Jack Waters was named CEO of XipLink in 2007 when Montreal-based Xiphos, an aerospace company, looked to spin-off its XipLink acceleration division. Waters was tasked with moving the company from traditional TCP acceleration over satellite toward a broader wireless link optimization system that included advanced stream compression techniques, Internet optimization, VPN acceleration and other value-added functions.
XipLink already was focused on the satellite sector due to kernel-based development of the SCPS standard (Space Communications Protocol Specification) and projects for CSA, PolarSat, MDA, GeoEye, iDirect and others, but XipLink wanted to expand within the satellite and adjacent markets. “The idea was to create a new product culture since, prior to 2007, XipLink was primarily project-based, with specific development requirements on a customer by customer basis. Our push since 2007 has been product-line oriented and market focused.”
Waters discusses his efforts to raise XipLink’s profile and further enhance technology and products.
Via Satellite: What changes have you seen in the market?
Waters: The customer demand has moved from basic TCP acceleration to a broader protocol optimization system, resulting in a significant market change over the last three years. Fortunately, we knew that was coming by watching wireline and other related markets. XipLink anticipated the market change with proper price points for satellite, algorithms for unique satellite topologies and the right distribution model for satcom. We focused on VSAT first and then added MSS to our plate about a year ago. Most of our competitors began with wireline customers and are now moving into satellite.
Via Satellite: Is it hard for wireline players to enter the satellite sector?
Waters: Satellite is a much more difficult environment than wire-line. When a satellite system is deployed there is more complexity with logistics, personnel, packaging, training and testing than with other markets. For instance, wire-line optimization products typically have many moving parts, take up several RU’s in rack mount configurations or are just physically too large for a mobile satcom deployment, so XipLink offers handheld optimizers, single board implementations or actually embedding our software into co-located modems, routers or remote terminals. One of the key lessons learned in satcom is that ease of deployment is equally important to the product function, thus XipLink launched our Hub Optimizations (XHO) product a year ago, which allowed operators to deploy an appliance at their teleport or data center without having to put an optimization device in the field.
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