Harris Stratex becomes Aviat Networks

Three years after the merger of Harris Microwave and Stratex Networks, the resulting company has evolved its business model to become more than just a specialized vendor of IP radio backhaul products, and to reflect that evolution, Harris Stratex today changed its name. The company will now be called Aviat Networks and trade under the new NASDAQ ticker symbol AVNW.

CEO Harald Braun said that the company was required to look for a new name after Harris Corporation divested its controlling stake in the company last May, selling it to other shareholders. But the legal requirements aside, Braun said that the company needed a new identity to reflect its changing role in the market. While the new Aviat’s bread-and-butter business is still in IP radios, under Braun’s watch the company has broadly expanded its portfolio, acquiring or developing the access and core elements at either end of its primary backhaul products. Harris and Stratex, while very venerable names in the backhaul field, no longer adequately expressed the scope of Aviat’s business, Braun said.

“I firmly believe that we could create a new identity, and it starts with a name,” Braun said. “Even had we been under no legal obligation, I still would have wanted to change it.”

The former networks president of Siemens Communications, Braun left the newly formed Nokia Siemens (NYSE:NOK, NYSE:SI) to take over the reins of Harris Stratex in 2008, and immediately began transforming the company. Harris Stratex bought WiMax base station vendor Telsima in order to gain an access component, and then Braun set his development team on the task of developing an access service network (ASN) gateway and network management system software. Last August, it revealed a new facet to business, network outsourcing, announcing it had won a deal with rural WiMax operator Open Range Communications to take over the operations of its new wireless residential broadband network.

“We’ve repositioned this company from a one-trick pony--from a specialized IP radio company--to a next-generation IP solutions company,” Braun said. His goal is to make Aviat an end-to-end networks provider for small and medium sized operator throughout the developed and developing world, while remaining a supplier of specialized elements to the big carriers.

So far, Aviat has shown some substantial progress toward that goal: along with the Open Range deal, its Telsima unit has landed major contracts with operators in India and beginning to penetrate the southeast Asian and African regions. The big end-to-end solutions deal, however, hasn’t yet emerged—at least not publically. Braun said that Aviat will be able to reveal more progress shortly, possibly as early as Q1 earnings call in February.