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December 29, 2011

The Year Ahead - with TeleCommunication Systems's Timothy J. Lorello

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC

TMCnet recently asked some of the leading lights in the industry for their thoughts about 2011 and what’s in store for the year ahead.

Here’s what Timothy J. Lorello, senior vice president and CMO of TeleCommunication Systems (News - Alert), had to say.



What was your company's greatest achievement in 2011?

Lorello: In 2011, TeleCommunication Systems Inc. made great strides in solving some of the toughest communications challenges facing the world today. In support of our public safety customers, we were proud to announce the deployment of TCS’s first NG911 solution with the State of Iowa, enabling video, data and text communication between the public and public safety answering points for the first time. These IP-based next-generation solutions will allow public safety agencies to receive text and picture messages as well as live video. These efforts represent a natural extension of our wireless and VoIP E911 solutions that support half of all 911 calls of those types in the U.S. In TCS’s multi-million subscriber navigation business, one of our customers reached the one million-subscriber mark in less than one year, a significant milestone in the growth of navigation services, and a marker for growing customer demand for these types of carrier-branded solutions. As evidence of our leadership in secure satellite communications initiatives, Cisco (News - Alert) selected TCS as the exclusive partner to deliver commercial satellite communication services for the Internet Routing in Space program, the first of its kind solution that enables the convergence of satellite communications and existing information technology infrastructure. In 2011, we announced significant industry-first milestones in testing with the IRIS program.

What are your business's goals for 2012?

Lorello: TCS has been one of those players that enabled government organizations to utilize commercially-available satellite technology for military uses through government-grade encryption technology. The Department of Defense has recently indicated support for use of commercially-available smartphones. We anticipated this direction and can now leverage our long-standing expertise in location-based smartphone applications to support this initiative. In TCS’ commercial business areas, we plan to continue to drive the deployment of more location-based technology, as these solutions are critical to the growth and diversification of the mobile industry. We want to ensure that our operator customers understand the importance of delivering branded-technology solutions to their customers, as opposed to depending on device-based solutions. There is a huge revenue opportunity for operators to deliver branded applications to their customers. Additionally, we look forward to deploying IRIS secure communication services for our commercial and government customers.

If there's one thing you'd like to see happen related to business in the year ahead, what is that one thing?

Lorello: We would like to see individuals and the industry overall become more aware of the importance of security and privacy for mobile devices. With the rapid growth of location-based services and the prevalent use of a wide variety of IP-enabled smartphones, there needs to be increased emphasis on safety, including more industry self-regulation and broader privacy guidelines.

If 2011 was the year of cloud and/or the year of the tablet, 2012 will be the year of…

Lorello: mobile security. Emerging trends such as near field communications, machine-to-machine communications and mobile wallet solutions will drive demand for better, more trusted mobile security. As part of this security trend, device authentication will be augmented by session-based security, ensuring that not just the devices being used to communicate are secure, but also the content of the conversation or data exchange.



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