VIA SATELLITE: Has expanding internationally been difficult for a company the size of iDirect?
COTTON: We’ve done a great job developing the business to this point, last year opening an office and training facility in Dubai. We just opened another technical support center in Asia. Smaller companies going international sometimes have more of a challenge because of the infrastructure and the willingness to commit to a smaller company that’s distant, but I don’t see us having that impediment. In international expansion, one of the challenges is how you develop. You have to put a lot of emphasis on building the local presence.
VIA SATELLITE: What are your expectations for iDirect Government Technologies and the U.S. government market?
COTTON: Our government business is one of our fastest growing sectors. We have 50 percent annual growth in our government sales, and our innovations related to communications on the move has been the key to much of that success. We have delivered some breakthroughs that have provided opportunities that did not exist a year ago. An example is the work we’ve been doing in direct sequence spread spectrum to enable ultra-small antennas on high speed vehicles.
VIA SATELLITE: How do you see iDirect’s business in the maritime market developing?
COTTON: We’ve been there for quite some time, and I think if you look at the business problems we’re trying to solve, this is probably one of the best examples of how we listen to customers and find a way for our technology to give them a competitive advantage. We’ve developed a technology that enables automatic beam switching for the maritime industry. Intelsat is using this innovation to strengthen its global maritime service. We’re working with MTN, advancing our spread spectrum waveform so that it can operate on a yacht and enable MTN to grow its customer base.
VIA SATELLITE: Do you see the growth of IP in the space sector bringing more challengers to your expertise in the area?
COTTON: Our roots are in IP. It has been our stock-in-trade and our competitive advantage. The competition changes and tries to catch up, but we feel our advantage is that wherever IP goes, we believe we’ll be strongly positioned to advance and dominate that market.
VIA SATELLITE: What new technologies do you expect iDirect to introduce?
COTTON: We’re currently rolling out our next-generation DVB-2 platform — Evolution. You’ll see more of Evolution in the next months as we introduce our expanded feature set. We’ll continue to advance our software applications as networks become larger and more complicated, and we’ll continue to push to reduce the total cost of ownership for our operators. We see our products as part of the larger portfolio that our partners will roll out to continue to differentiate themselves and offer customers advanced services.
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