major force in the DSP resource board space. Many voicemail systems including the one at TMC have Rhetorex boards in them. The company was later sold to Octel which was sold to Lucent and the Rhetorex division was subsequently spun off to Brooktrout.

Most recently, Mike has been the President of the US division of Aculab and was the US face of the company. He did an incredible job growing the UK/Florida based company, while many competitors scrambled to deal with post-bubble times. He steered the Aculab ship with steady and consistent vision while others were lost. Mike understood technology and saw the Linux telephony market evolving before many of his competitors. This allowed Aculab to be an early player in this space. Not only did he understand technology, he was an excellent marketer, a straight shooter and perhaps the nicest person I have known in the industry over the past decades.

I view this as an industry loss but on the bright side, after two decades of service, growing the telecom space by being instrumental in the success of many companies, Mike may decide to relax for a while. He certainly deserves it. I envision more great things from Mike Ross as he looks to whatever comes next.