MWC: Aviat goes back to its roots

The Aviat Networks (NASDAQ:AVNW) that shows up at Mobile World Congress next week will be very different from the Aviat of last year, though it may it look an awful lot like Harris Stratex of old. Under returning CEO Chuck Kissner, Aviat is going back to its roots. Kissner is pushing the vendor’s new wireless access and core product tracks—started by former CEO Harald Braun—to the sidelines so Aviat can focus on what it’s always been good at, microwave backhaul.

In Barcelona next week, Aviat won’t be showing off new WiMax base stations or access service network (ASN) gateways. Instead, it’s debuting a rejuvenated microwave product line led by a new radio in its venerable Eclipse portfolio. The access and core products will still be there, but Kissner said Aviat’s primary focus has shifted to improving on its core radio products in effort regain lost market share.

In a recent interview with Connected Planet, Kissner minced no words when he talked about the direction of the company under Braun—he wasn’t pleased. After leaving his high-profile job as president of communications networks at Siemens (NYSE:SI), Braun took over Harris Stratex two years after Stratex and Harris merged, leading the two companies integration and its name change, but also launching the company into several new business areas. Aviat acquired WiMax vendor Telsima, which had a huge contract with India’s BSNL under its belt, and set the company on a development tracks for core network gateways and network management systems.

Braun’s goal was to make Aviat into much more than a microwave backhaul vendor, but according to Kissner the problem was the company forgot it backhaul was still it’s primary business while it pursued all of these new strategies. “The original concept was to take our strength and backhaul and build from it, but the problem was that you had to maintain our strength in backhaul to do it,” Kissner said. “We took our eyes off the ball.”

Aviat fell from its number 1 spot in the crowded microwave market, losing share not just to its traditional competitors Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), but newly emergent powerhouses like Huawei. According to an Infonetics report last October, Ericsson was the leader in microwave equipment sales, followed closely by Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks (NYSE:NOK, NYSE:SI) and NEC. Aviat didn’t even make the list. Competition for microwave sales is tight, though. Infonetics estimates that no single vendor even reaches 20% in market share.

Throughout that market turbulence, Aviat was still dealing with the restructuring related to the merger of the former Harris Microwave and Stratex Networks. Kissner, who was chairman of Aviat at the time, said he was increasingly frustrated with how long the reorganization was taking. “There was a very specific integration plan,” he said. “You have to get these things done quickly, and we were running way behind.”

Kissner credited Braun with having a grand vision for the company that might well have worked under different circumstances, but in the midst of a recession and an overdue integration of two corporate cultures, a grand vision was not something Aviat was prepared to embrace at the time. “I think we were just trying to do too many things,” he said.

That said, Aviat isn’t canning Braun’s new products. Kissner said Aviat will continue to support its existing customer base, especially BSNL, which is rolling out a massive rural and urban network throughout India, but it will try to refocus those divisions’ future development efforts on improving the microwave portfolio. Considering the financial state of WiMax operators, aggressively pursuing new WiMax contracts makes little sense anyway, Kissner said.

Aviat’s microwave product development is now focusing on increasing radio performance while driving cost. In recent years, Aviat’s products remained some of the more expensive gear in the industry, even while its innovation was slowing down, Kissner said. Aviat hopes to correct that problem with an overhaul of Eclipse and a new outdoor IP radio called the WTM 3000, which will make its first appearance next week in Barcelona. The radio combines an Ethernet router/switch with a radio unit, obviating the need for separate indoor and outdoor units, while still supporting full networking features such as quality of service and advanced radio functions, such as adaptive modulation. Aviat said the radio is targeted at new small-footprint long-term evolution (LTE) and WiMax deployments. New compact base station designs are allowing operators to stick cells on the sides of buildings and places other than the tower, where there’s often no room for extraneous equipment.

Aviat will also unveil at the show its latest Eclipse radio, the IDU GE3, a compact indoor unit designed to feed high-capacity LTE and WiMax sites with up to 400 Mb/s of backhaul capacity.