“Mercury is a very complex company.” Those were the words I heard on my first day at the company a little over three years ago. I had friends at Mercury and had followed or competed against the company for over a decade, but it wasn’t until that first day that I realized I had little understanding of what the company actually did, who it served, and what it represented. And based on our market research, it turns out I wasn’t alone.
How are you?
Some who have known Mercury for a long time might refer to the company as an “embedded computing company” or a “defense electronics company.” Others who have witnessed our growth in RF and Electronic Warfare technologies may be speaking about our RF, Microwave and Mixed Signal products. Then came C2I and C4I and security features, leading some to label the company as a rugged systems or server company. With an advanced security and mission computing portfolio, Mercury is now gaining recognition as an avionics company. Finally, there’s our investment in microelectronics technology, which is likely to be the company’s fastest growing and most exciting development as we can now do all of this at chip scale.
Mercury has grown so rapidly, adding so many people, technology, skills, and products over the years, that a lack of familiarity with what the company does was probably inevitable. So how do we deal with this familiarity conundrum?
Well, I’m trying to tell the world about it all The company did not work: We sell EW test and training solutions, turnkey subsystems, military ruggedized display systems, ruggedized servers and subsystems, data storage and transmission systems, RF microwave and mixed signal products such as frequency converters, signal sources, components and amplifiers, microelectronic components such as Memory, custom system-in-package and multi-chip modules. Then there are the boards – multiprocessing, single board computer, GPGPU, FPGA, video and graphics, network, I/O, memory and RF. But wait, there’s more – Development systems, tools and software. Not to mention our services: System integration and design support. We can manufacture your products. Need help with security certification or need someone to review your system security? We do that too!
No wonder no one knows exactly what Mercury is doing.
Simplify
Sometimes an effective way to solve a problem is to do the opposite of what you were previously trying to do. And that little tactic led our marketing team to one conclusion: there’s a common thread that runs through everything we do. Our development was not ad hoc. All acquisitions, technology and investments over the past 40 years have had a strategy and purpose and this is embodied in our mission statement:
Make the world a safer place for everyone. Our goal is to provide everyone Processing Solutions on any system that requires uncompromised computing.
What we’ve built is a processing platform upon which the world’s most advanced aerospace and defense solutions are built. Our finding: we don’t have to explain the multitude of Merkur solutions; we just need to describe our only offering to customers – the Mercury Processing Platform.
The Mercury processing platform
The Mercury Processing Platform includes all of the technologies we’ve developed over the years: security, signal, RF, display, computing, software, networking and storage. Beyond these technologies, it encompasses our people, their expertise and the way we serve our customers. Offered from silicon or chip scale to system scale, the platform and its technology are ready-to-use, trusted and secure, software-defined, open and modular. Our customers can use individual parts of the platform, but the more they use, the more value it can offer.
Our customers—the world’s defense systems pioneers, avionics visionaries, and new technology futurists—build on the Mercury processing platform to address a range of applications from sensor processing to mission computing, command and control, and communications . They build aerospace and defense solutions that collect sensor data at the very edge, delivering actionable insights that enable better/faster mission-critical decision making.
And at no point in our recent history has the Mercury Processing Platform been so relevant. With competitive threats and the very real prospect of the US and its allies losing a technological edge, the status quo of technological innovation will not work. “Incremental gains are no longer enough.” The processing platform must help our customers – and the industry at large – bend the curve of innovation and complete the mission faster than ever before. We’re focusing the platform on maintaining our technological superiority, strengthening global alliances, expanding into strategic areas, and building robust security and resilience, all in the most affordable way possible.
Bend the curve
So what is Mercury doing?
Mercury is a technology company that delivers commercial innovations to rapidly transform the global aerospace and defense industry. From data to decisions, from silicon to systems, A&D leaders are turning to the products, services, technology and people that make up the secure end-to-end Mercury processing platform – the exponential force that connects customers to what the most important thing is. Innovation That Matters®. By and for people who are important.
Would you like to find out more? I encourage you all to join us and discover how to bend the curve.