Mark DeVol, Vice President of Federal at Cradlepoint, part of Ericsson, discusses the importance of wireless technology in enhancing battlefield communications for the SOF community on Innovation in Government from SOF Week. Presented by Cradlepoint, part of Ericsson and Carahsoft
Transcript
Technology and innovation are familiar concepts to the soft community. Mark Duvall is vice president of Federal at Cradle Point. He says he's not surprised to see the level of innovation in the soft community. I think the soft community has long been known as the tip of the spear, right, when it comes to the men and women that are out there, you know, doing the missions that nobody else wants to do. But I think you could also equate that to how they utilize technology because they are always the ones, like, first to deploy something new. Or if it's not well utilized already in the commercial space or even in the military, they don't have any problem of, of taking that burden on and trying to develop it into something that they can utilize out there. You know, when they're doing their missions and, and hoping the war fighters collect information, which is truly the key, I think to, you know. Being successful out there on the battlefield, what's your sense of what is driving their demand signals and how is technology meeting those demand signals in your view, Mark? So I think when you just look at the world, you know, and the way we're going, we have conflicts in Europe, potential conflicts coming in, in the South Pacific region. And the, the soft community has always been the 1st to respond. So I think they're looking at different technologies like ours with cellular and, and doing different things with a lot of wireless technologies. Because they don't want to just rely on one specific technology or one type of communications method, right? That's why they have pace. So being able to do more than just the primary is key to being able to have resiliency when it comes to the communications out there in the battlefield. You used one word that I was about to ping you on and the other is security. Tying resiliency and security together, I imagine is going to be critical for those people at the tip of the spear that you referenced. Extremely critical. That's why to our company that has. Was primarily founded really with wireless routers and adapters. Has now been acquired by a larger company, Ericsson, who's the leader really when it comes to cellular infrastructure. So we've been taking what we've done, incorporating with what they do and try to have a full end to end solution, not just from the connectivity, but also from the security standpoint. So wireless is different than a wire line connection. So how do you make sure you're optimizing that wireless connection in a way that doesn't disrupt, you know, their operations? And so that's what we're seeing, what our special operators telling you that they need. And how is that evolving, changing over time. They need devices like what we provide out there in the battlefield that can seamlessly pull other types of technologies in. So not just cellular, but Wi-Fi, you know, sitcom, you know, star Shield is obviously making its name and, and a lot of this, you know, community as well. And it really it comes down to having connectivity anywhere in the world when they need it. O one of the greatest validations I've had since being at this company is I had someone from the the soft community Assoc walk up to us and I won't use the word, but he said your stuff just saved our our butts on a mission when we had no other calms available. What do partnerships look like in your view in this community? A lot of discussion here about industry, government partnerships, a lot of discussion about international partnerships and so on. What does a good partnership look like in that view? Well, good partnership is always. One that's give and take. I think we, we've seen a lot and somebody myself who's been on the, the uniform side of things, we sometimes have a little bit of distrust with industry or, or others when reality is folks like myself, you know, go into this field because we know we can do more good than we did when we were in uniform in many ways. And I think when people start to see we truly are here because we want to help. I was in the Navy and I got out 20 some odd years ago. I commissioned a ship in 95. I can guarantee I can go on that ship and it still got technology from when that time that ship was built. And you hate to see that when you see all the technology advancing. And so us and and working with them in a collaborative environment, not one that's always about the sale, but how do we first build the solution and then we can talk about how that gets wrapped in into a much larger program or a field it solution.To view or add a comment, sign in
