Just 30 days into his tenure as Comtech’s CEO, Ken Peterman announced two key initiatives: the first was the appointment of Anirban Chakraborty as the company’s Chief Technology Officer, and the second was the launch of EVOKE, Comtech’s new Innovation Foundry, which is overseen directly by Anirban.
As an expression of Comtech’s mission to locate itself firmly at the center of the future of communications through constant innovation, EVOKE was founded on the belief that the kinds of step-changes that will transform the way we connect, and what those connections can do, will come from constant collaboration – across business units, and with suppliers, partners, customers, and academia.
At the same time, EVOKE is not only aspirational in its mission, but pragmatic: ultimately, everything we do at Comtech is designed to anticipate, address, and solve for our customers’ most pressing needs.
Since the launch of EVOKE, we’ve already formalized strategic partnerships with leading technology companies that are significantly accelerating the progress we are making on our strategic vision for the Innovation Foundry.
In the last four months alone, we have established relationships with key innovators, market disruptors, and game-changers across the industry. Our EVOKE technology partners now include:
- Sirqul, which is exploring how their network technologies, combined with Comtech’s recognized expertise in location-based services, can deliver extraordinary, real-time analytics and intelligence at the absolute edge of the IoT to connect systems, devices, customers, employees, logistics, buildings and more.
- Descartes Labs, which brings one of the world’s fastest cloud-native supercomputers and industry leading data processing and analytics capabilities to help Comtech apply artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to develop data solutions and services to address the growing demand for data based insights that rely on the near real time fusion of data derived from space technologies, telecommunications networks, and earth observation sensors, among other technologies.
- WishKnish, which brings industry leading distributed ledger (blockchain) offerings that will accelerate the way society securely exchanges information across industries, institutions, governments, and developers, ultimately ensuring safe communications in diverse markets across the globe.
- Aarna Networks, which brings industry leading zero-touch edge and 5G service orchestration and management (SMO) services, will work with Comtech, and our Dynamic Cloud Platform (DCP), to enable customers to easily add and manage a variety of open architecture cloud-based applications across private, hybrid, and public networks, in both terrestrial and non-terrestrial environments.
With these partnerships in mind, one of our goals at EVOKE is to develop sophisticated and intelligent analysis and actions that, when taken, together drive real-world outcomes. Combined, these new partnerships speak to two deeply interrelated ideas about our future.
The first is that the definition of communications is being disrupted—changing from mere connectivity to intent based, insightful on demand connections. The inexorable migration of people and businesses alike to digital, and the movement of all data and activity to the cloud, will demand that any future we imagine will involve bigger, resilient, seamless, and more ubiquitous connectivity than ever before, across the entirety of the network infrastructure–from the cloud, through the middle mile, and at the edge.
The second is that we will use Comtech’s differentiated expertise in creating and combining complex communications infrastructures with our partners’ capabilities to profoundly transform the global technology landscape. For years, infrastructure and analysis have been conceived of as distinct, embodied by the roughly decade-old trope coined by Martin Fowler of “smart endpoints and dumb pipes.”
But innovations in AI/ML, advances in computing power, and the application of sophisticated software technologies, mean the “data pipes” will be smarter in ways that have every opportunity to transform the endpoints they connect. One use case that provides an accessible example is viticulture.
Imagining the journey from grape to glass, and the number and complexity of the steps involved begins with the act of farming itself, which include the variables of sunlight, temperature, rainfall, and soil nutrients, to name a few. It ends with a bottled product that derives the majority of its economic value from a demonstrable provenance (when, and where, and by who, was this wine made).
What does this have to do with a connected, intelligent communications infrastructure?
As an example, a vineyard with an always-on network of intelligent devices could precisely measure the conditions of the soil and make decisions about everything from when to water the grapes to when to harvest them. Imagine this vineyard compiling rich data sets of all these conditions, and using them to inform blending, bottling, and aging the wine. Imagine managing complex inventory, storage, and supply chain problems, so that both the seller and buyer of the wine can have absolute confidence in the product.
In fact, the only thing this emergent intelligent communications network can’t do directly is drink a glass of this wine.
Finally, and related to the vineyard example, we note that we very purposefully refer to EVOKE as a foundry and not a lab – because EVOKE exists not just to develop ideas, but to build and deliver tangible, durable solutions, services, and integrated technologies. We’re working to directly address some of the biggest real-world challenges our global customers face.
Partnering with emergent leaders that have important technologies in our target areas will help us all put them to work more rapidly. Given the fast start and early success we and our partners at EVOKE have seen, we are certain that our ability to see further down the road, with more clarity, will deliver enormous value to our customers and investors alike.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain information in this blog post contains statements that are forward-looking in nature and involve certain significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results and performance could differ materially from such forward-looking information. The Company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings identify many such risks and uncertainties. Any forward-looking information in this press release is qualified in its entirety by the risks and uncertainties described in such Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
