Multiven Group BV is a Netherlands-based provider of independent and decentralised software integrity maintenance and cyber-defence services for multivendor

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. ...

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematic ...

hardware and

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, ...

nodes. Its customers include large enterprises,

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise priva ...

s, small, medium businesses,

Telecommunications companies A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunicat ...

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...

Academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

and

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government i ...

agencies.

History

Origins

Multiven was founded in 2005 in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

by British-Nigerian technology entrepreneur Peter Alfred-Adekeye. His aim was to build a company able to maintain the integrity of the world's Internet infrastructure without a hardware, software or political agenda. Headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Multiven is today the world's first and only independent provider of software management, maintenance and cyber-defence services for Internet networks. Multiven has regional sales offices in Paris, France, London, UK, Dubai, UAE.

History of Market

The Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, a short form of the word Internetwork, is an international ubiquitous network of networks. Given the amount of data traversing it, its criticality to personal, corporate and national security cannot be over-emphasized. The Internet infrastructure comprises software-driven networked

switches In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type of ...

, routers, firewalls, servers and storage hardware that switch, route, protect and store all voice, video and text data intelligently across the world. Internet equipment manufacturers like

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

etc. ''Et Cetera'' ( or (proscribed) , ), abbreviated to ''etc.'', ''etc'', ''et cet.'', ''&c.'' or ''&c'' is a Latin expression that is used in English to mean "and other similar things", or "and so forth". Translated literally from Latin, means ' ...

have a quasi monopoly on the multi-Billion dollar software maintenance services market for networking equipment through their own maintenance contracts and authorized third party maintenance. Multiven is the only provider offering a one-stop alternative for businesses of all sizes.

The Multiven Open Marketplace

In March 2018, Multiven launched the development of the Multiven Open Marketplace, a

project aiming to transition its existing business into a decentralized organisation. Multiven is developing a blockchain-based open Marketplace to allow customers to buy and sell new and pre-owned

Information Technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology syste ...

hardware, software and services, on a peer-to-peer basis, without intermediaries, solely powered by smart contracts and one global

Cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...

, the Multicoin. Multiven's maintenance and cybersecurity services will be accessible on the platform and can be bound to any hardware device. A portion of the Multicoin transaction fees from the Multiven Open Marketplace, funds Multiven B-Fence, a program that proactively defends

Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

nodes and the routers that connect them to other nodes, against centralisation cyberattacks.

Controversies

Antitrust lawsuit against Cisco Systems

On December 1, 2008, Multiven filed a United States Federal

antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust ...

lawsuit against Cisco Systems, Inc. in an effort to open up the network maintenance services marketplace for Cisco equipment, promote competition and ensure consumer choice and value. Multiven's complaint alleges that Cisco harmed Multiven and consumers by bundling and tying bug fixes/ patches and updates for its

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

to its maintenance services (“SMARTnet”) and through a series of other illegal exclusionary and

anticompetitive Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market. Antitrust laws differ among state and federal laws to ensure businesses do not engage in competitive practices that harm other, usuall ...

acts designed to maintain Cisco's alleged

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

in the network maintenance services market for Cisco networking equipment. In April 2009 during a Cisco-initiated mediation, Cisco offered Multiven a few million dollars as settlement and limited software updates for its customers but insisted that Multiven couldn't advertise its access to Cisco software updates. Multiven declined this offer as it still limited free and fair competition. The following month in May 2009, Cisco filed a set of false counterclaims against Multiven and alleged that in 2006 ''“Multiven’s CEO or someone under his control”'' viewed Cisco's ‘protected’ public website 99 times and downloaded Cisco IOS five times with a total value of $14,000, using a Cisco-employee provided credentials.

Cisco Fabricated Criminal Charges against Multiven CEO

Cisco went on to communicate exactly the same false allegations in its civil counterclaims to a local US prosecutor in San Jose and after several months in which US authorities prevented Peter Alfred-Adekeye's re-entry into the country for participation in Multiven v. Cisco, a special hearing in the case took place at a Canadian hotel from 18–20 May 2010, involving a US

special master In the law of the United States, a special master is generally a subordinate official appointed by a judge to ensure judicial orders are followed, or in the alternative, to hear evidence on behalf of the judge and make recommendations to the jud ...

and four Cisco lawyers. On 20 May 2010, Cisco accused the person who filed the

suit of hacking and orchestrated his arrest from the court session by Canadian police based on a misleading US arrest warrant while in the middle of testifying against Cisco in Multiven's antitrust hearing. Alfred-Adekeye was released after 28 days in custody but was forced to remain in Canada for another year before he was allowed to return to his home in Zurich, Switzerland. On May 31, 2011, Mr Justice Ronald McKinnon of the Supreme Court of British Columbia stayed the extradition, ruling that the strict standard of "extraordinary misconduct" was met by the circumstances and speaking of the "audacity of it all", of "Cisco's duplicity", and the "shocking" act of preventing someone's participation in a judicial proceeding by arresting them. False material in the US attorney's letter had misled the judge who signed the Canadian arrest warrant. "Grotesquely inflated" charges and the unjustified portrayal of Alfred-Adekeye as a Nigerian-born scam artist and flight risk had misled the Canadian judicial system further. The underlying civil case by Multiven against Cisco had been withheld from them.

Cisco Settles Multiven v. Cisco

On July 19, 2010, Cisco settled Multiven's antitrust lawsuit by making its operating system and application software updates, bug fixes and patches available to all Multiven customers worldwide. This settlement agreement transformed Multiven into Cisco's first and only independent competitor in the multi-Billion dollars per year software maintenance services business.

Libel Lawsuit Against Cisco

On July 20, 2015, Multiven CEO, Peter Alfred-Adekeye initiated a libel lawsuit against Cisco for (1) falsely claiming that ''‘he or someone under his control at Multiven’'' downloaded and ‘stole’ Cisco software five times in 2006 from cisco.com (2) used this lie (a) to orchestrate his illegal arrest in Vancouver, Canada in 2010 during Multiven v. Cisco and (b) to fabricate an ‘indictment’ in August 2011 after the Canadian Supreme Court threw out Cisco/US Government's extradition request and (3) continuing to knowingly propagate this falsehood till today, with the core purpose of defaming Mr Alfred-Adekeye's character and that of Multiven's - Cisco's only competitor in the global multi-Billion dollar per year services business.

References

External links

*{{Official website Companies established in 2005 Companies based in Redwood City, California Online companies of the Netherlands International information technology consulting firms Blockchain entities Peer-to-peer