With demand for satellite services growing, Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. would like to see better performance from its Spacenet Inc. services group. To accomplish this, Gilat has rebuilt Spacenet’s executive team and placed the pressure to perform on the shoulders of CEO Andreas Georghiou.
This is not the first time that Gilat has asked Georghiou, who has more than 20 years of experience in the industry and most recently served as chief commercial officer for SES Americom, to take over Spacenet. “I’ve known them for almost their entire life, going back to the times when I used to compete with GTE Spacenet and then as GE Americom decided to buy them because they had good orbital slots, good satellites and good customers,” he says. “Part of that purchase was the
VSAT business. We streamlined the business and sold it to Gilat. In the process, I got to know a lot of the people running Gilat, and throughout this time, they were asking me if I was interested in working for them in some capacity.”
Georghiou resisted those initial advances, but reconsidered “when the current management of Gilat was brought back to run the business,” and he took the helm at Spacenet in August.
Spacenet posted revenues of $86.1 million in 2005, and Gilat and Georghiou expect to see that number grow as the company rolls out new product offerings and services and the demand for satellite-related services increases. “This is a very interesting period of time for Spacenet and it has to do with where the industry is going and some of the things that are happening,” he says. “The timing worked out just fine, and I thought the challenge was one I was ready to take on — one of running a business that has had its challenges and is now poised to take advantage of some significant opportunities.”
Georghiou spoke with Via Satellite Editor Jason Bates at Spacenet’s McLean, Va. Offices.
Via Satellite : What do you see in the industry that made this the right time to take on this challenge?
Georghiou: I have done just about every job that one would like to have in the satellite operator arena. I have done business development, finance, [information technology], sales and marketing, and operations. It was time to do something else. Along comes this opportunity, and in talking to Amiram Levinberg (Gilat’s chairman and CEO), he related to me some of the products they have on the drawing board. The Cisco development — integrating the
VSAT into the Cisco routers — was an exciting one. With the disaster recovery and business continuity issues making industries take a very serious look at the satellite alternatives, and the government issues with homeland security, and the first responders challenges they have with communications, I though this was an interesting time.
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