Interview - Peter Harrison, Exelis C4i

Exelis’s new Melbourne headquarters and R&D facility will boost its local division’s share of the international defence comms market.

Following the acquisition of local business C4i by Exelis at the beginning of last year, the company recently announced the opening of its new Asia-Pacific headquarters at its St Kilda Road site in Melbourne. The HQ also houses an upgraded and expanded R&D, testing and systems integration facility with capacity for 120 staff.

US-based Exelis has a 50-year history of providing solutions to the defence, aerospace and ICT industries. Its traditional focus has been in communications and information systems, air traffic management solutions, sensors, positioning and navigation, and image processing and distribution. The company sees growth in the areas of critical networks, ISR and analytics, and electronic warfare.

“The decision to establish our Asia-Pacific headquarters in Melbourne was heavily influenced by the region’s robust engineering talent, growing market opportunities and the unwavering support from the Victorian Government,” said Exelis CEO and President David Melcher in a press release. “Paired with our more than 40 years of history serving the Australian market, this expansion represents our company’s continued commitment to growing our presence in the Asia-Pacific region and our focus on international expansion.”

David Hodgett, Victorian Minister for Major Projects, Manufacturing and Ports; Peter Harrison, Managing Director, Exelis Australia; and Chris Tucker, VP International Business Development, Exelis, at the opening of the new Exelis headquarters in Melbourne.

“Exelis’s decision to establish its headquarters here is yet another example of Victoria’s attractiveness as a destination of choice for North American companies seeking an Australian base to grow their businesses in the Asia-Pacific region,” said David Hodgett, the Victorian Government’s Minister for Major Projects and the Minister for Manufacturing.

To learn more about the new facility and the direction in which Exelis is moving locally and regionally, we spoke with Peter Harrison, Managing Director of Exelis C4i.

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Tell us about the history of C4i.

C4i is an Australian company; it’s 25 years old. It has focused on building communications solutions for mission-critical environments. It started with a domestic base and then grew to include international, to the point where 50% of our revenues are derived from export.

Traditionally we’ve worked in the defence environment, but have transitioned into supporting both defence and more commercial applications - taking that mission-critical, hardened technology and moving it into other mission-critical environments. That initially lent itself to public safety and then airports, and more recently, resources, LNG plants and so on.

What is the company called now?

So that we’re able to accurately represent the broader Exelis divisions without confusing the market, we’re branding ourselves as Exelis, and our division is C4i.

Does C4i manufacture its own equipment or does it consolidate off-the-shelf gear?

We design and manufacture all of our technology here in Melbourne. We have a large engineering team here comprising software, systems and electronics engineers. We design our mission-critical communications product, which comprises predominantly software nowadays - probably 90% of the product is software. We still design proprietary circuit board hardware which forms part of our solutions, which we manufacture locally here in Melbourne. We really provide an interoperable solution for that mission-critical communications environment, with a lot of intelligent edge devices that convert to open standards IP and then allow us to build different types of solutions.

Software has really changed everything, hasn’t it?

The benefit for us - because we’ve been in this business for 25 years, when there was a much greater hardware component - is taking the lessons learned from that hardware environment and the discipline from those solutions [and translating them] into software solutions. There are lots of different software solutions out there, but [we see our strength] in being cognisant of the mission-critical environment and the characteristics that are expected in that environment - which used to be delivered by hardware and are now predominantly software.

What does the concept of interoperability mean to you?

We don’t make RF products, we interface to them. So interoperability for us is the ability for any communications asset to seamlessly operate in a single environment with any other communications assets. This could be a VHF/UHF radio device, a phone, a landline, analog or GSM or 3G, 4G, a satellite communications link, and obviously TETRA, P25 and the myriad manufacturers of that equipment.

We provide the ‘smarts’ that converts whatever the native format is into that IP world, and then we provide the transport mechanism to allow you to do whatever you need to do in your mission-critical environment, whether it be situation management from a control room or local management and response in a deployed environment.

Was the defence world way ahead of everybody else on this?

Defence traditionally has integrated telephony and radio assets - that was just the expectation [the sector had]. So air defence operators have had that capability for a long period of time. In other environments they tended to have two systems instead of one integrated solution, but nowadays the latter is very common - both the commercial and the defence world have similar integrated solutions, which is ideal for a business like ours with a technology designed specifically to address both.

Tell us about the acquisition of C4i by Exelis

Exelis acquired C4i in January 2013. They had a very strong interest in our technology and where it could be applied. We were working with Exelis on a number of programs in different markets, and Exelis corporately is very interested in diversifying out of its traditional defence market, which is predominantly the US defence market. So they saw an opportunity and still do - this is an active strategy [for Exelis to move] beyond just us and into more international markets and to diversify some of their business beyond just department of defence work.

With Exelis being onboard, do you expect your export work will grow?

There are two things we see out of the new Exelis relationship. One is that we will have the opportunity to pursue some of the larger programs that we perhaps didn’t have the credentials or even the capacity to pursue, through reach-back into either our parent company or ability to grow through our new facility here. We also have access to a larger international engineering footprint through Exelis with their operations in different parts of the world, and obviously a very large footprint in the United States.

And then the second angle to our business, which is not so much in the export side, is providing the Asia-Pacific region support and execution in this part of the world for other Exelis technologies. We’re looking at how we can assist their other portfolio of technologies in this region.

How did the Melbourne expansion come about?

There were two reasons. One part is to strengthen our footprint in the region and show real commitment to the customer base in this part of the world - Exelis is serious about establishing itself here with an Asia-Pacific headquarters, which means having the capacity and capabilities to do that justice. This ranges from good business developments skills, to project management, engineering talent, and then through-life support - dealing with all of the facets of type of programs that we would traditionally execute, and that Exelis would execute, and being able to manage and operate them from this facility.

We also have an active R&D centre here in Melbourne; we always have remained active in product development. Exelis from the United States had an opportunity to see some of that technology, which is why they bought us. They’re excited about it. They see further growth potential for some of the R&D initiatives we had underway, and really encouraged us to look at how we could accelerate that. So not only is there the new facility, there’s also funding to accelerate some of the R&D work that’s already in progress, which is predominantly software-based engineering.

Will your new facility be based at your present site, or will it be located elsewhere?

It’s here [in St Kilda Road]. We’ve actually signed a lease on a new facility, completed fit-out and we’ve just moved in in the last two weeks. The facility will support doubling our current head count; we’re currently just shy of 60 staff. And that’s certainly what the Victorian Government’s expectation is, that we would be looking at doubling our head count here.

Finally, what support has the Victorian Government provided?

It is financial support tied to us meeting a number of criteria. Their real focus is on employment in the state, and we’re a professional business that attracts intellectual property generation and export sales. So there are a number of areas of interest to the Victorian Government.