By: Marine News | January, 2010
MarineNews spoke with Robert Landsfield, founder and CEO of Skymira, a provider of turn-key wireless communication systems, about the company’s offerings, its niche in the maritime industry and its investment for the future.
About Skymira
Skymira has been in business since 1998. The company’s initial offering was an email service targeted at the maritime industry and was successful because the service was priced 90% less than Inmarsat C. It’s founder and CEO, Robert Landsfield, has an Unlimited Master License and spent nearly a decade sailing U.S. flagged chemical tankers.
How has the current economic situation affected your business?
Skymira’s business is thriving as indicated by our being ranked 265th on the Inc5000’s 2009 list of fastest growing private companies in the U.S. Our products and services enable our customers to scale their business when times are good and reduce operating expenses when times demand cost savings to maintain profit margins.
What sets Skymira apart in the maritime niche?
In addition to being a service provider for Inmarsat, Iridium, VSAT, SkyTerra and cellular services, Skymira TailorFit solutions meet the customer’s exact business requirements rather than the traditional model of attempting to pigeon hole those requirements into canned applications. For example, our electronic forms service enables companies to transform their existing paper-based forms into electronic replicas which streamlines the flow of information between the vessel and company operations. The forms service can also be used to add forms when regulations change in the industry. The service enables companies to easily meet EPA’s Vessel General Permit regulations for logging and maintaining discharge and other required information.
What has been the biggest challenge in getting your product/service on vessels?
As with most companies, our biggest challenge is getting our foot in the door. Once we accomplish that however, companies very quickly see the value in our TailorFit solutions and use them to continually capture savings … savings which flow directly to the bottom line.
How is Skymira investing today to ensure its future?
Skymira continually enhances our TailorFit solutions to enable our customers to cost-effectively utilize next generation services. For example, Skymira has recently released IP Controls which enable companies to take advantage of Inmarsat’s Fleet Broadband Background IP service while providing management with the tools necessary to guard against run-away satellite bills. We have an enhancement to IP Controls in development that will automatically monitor the Background IP connectivity and automatically reestablish the connection if it’s lost.
What are the biggest challenges to your profitability in terms of regulation and compliance?
Regulations and compliance generally do not adversely impact our business but rather provide Skymira with opportunities to assist our customers in cost effectively complying with government regulations.
What about in terms of competition?
Skymira’s business model goes well beyond simply providing hardware and airtime as a service provider. We derive the majority of our revenue from our value-added TailorFit Solutions. As long as we listen to our customers’ business requirements and provide cost effective solutions to meet those requirements, Skymira will continue to be one of the fastest growing private companies in the U.S.
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