Enezia's Fitzell Explains Company's Move Into Commercial Market

Recently at New York’s Interop (News - Alert) 2010, TMC’s CEO Rich Tehrani had a chance to interview Michael Fitzell, vice president of engineering for Ezenia, which works in secure messaging and information sharing.

He explained how many of the same issues of data security and integrity in the government and defense industry, the intelligence community and the Department of Defense specifically --one of its main clients -- can actually transfer pretty well into the commercial space. Much of the reason for the company being at Interop, actually, he said, was to introduce their product, geared primarily for the government, to a commercial market.

A couple months ago, TMC (News - Alert) had the news that Ezenia, which sells real-time situation awareness, command and control products for corporate and government networks, appointed Peter Janke as president, vice chairman of the board, and chief operating officer, adding these responsibilities to his board seat.

Janke has more than 40 years of senior leadership experience in the information technology industry and was most recently the chief operating officer of Raytheon's (News - Alert) Information Systems organization.

"With the recent launch of our MxM secure collaboration product, the time is right to bring aboard a seasoned leader who can help bring our products into the government and commercial markets on an accelerated schedule," said Khoa Nguyen, chairman of the board.

Addressing why Enezia chose to branch out into commercial, Fitzell smiled and said besides the fact that “it’s a larger market out here,” there were a number of other issues and considerations that made it a smart move at this time. “What we saw was that there were a lot of regulations coming out, with encryptions and security, and that’s in our DNA. That’s how we think. That’s a natural for us.” Dealing intuitively with hacking and other security concerns is second nature for them as well.