William McCormick
Greg Taylor, senior director of DOD Sales for Comcast Business, recently spoke with ExecutiveBiz regarding his role with the company as well as how recent DISA commercial ethernet gateway wins have helped to leverage the network modernization efforts for their customers and why Comcast presents such a unique play in the federal sector during the latest Executive Spotlight interview.
“Comcast’s high-speed, high-capacity network, which scales rapidly up to 100 Gbps, operates across our private, diverse infrastructure with 185,000+ miles of fiber. Plus, we deliver secure access to cloud and data center resources for seamless connectivity and communications among more than 1.6 million Ethernet-enabled buildings.”
You can read the full interview with Greg Taylor below.
ExecutiveBiz: As the Senior Director DOD Sales for Comcast Government Services, will you please describe your role and some of your background?
Greg Taylor: ”I’ve enjoyed over thirty years managing and building high-performance sales teams supporting the US Department of Defense (DOD) and NATO, including 3 years based in Frankfurt, Germany.
Some of the many DOD programs during my tenure included GIG Europe, Commercializing Tactical Communication in Bosnia, DREN (Defense Research Engineering Network) and NETWORX fair opportunities for IP and Private Lines for DISA.
For the past three years, I’ve been leading the Comcast Government Services’ team supporting the US Department of Defense.”
ExecutiveBiz: Tell us a little about what has transpired since we last connected with Comcast Government Services.
Greg Taylor: ”Comcast Government Services has been hard at work building the infrastructure to support the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) commercial ethernet gateway (CEG) project.
We’ve been making incredible headway on this important initiative – which supports the Agency’s voice, video, and data from the White House to the ‘fox hole.’
DISA has praised our performance to date and we look forward to continuing to expand this partnership as other agencies look to modernize their networks.”
ExecutiveBiz: With some of the recent large DISA CEG wins, how will they be leveraging the network to modernize their networks?
Greg Taylor: ”The FCC has mandated that all Department of Defense (DoD) customers transition their legacy TDM services by 2025.
At the same time, just like the private sector and civilians, DISA agencies are adopting more bandwidth-intensive applications to support everything from professional gamers to point-of-sale purchases at commissaries.
As this deadline approaches, we expect to see DISA’s customers – including the U.S. Navy, Army, and Airforce – prioritize modernizing their networks and upgrading their connectivity from traditional TDM private lines to more reliable, flexible, 10 gigabit Ethernet.
With the infrastructure we’ve built out supporting DISA, Comcast is uniquely positioned with the foundation other DoD agencies need to run bandwidth-intensive applications and accelerate the transformation of their networks to fuel continued innovation.”
ExecutiveBiz: Why is partnering with a multiple service operator, like Comcast, such a unique play for a federal agency?
Greg Taylor: ”First and foremost, for federal agencies, partnering with a multiple system operator (MSO) means all commercial ethernet gateway traffic goes through a cloud access point.
Comcast’s high-speed, high-capacity network, which scales rapidly up to 100 Gbps, operates across our private, diverse infrastructure with 185,000+ miles of fiber. Plus, we deliver secure access to cloud and data center resources for seamless connectivity and communications among more than 1.6 million Ethernet-enabled buildings.
This gives federal agencies diversity of connections, enhanced security and ultimately, more reliability of their mission-critical operations.”
ExecutiveBiz: What sort of investments has Comcast been making in their network?
Greg Taylor: ”Comcast is committed to proactively upgrading, investing in and building out our network. In the past five years (2017 to 2021), Comcast has built 50,000 new route miles of fiber into our network and invested nearly $20 Billion to evolve and grow it.
In 2021 alone, Comcast invested more than $4.2 Billion to strengthen, expand and evolve the network – more than any previous year.
At the same time, we are laser-focused on investing in our clients. We make it our mission to understand our clients’ missions. For DISA, we’ve developed an expansive dedicated support team and personalized collaboration tools to track progress and provide a single source of truth.
The high marks we’ve received from DISA are a testament to that. We look forward to continuing our traction in the federal government space and bringing new, innovative products to help military bases and agencies modernize systems, accelerate innovation, serve citizens and achieve their goals.”
