Exclusive Interview With The Executive VP Of Corporate Affairs: Concurrent Computer Corporation (CCUR) - Kirk L. Somers, Esq.
June 13, 2012 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published Business and Application Software Report offering a timely review of the sector. This Special Report contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. Please find an excerpt below.
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Kirk L. Somers, Esq., Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Concurrent Computer Corporation, joined the company in 2001 as General Counsel, and subsequently became Secretary for the company. In 2005, he added investor relations to his responsibilities, and in 2010 he took over human resources. Mr. Somers has more than 20 years of experience in a myriad of legal capacities, from litigation to intellectual property to securities. Before joining Concurrent, he was the Assistant General Counsel for Melita International Inc., where he was responsible for board matters, SEC reporting, corporate development, and enforcement of the company's intellectual property portfolio and commercial contracts. He led the publicly traded company through several acquisitions culminating in the sale of the company to divine inc. in October 2001. Before his work at Melita International, Mr. Somers was a Partner in the Ohio law firm of Marshall & Melhorn, LLC, practicing in the area of litigation. His early experience also included serving as a Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Air Force, during which time he tried more than 40 cases. Mr. Somers earned a B.A. in physics from Cornell University and his law degree from the Ohio State College of Law. He is a member of the U.S. patent bar.
TWST: Please give us a background profile on Concurrent Computer Corporation and share with us the company's business.
Mr. Somers: Concurrent is a technology company that was founded more than 45 years ago. Our roots are in high-end, high-speed, data-intensive applications known as real time computing. We transformed that business into video on demand, and launched the very first commercially deployed video on demand system with Time Warner in Hawaii in 1999.Since then, we have continued to transform the business, adding a media data business that tracks video viewing, and now expanding our video-delivery products from a TV solution to one that serves different screens, like the cell phone, tablet and PC. We're a technology company with a rich history, but today our primary focus is video.
TWST: What is the estimated size and growth potential in the markets Concurrent Computer serves?
Mr. Somers: The video market is growing at a rapid pace. Forty billion videos were viewed online in January of 2012. There are 55 million households with connections to video on demand in the U.S., and video on demand has grown 12.8% year over year to 8.8 billion transactions in 2011.The market size is reflective of video consumption, and video consumption continues to grow. Consumers continue to watch more and more videos on their television, but now they're adding the additional devices such as the PC, the tablet and the mobile device to continue to expand that market.
TWST: Concurrent supplies customers in the cable, telecom, wireless, Web advertising and content industries with a variety of solutions. What's changing about who the company's customers are and their needs, and how do you address those changes, as far as technology in the pace of innovation?
Mr. Somers: The biggest change that we're seeing with our traditional video customers is the move to more and more content to compete with the over-the-top providers such as Netflix. Our customers are focused on providing deeper and deeper content libraries, in addition to providing more content available immediately for what we call network DVR. And they want to take the infrastructure they have for delivering pay video today and use that infrastructure to deliver pay video to different devices.From a technology standpoint, our customers are moving from traditional delivery methods to IP-based delivery. It's a more economical delivery method and has really taken off in the industry. Our customers are moving to IP delivery and building content delivery network architectures, which enables greatly expanded content on a variety of screens.
TWST: Would you explain Concurrent Computer's MediaHawk VX, and why it is important?
Mr. Somers: MediaHawk VX, our core offering, is the foundational software platform that delivers video to any device. That platform has evolved with each new technology requirement. As we're talking about more and more content, MediaHawk VX is able to stream more and more content to the different devices through a software upgrade.Surrounding MediaHawk, we have additional software, like our eFactor application, which is a software-development kit that sits on top of any platform or infrastructure and takes one type of video in, say MPEG-4, for example, and changes or repackages that content so it can be delivered to different devices. We can support content formats from Apple, Adobe or Microsoft. eFactor can dynamically change the initial content format so you can send streams to the different devices.
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