[Satellite News 08-06-08] Customers loyal to Radyne products have nothing to fear over the company’s acquisition by Comtech Telecommunication Corp., said Comtech EF Data‘s senior vice president of strategic marketing & business development, Daniel Enns, in an interview with Satellite News.
    Comtech EF Data has been reassuring Radyne customers since the deal closed Aug. 1 that the combination of the two companies will not have a major impact on the markets even though there is some overlap in the product portfolio of both companies.
    “Radyne products, specifically modems, converters and receivers, have a strong loyalty among its customer base and we highly value these customers,” said Enns. “The Radyne products will maintain its separate existing website as is as an assurance to that customer base that it is business as usual under the Comtech umbrella.”
    Comtech will close Radyne’s facility and some personnel will be absorbed, said Enns. “We will be bringing the engineering teams together over the next three to six months,” he said. “We are trying to minimize any disruption of business. We are still doing the business Radyne was doing from their original facility. We are looking forward to leveraging the manufacturing of Radyne products under the Comtech EF facility in Tempe, [Ariz.].”
    In terms of making this new company more efficient, Enns said Comtech would be combining sales forces, but “that doesn’t mean we will not have sales personnel or engineering coming in from Radyne,” he said, adding that manufacturing would be integrated much as both Radyne and Comtech’s sister companies have outsourced in this area.
    Comtech will focus on improving customer services, and “synergies will not come at the expense of customers,” said Enns.

Competition Sees Potential Opportunity
Comtech’s competition sees the acquisition as taking out another competitor and opening up the “number two” slot in the market. Tony Radford, vice president of sales and marketing for Paradise Datacom, said he was skeptical Comtech would leave Radyne’s product line intact, but that the outcome of the merger could be analyzed as beneficial to his company.
    “They’ve already indicated that they were going to do so in the past,” said Radford. “If they should elect to kill the Radyne product line, then obviously those customers would obviously have a choice to go somewhere else, and that could impact us in a positive way.”
    Radford suspects that competitors will have to wait to see what Comtech decides to do with the Radyne product line portfolio before seeing how the market will shake out.
Regardless, the modem market in the United States remains relatively open. “Comtech is still our principle competitor,” said Radford. “The merger doesn’t change our business model or strategy to compete with that company.”