[Satellite News 11-16-09] Since taking the position as Globecomm‘s COO in August, Keith Hall, a veteran of the company’s service division, has been working to apply his successful service-based growth formula company-wide.
    Globecomm now finds itself in a period of change as it looks to shift its focus and grow its presence beyond its original foundation as a system integrator and into lucrative government and commercial markets.
    Hall spoke with Satellite News about the progress the company has made over the last quarter and its plans for the end of the year.

Satellite News: As COO, you’ve talked a lot about expanding the company’s presence beyond just services. Why expand when you’ve seen success in this sector?

Hall: Due to the economy, we’re in a changing business environment. Internally, Globecomm has been tweaking its vision is and the image we portray as a company. Globecomm has been known as a system integrator for many, many years. We’re looking to change that and have been slowly accomplishing it over the last eight years.
    Before I became COO, my role in the company was on services and growing that side of the business. When I took it over that business sector in 2002, we had about $14 million in recurring services. We had a vision to bring some stability and scalability to the streets and visibility to the market for Globecomm. We were very much focused on growing recurring services. With all of the engineering know-how that we had and have had for many, many years in providing infrastructure solutions to many different market segments from broadcasters or government, we were really trying to find ways to bring that value proposition to the same markets from a managed network services approach. So we extended our reach internally and worked in new vertical markets and have grown our revenue from $14 million to $125 million just from the services division and $215 million to $225 million company-wide.

Satellite News: Now that you oversee all of the business operations, have you seen the same growth opportunities in other areas?

Hall: We had a down year last year, specifically on the infrastructure, design and intergration sides of the business. There were two main factors for this. The economy was certainly a large factor. Capital dried up and people put their business plans on hold or their expansions on hold. We saw a tremendous slow down on the commercial side last year, as well. However, that business is now starting to pick back up and we’re starting to see old opportunities come back as programs that got put on hold are starting up again. 

Satellite News: Did the economy affect your business with the government?

Hall: On the government side, you had the economy slow down and you had a change of administration. There was some uncertainty in the political environment, which delayed certain programs. There were budgets in place and people were wondering where the budget would be applied, which resulted in a slow-down. But, that is starting to pick up as well. 

Satellite News: When did you first notice a turn-around?

Hall: In the first quarter, the company started to show tremendous rebound. Our two new acquisitions, Mach 6 and Telaurus certainly contributed, but, our bookings were up, which is important and will lead to growth in the out quarters.

 

Satellite News: How does Globecomm view its new X-band ventures? Is this a growth market?

 

Hall: Currently, we are just starting to provide X-band services. X-band is a new area for us from the service side. We expect that to grow substantially over the next few years. We’re working on launching our telepoint services in that area and developing X-band products, like our version of the ManPack, which we call TomCat. We are very optimistic what X-band, from a service standpoint, can do for us.

Satellite News: Does X-band’s growth potential hinge on the Obama administration’s plans in Afghanistan?

Hall: About a year ago, the market had concerns about troops moving from Iraq to Afghanistan. At Globecomm, we were wondering what the move from Iraq to Afghanistan would mean to the infrastructure that we built up in Iraq. We wondered if we would take some hits there from a revenue perspective. However, what we’re actually seeing is an uptick in services in Iraq, despite less troops being there. We built a lot of infrastructure there for the U.S. Department of State and other agencies. It just changes hands a bit on who is controlling those assets. We have worked with all sides of the government as they make the transition from a war zone to an ongoing culture and environment support mission.

The same thing applies to Afghanistan. I think there is always a concern on the government side about where the budget dollars will go, but we’ve done a good job to stay diverse with our customer base in those regions to support a wide variety of operations and growing our presence there to support the U.S. military mission.