Software-defined wide area networking, or SD-WAN, and other technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping the future of communications. In this Executive Spotlight interview, we spoke with Sachin Patel, vice president of government services strategy and operations at Comcast Business, to learn more about the impact of SD-WAN on public sector communications, industry trends and Comcast’s growth strategy.
Patel joined Comcast in April 2024 after two decades with another telecom provider. Read below for his full interview.
GovCon Wire: Sachin, tell me about your background and what brought you to Comcast.
Sachin Patel: I’ve been in the telecom industry for over 20 years, and I have a lot of experience supporting the public sector, predominantly in the federal space. I’ve also had the pleasure of working on the enterprise side of the house. I’m familiar with both commercial enterprise and public sector/federal offerings and how these respective worlds work. I’ve had experiences in a variety of different roles ranging from service management and customer advocacy to program management, pre and post-sales, engineering, contracts and lifecycle management, service delivery, service assurance and other roles that revolve around technology. I’ve worked on product development, product federalization, and vendor management and governance. It’s been a good journey with a broad range of experience in this segment.
With all that said, coming to Comcast was the perfect opportunity for me. Comcast Government Services is still actively building upon its existing work in the space, so it seemed like the right fit given my public sector/federal expertise and knowledge to help the team continue to grow and succeed in the marketplace. There’s an appeal to being in an environment where I can help shape and drive policy improvements. And, I have found that the folks at Comcast have a lot of passion and drive to continue to support the segment and see the mission succeed.
GovCon Wire: What do you hope to accomplish in your new role?
Patel: Comcast Government Services is off to a fabulous start. They have a solid foundation that’s ready to build upon. The team has done tremendous work over the last five or so years establishing this channel. I’m here to help continue to position this channel for success and growth in the future. I want to bring my industry experience and best practices forward to drive additional enhancements and optimize the way that we perform our delivery and operations across the board. I’ll be focusing on things like accelerating the quote-to-cash process, helping to grow our portfolio and the service offerings and continuing to bring additional value to clients with a simplified and reliable customer experience. At the end of the day, my goal is to expand the customer experience, along with their satisfaction and have sustained, long-term and durable revenue growth for this channel.
GovCon Wire: Where are you seeing opportunities for expansion in Comcast’s portfolio? What new capabilities or markets are you eyeing?
Patel: In regards to portfolio growth, Comcast has done a tremendous job developing world-class products and innovation within the realm of broadband, WiFi, mobility, video services and commercial services. Now, we want to take the best of what the corporation has done and bring forward the federalized versions of those capabilities. It all starts with a reliable and robust network that has capabilities to deliver global services.
Leveraging everything that we do well and providing that as service offerings to our government customers is going to be key to our success. Take, for example, high-speed connectivity. We provide connectivity up to 100 gigabytes, so we’re focusing on continuing to expand the capability and provide that high-speed connectivity to our government customers. We’re also looking at managed network services, including the enablement of our best-in-class enterprise-grade and FISMA compliant SD-WAN solution for our federal agencies.
SD-WAN is something that is high on the radar for pretty much all service providers. There’s a huge appetite for government agencies to migrate towards SD-WAN. There’s a number of benefits that are seen from leveraging that technology, including enhanced security, data encryption, ease of administration and being able to have customized policies on a per agency basis to improve application performance — and, at the end of the day, optimize bandwidth and manage both CapEx and OpEx. It’s definitely a space that’s primed for growth.
A lot of agencies have been focused on transitioning to the latest and greatest contract vehicles, and then focusing on modernization. We are heavily focused on modernizing and keeping pace with government needs to allow the government to provide the required services to our citizens. We’re focused on keeping pace with relevant products and services, and delivering reliable high quality performance. That’s where we’re looking to go with everything that we do.
We’re also looking at cybersecurity, hosting services and ensuring what we’re doing is capable of operating with cloud environments. It’s really about multi-product solutions and making it easy for the government to do business with a single entity to simplify their procurement processes, streamline billing and increase across-the-board visibility. Comcast is a company that can provide a variety of different products and services, and we’re able to fine-tune and enhance them to make sure they’re operating to the best of their capabilities for the agency. We’re able to really hone in on providing multi-product solutions and having end-to-end visibility. We’re going to help drive an enhanced customer experience.
GovCon Wire: Tell me more about Comcast’s growth strategy. What factors or GovCon industry trends are influencing your growth strategy as you look toward Comcast’s future?
Patel: Comcast’s overall growth strategy is to continue to innovate and build on the core product set, while having expansive reach. Comcast has the capabilities to deliver products and services around the world. It’s not just a national footprint. We have an international network and very robust capabilities. So how do we leverage everything that we’re able to do across the board to meet the needs of all government customers and do it in a way that allows for a simplified client experience? We want to be able to ensure we have high customer satisfaction with reliable connectivity that meets their needs. Looking at that with transformation for the government, we’re noticing some of the industry trends — contract consolidation, modernization, network transformation and leveraging AI and ML. There’s a big push in the industry around those technologies, and a lot of organizations are looking at implementation and risk management.
