In Broadcast - May 2014 - 28

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 31 - MAY 2014

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The Future Looks Bright For Globecomm
Globecomm's CEO Keith Hall discusses the recent
acquisition, leadership of the business and future
plans for the company...

28

InBroadcast: In December,
Globecomm was purchased
by Wasserstein & Company,
becoming a privately-held
company again. What has
happened since the acquisition,
and what is the overall state of
the business?
Keith Hall: It certainly has been
a busy few months. We have a
great partner in Wasserstein, one
who understands our vision and
strengths and wants to help us grow.
Globecomm has a very strong
foundation of capabilities with a
solid customer base. Over the last
ten years we have been able to
re-invent ourselves as a managed
network services provider where
75% of our annual revenue is now
derived from recurring services.
We have also been able to diversify
our customer base to better handle
the ebbs and flows of markets,
especially the government sector.
As we continue to enhance our
value proposition we see the market
opportunity growing for us. It is vital
that we do not stand still. We must
continue to adapt. With that in
mind, we took a hard look at three
areas: our speciﬁc go-to-market
strategy based on the vertical
markets we want to service, our cost
structure, and our organisational
structure to make sure it is aligned
with our go-to-market vision.
One area we are very focused on
is building out a customer-facing,
proactive sales and marketing front
to complement our engineering and
operational capabilities.
InB: You were appointed CEO in
February, succeeding the Founder,
Dave Hershberg, who retired after
many years. Tell us about yourself.
KH: I am truly honoured to carry
forward the torch that Dave lit at
Globecomm. The contributions
Dave made to Globecomm and
this industry are too many to
list. He taught many of us a lot
about business and about life
and to successfully go forward.
I have been at Globecomm for
nearly two decades and have
been fortunate to learn the many
different functional areas of the
company as we grew from a satellite
systems integrator to a global

Globecomm's international network - multiple teleports connected by fibre

communications solutions provider.
These experiences have been
priceless in helping me understand
and lead a global workforce.
My background is engineering. I
worked as a systems engineer for
several years and then played roles
in Program Management, Business
Development and eventually became
Vice President of Operations
for our new services business.
In 2002, I was given the opportunity
to help take the company from
being a pure systems integrator to a
managed network services provider.
One of the keys to Globecomm's
success over the years has been our
ability to reinvent ourself in an everchanging technology environment.
We were successful in building
this business both organically and
through acquisition into a $200
million per year business. I am proud
to say I was part of that. It's been a
great ride and I feel we are at a new
beginning.
InB: Globecomm has always
been known for its innovation
and ability to enter new areas
of communication in all corners
of the world. What is your plan
for Globecomm over the next
12 months?
KH: Globecomm prides itself in
providing broadband services
anywhere to any device around
the globe and we will continue

to do so. Innovation is the key
ingredient to our value proposition.
Applications will be a focus area
as we look to become more than a
transport company in the services
world and there will be an emphasis
on our data management capabilities.
End-to-end data management,
from data acquisition, to storage,
monetisation, transport and security
are all fundamental capabilities
we will provide as we use our
engineering talent and innovation
process to continue to provide more
bits per hertz per dollar spent in
value for our customers.
InB: The communications
landscape seems to change
every 18 months. What do you
think will be the most signiﬁcant
changes ahead?
KH: Every expert I speak with
says what I also believe, which
is that we have moved pretty
fast into a seamless environment
for communications. Here we
know that voice, video and
data content distribution are no
longer limited by the transport
medium or even the device.
From our end of the communication
chain, we need to enhance the
expertise of being able to design and
utilise a hybrid approach - satellite,
public internet, MPLS networks, 4G/
LTE networks, etc. - for solutions.
Mobile communications is really

the platform that is providing the
ﬁnal link to the ubiquitous Internet.
Cisco and others now talk about
"The Internet of Things," which
incorporates Machine-to-Machine
(M2M) communications where
billions of connected devices are
enabling this blanket of total access
to the media as the customer needs.
In our case it is a customer, such as
broadcaster or telecommunications
provider, which needs to provide it.
We are getting ready to design and
implement in a seamless environment
and have a pretty good start.
The new owners understand this
and the market is looking to us
because this is not going to be easy.
But we prefer to do the hard stuff.
They say software is "eating
the world." Automation of manual
processes is becoming common
practice, the virtualisation of
previously hardware-specific
functions is evolving and pushing the
shift from CAPEX to OPEX business
models to take centre stage.
Applications development
will also accelerate and
change, not every 18 months
but probably every 18 minutes.
That is why our parking lot at
headquarters is going to be full and
our teams busy.
InB: Thank you for taking time to
answer our questions.
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