After the retirement of Tom Dickinson, CEO VT Miltope earlier this year, we asked the company about the new President and CEO, Julie Briggs and thought our readers might like to know a little more about the new president and hear her views on VT Miltope’s place in the IFEC industry. From a personal perspective, Julie has a strong background in rugged computer systems and products. Having previously worked for RCA/GE and BAE, her aerospace and defense experience includes program management, marketing, and business development. Prior to becoming CEO, Julie served as VP of Rugged Systems Program Development at VT Miltope for 9 years. Rugged Systems is the largest core business at Miltope. Bob Guidetti, VP Commercial Products told IFExpress that as a result of Julie’s business development background, she has a strong customer oriented focus. “Customers and their needs will drive VT Miltope’s product development and program participation in its core businesses,” he said. To echo the sentiment, Julie told IFExpress: “VT Miltope is focused on providing our customers and end users in the federal and commercial aviation market with rugged, affordable computing and networking equipment that meets the requirements of the intended applications and environments. We do 100 percent environmental stress screening on all of our products prior to shipment to enhance our field reliability. VT Miltope ensures that the value of our systems are enhanced by responsive customer and product support.”

We asked her how she see’s the impact of recent technological advances and the role of VT Miltope in our industry in the near term, and over the next five years: “VT Miltope has been a leading manufacturer of rugged computer, server/mass storage and network equipment solutions for military, industrial, and commercial aviation applications that call for reliable performance under demanding environmental conditions for over 30 years. In my opinion, both markets require products that have been ruggedized to the appropriate industry standards. My team will continue to develop products that are lower in weight and size, use less power, provide the latest technology, are competitively priced, and most importantly offer superior reliability. Watch us grow our capabilities to meet these expectations from our customers in both markets as well as develop improved business processes, systems, and procedures to provide better overall service and support to our customers. After all, support is key to success in the IFE industry!”

IFExpress queried Ms. Briggs about the “secret sauce” that has made VT Miltope’s products so successful and how she sees the product mix evolving: “In general, VT Miltope strives to sustain long term profitability through customer loyalty by meeting or exceeding our customer’s expectations so that those customers return to VT Miltope for future product needs, as noted earlier. More specific to the aviation market, as VT Miltope grows its aviation business, we will need to provide the worldwide services that meet the expectations of the global aviation customer base. We don’t need to organically grow these capabilities, instead we can leverage those capabilities that already exist within the overall ST Engineering family for product support, maintenance, repair, logistics, and in some cases product development. From a product mix point of view, Bob and his team plan to offer aviation customer solutions that include a family of VT Miltope hardware and software network products. This family of products can then be used as building blocks to support aviation systems and subsystems. Based on customer inputs and over the next several years, we will increase our offerings to include integrated solutions in addition to our products so that our customers can minimize the level of integration and test required at the systems level. System integration and testing are the keys here!”

On the technology front, IFExpress asked Ms. Briggs what new connectivity & entertainment products/technologies are on the horizon: “With the growth of wireless IFEC systems, VT Miltope’s wireless products have become widely adopted as the preferred solution for delivering wireless connectivity to passengers and flight crew. VT Miltope’s servers have also been adopted as the platform for running telephony services as well as applications providing Internet and email services to passengers. We plan to continue to support those applications with our current and planned servers, as well as, other enhanced and new products when building the network backbone required to support the future connectivity and entertainment systems. We have some exciting new product technologies that you will hear about in the near future!”

Naturally, this led to the next line of questioning and IFExpress wondered if there were any synergies between the commercial and military businesses? Furthermore, how would the product line be impacted? “VT Miltope’s entire product line leverages commercial off-the-shelf computer and network technologies. For both federal and commercial aviation, these products require ruggedization to industry standards that in many respects are somewhat similar,” noted Ms. Briggs. “So the core technologies of VT Miltope are in those areas that serve both markets. As to product impact, and generally speaking, the functionality of the servers, mass storage units, access points, and printers supporting our federal customers is very similar to the functionality of those products supporting our commercial aviation customers. However, the packaging and the standards are specific to the respective sectors. It would not be difficult to repackage and re-certify our full line of ruggedized computers currently used by federal customers on military aircraft and flight lines – handhelds, tablets, clamshell PC’s, and more—to meet the needs and standards of commercial aviation customers.”

From a technology trend point of view, we pressed for more specifics about trends in connectivity, entertainment and systems. Julie told IFExpress: “The airlines are demanding more reliable, lower weight, lower power, price competitive products that provide the latest future proof technology. By that I mean the processors, RAM, storage capacities, data busses, and I/O must be upgradable or designed initially to support future applications that they may have in 5 to 10 years. Commercial aircraft operators, much the same as military aircraft operators, don’t want to be upgrading hardware every couple of years to support new software applications and new services aloft.”

With all this emphasis on technology, IFExpress asked Julie how the company plans to educate their market on their broad product line and the various applications and system solutions that are available, and she said: “We provide both markets with technical marketing information to articulate how our skill sets translate into reliable, cost effective solutions. Further we leverage our website with examples of systems to better illustrate how our products can be used as the building blocks. We have some new approaches to that challenge and I will have have more to say on that later.”

Lastly, Ms Briggs said to IFExpress: “I look forward to meeting more of our present customers – and future ones too. Inflight entertainment is an exciting industry and VT Miltope is in the business of improving it and helping our customers deliver on their entertainment and communication promises!”