Interview with Tomas Sorensen Boye

What market observations relevant to you would you highlight from the past 60-90 days:

Obviously, the huge component shortage is continuing to be a major issue to fight for everyone in our industry. It does not benefit anyone! Some take the strategy of increasing their pricing, and that might short term have a good impact, but how will their customer react after the shortage? From manufactures to component suppliers, to the factories, everyone can deliver less than usual, and are therefore considering both their price strategy and also how to allocate the little volume they have. Some suppliers that were fighting for customers before the shortage, sees this as an opportunity to enter the market and win shares, and as a result many development houses and manufactures like our self, are redesigning the products to fit the components that we can get supply on. This means that resources are being used to do redesigns, and those resources can therefore not be used for innovation as they otherwise would. We are focusing on get through the shortage as good as we can, while maintaining our focus on designing the next generation networking solutions.

The other interesting observation as we dig deeper and deeper into the networking management and support tools that are available for ISPs today, is how poor these really are. We are talking about the tools and the data that is used when we as consumers call in to get help with a concrete problem we are experiencing, but also the operational tools ISPs use for everything like firmware management, connection management, CRM etc. It is almost as bad as if we asked a doctor to diagnose and safe a patient, without having access to blood samples, scans and while being blindfolded. I knew it was not good, which is why our Orchestrator platform was developed in the first place, but I am surprised on how bad the reality has been for ISP’s, their operation and support teams and of course in the end for the consumer. This really gives appetite on getting our Orchestrator modules out and deployed. And I am 100% sure that the result will be fewer and shorter calls to support, less returns and happier end users.

What have been your primary focus in the last period?

I am not personally directly involved in the component’s shortage challenges, but I am affected by it. So of course, some time has and will continue to be spend on solutions for ensuring our customers continue to get deliveries to fulfill their needs. 

My main focus is on our Orchestration platform, and getting the current modules deployed, but also very interesting in getting the new and secret modules done. We have some brilliant features in the pipeline, that I can’t wait to see being launched. As we come up with ideas and develop, we are equally focusing on how we can affect the consumer and the ISPs and its employees. Benefits can be economically, with a combination and savings and added revenue streams for the ISPs, but I am personally also very focused on how we can affect the employee satisfaction by making life easier for support employees around the world.

Of course, this period also means vacation for both me, our employees and our customers. I can see energy increasing after a vacation, maybe not in the first week coming back, but in the weeks and months following especially the summer vacation.

What will be your primary focus in the coming 60-90 days?

First of all, I can’t wait to actually get out face to face and meet with people. During the last 1,5 years the pandemic have highly affected our interaction with people. So now when the majority are vaccinated, I plan to get out and meet people. I have a trip planned to visit some of our US customers in September and I am also planning to travel to Amsterdam for the Broadband World Forum event in October. I will also be using every chance I get to visit current and potential customers.

And then I will be spending a lot of time on being part of the volume deployment of our Orchestrator Platform. 

Tomas Sørensen

CEO, Europe, and CCO

Tomas Sorensen is CEO Europe and Chief Commercial Officer of AXON Networks, with a proven track record in commercial leadership roles for the past 26 years. He was previously with NCC Group and led the commercial team in Europe before accepting a position as the CEO of NCC Group Europe. Prior to joining NCC, Sorensen was with Greenwave Systems as one of its first employees. Before joining Greenwave, he led the commercial team at KiSS Technology. In 2005, KiSS was acquired by Cisco Systems, and from 2005 to 2010, Sorensen was part of the team that owned the go-to-market strategy and execution for Cisco’s advanced consumer electronics. Sorensen has a high focus in AXON on understanding the real pain points for both the service operators and their end customers, and ensuring AXON deliver high value specifically towards those needs.