As part of our ongoing series, “Meet the Chief,” Signals took the opportunity to sit down with the newly appointed Comtech Chief Strategy Officer – Defense, Daniel Gizinski, to talk about his role at Comtech and the future of communication technology in the defense industry.
Daniel Gizinski has been with Comtech since 2019 and has worked across five different business units within the organization during his tenure with the company. Promoted to Chief Strategy Officer of Defense in December 2022, Daniel is combining his passion and industry expertise with his first-hand experience working with multiple departments across Comtech to further propel the company’s innovation and industry leadership across multiple global market segments.
For our first question, we asked Daniel what excites him the most about the future of Comtech.
“In my nearly four years with the company, I have had the pleasure of working with teams across five previously siloed businesses,” shares Daniel. “I’ve had the chance to collaborate with people in each group and work on the cutting-edge technology portfolios they’re developing. I also understood the nearly endless possibilities and tremendous opportunities we have by coming together to collaborate and develop turnkey solutions and services. At the same time, there were no real incentives for folks to work together, and as such, it was difficult to foster collaboration between groups. Now that we are operating under the One Comtech strategy, subject matter experts, technologists, and employees across various departments can work together, plan together, build new solutions together, and even just bounce ideas off each other.”
“Technology is a very iterative process,” said Daniel. “Often, the idea you originally have is significantly different than what eventually gets built. For me, seeing these different pockets of innovation come together and be provided with a forward-thinking, clear internal mandate for collaboration is exciting: I know we are that much closer to creating the kinds of cutting-edge technologies that can change not just our industry, but also the connectivity landscape across the world.”
Thrilled about the company’s newfound collaboration, Daniel is deeply committed to facilitating the One Comtech strategy for his team.
“The first thing I did upon being promoted to Chief Strategy Officer was familiarize myself with the people and offerings of Comtech’s other business units and look for ways to pull all this together into something that solves our customers’ most difficult challenges,” Daniel explains. “Historically, Comtech provided a customer with key technologies for a larger comprehensive solution. As One Comtech, we evolving to provide customers with comprehensive, turnkey solutions and services. To evolve, build and expand on our existing technologies, it’s critical for our teams to come together to collaborate, iterate, test, and create new comprehensive solutions.”
Daniel shares that though it is early in the year, the team is already developing solutions that address key gaps in customer capabilities. He also mentioned he’s been strategizing closely with his colleagues on the commercial side of Comtech’s business, which prompted us to inquire about the convergence of defense and commercial infrastructures.
“The U.S. governments and commercial world are fundamentally trying to overcome the same challenge right now: how do you create a truly ubiquitous, interconnected world—across devices, platforms (maritime vessels, aircraft, space assets, etc.), and hard to reach/remote regions—that leverage the latest advances such as artificial intelligence, 5G, machine learning, and IoT technologies, without the user having to think about how they’re getting the connectivity,” says Daniel. “That’s a simply stated problem that’s incredibly hard to solve.”
“Comtech is uniquely positioned to address these customer needs across the government and commercial markets,” said Daniel. Comtech’s innovative business models, differentiated technologies, and our deep expertise across the company will enable us to develop cutting-edge communications solutions that meet customer needs in virtually any end market.”
“In the U.S. defense market, it’s clear our customers are willing to be early adopters of technology as governments are often willing to take on some technical risk to pick up the benefit of first-mover advantage,” said Daniel. “When it makes sense, one of the things we do well at Comtech is apply commercial technologies to defense use cases.”
One example of commercial technology crossover to the Defense Industry Daniel shared is the “Blue Force Tracking Program.”
“Comtech originally developed a commercial technology for tracking the location of commercial vehicles that eventually became the backbone of the U.S. Army’s Blue Force Tracking program,” explains Daniel. “This is just one of the many examples that illustrates how Comtech’s technologies can be applied to different or similar use cases across the defense and commercial sectors. Looking ahead, we are planning to introduce other commercial technologies in the defense space alongside the same security and cyber security protocols that we’re familiar with implementing on the defense side.”
As One Comtech, Daniel confident Comtech’s technology leadership and differentiated expertise can change the global connectivity landscape for the commercial and defense markets.
“Comtech benefits from deep expertise and technology portfolios that span multiple global technology segments,” said Daniel. “Our forward-leaning, future-focused approach to doing business and solving our customers challenges will set Comtech apart from the rest of the industry.”
“Comtech is in a very strong and unique position to lead the way in the convergence of communications technologies and network infrastructures,” said Daniel. “This goes back to a point I made earlier, converging technologies and hybrid network infrastructures will be central to addressing the core challenges the U.S. government and commercial market are trying to overcome today. Through Comtech’s differentiated technologies, services, and expertise, we can help fundamentally change the connectivity landscape across defense and commercial markets. As we move into our next chapter as a company, we are focused on connecting the unconnected and empowering people, governments, and businesses around the world through access to technology.”
