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Jim Barthold
As Com21's new president - and CEO-in-waiting - Craig Soderquist needs running shoes to keep up with his company's fast-paced growth.
Soderquist took over presidential responsibilities from Peter Fenner this month and will assume the CEO title Jan. 1, when Fenner retires.
"There are a number of activities going on (at Com21), anything from the cable modem itself to headend equipment to voice capability," Soderquist says. "Companies like Com21 have a number of choices to make to figure out how to stay focused and go after the market in the way that they can succeed."
Money-wise, Com21 could already be taking a victory lap. The company shipped its first products in 1996 and has grown to a $200 million a year run-rate business.
"Now we're focusing on a couple other things, specifically improving the product margin that we get out of the products we ship and focusing on the overall road to profitability," he says.
To do this, Com21 must evolve a niche - or niches - in a marketplace that has moved beyond residential cable modems to commercial units that guarantee levels of quality and speed to voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) to modems in the retail marketplace.
That sets Soderquist's goal "to diversify our product line into more infrastructure products," he says. "We're working on strategy now to continue to develop the voice products and other initiatives for things that would go into the headend for both voice and data space."
Then there's the international element. More than half of Com21's business has come internationally, using proprietary asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology. While the company pursues DOCSIS standards both domestically and abroad, its embedded base gives it a leg up, Soderquist says.
"We have a very good international footprint with systems in place that cover 16 million homes throughout the world," Soderquist says. "We're very excited about our international business."
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