10 Questions for Mike Kozlowski

Role: VP Product ManagementLocation: DenverYears at Integra: Three years

1. Corporate Communications: How would you describe your role at Integra?

Mike Kozlowski: In the classic sense of product management, my organization owns the four Ps of marketing which are product, placement, pricing and promotion. Our responsibility as product owners is to ensure we compete on each of the areas to drive our overall business strategy. I think about our products from a time perspective in terms of today, two years from now and three-five years from now and ask a lot of questions.

Current or ‘Today’ Focus:Through the lens of the four Ps, what do we need to do to make a current product work better?I ask questions around how we can shave time off of existing delivery cycles, implement break/fix initiatives or what market initiatives such as promotions will enable more sales in a quicker time frame.

0-2 Year Focus:What will that product look like tomorrow or two years from now?From this view, I want to know the adjacent products or incremental additions to existing products we need to add to provide clear competitive advantages to our products in the two-year or less time frame. For example, we are now a Technology Partner and Direct Connect Partner with Amazon Web Services (AWS) which offers our customers direct, fully-integrated access to Amazon’s enterprise-level managed and hosted public cloud services. As the industry shifts, we need to not only address but also anticipate our customers’ needs to stay ahead of the curve.

3-5 Year and Long-Term Focus: What do we need to develop in the future to stay in front of the trends?I think about long-term planning through a transformative lens to see what technologies on the horizon we need to be aware of so we can capture that market before it’s even defined. For instance, technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), or changes to net neutrality and architectures will create new market opportunities in three-five years.

2. CC: How has our product strategy changed over the past six months?MK: The short answer is that our product strategy hasn’t changed. We have been building and continue to build fiber-centric services our customers need to grow their businesses. Fiber-centric services have lower churn rate and make our customers happy by offering unlimited bandwidth, in theory, into our assets. The strategy for products is less about the what (product portfolio) and more about the how. Now that product is in the technology organization, it affords us closer partnering arrangements with

Applications Development and Engineering so we can continue to drive products forward in a much more scalable and timely manner.

3. CC: What is your reaction to our new Business Unit (BU) structure?MK: I love the new BU structure. It allows us to be more purposeful in creating network development opportunities with our customers and driving building penetration into the existing Integra assets. The BU structure is well suited to for us to grow the network to best serve our customers’ needs. It’s a win for our customers and Integra.

4. CC: Talk to me about your 90-day focus?MK: My 90-day focus is two-fold. First, we are working through the product criteria we rolled out late last year. We are participating in the Regional BU roadshow to continue our dialog with the Sales organization in each major market to address any questions and provide transparency. The second area of focus is a result of being in the technology organization. We are focused on developing an optimal execution model integrating the Product Management team with Engineering and Applications Development into the same organization. The opportunity is to execute on lifecycle and new product development in a faster and more efficient way. It’s really exciting.

5. CC: What do you like best about your job?MK: I love where I sit—in a crossroad location—with a view of all sides of the business. I can look forward and backward while managing the strategy. Managing products is very much like raising children (I have three real ones). I look at where my products are today to determine how well they are doing, apply measured resources, and then nurture them. Next, I track how I’m going to grow them into full adulthood as upstanding members of society. It’s a wonderfully satisfying experience when it all comes together.

6. CC: What are the biggest challenges in your role?MK: Keeping all the stakeholders in the same boat rowing toward the same goal. We need to over communicate to ensure the right cross-section of people is present at the table for our discussions and we are all aligned to the overall vision and plan.

7. CC: What career path did you take to get here?MK: I’ve had roles in engineering, operations, network planning and product over my 20-year career. I have also had the opportunity to work for large and small companies ranging from wireless and fiber-optic startups, to MSOs, to network service providers. During this time, I completed my Masters in Engineering from Columbia University and earned an MBA in Finance from the University of Denver. I came to Integra because this role was, and continues to be, the right mixture—a financially-stable company with significant growth potential where an individual can impact change. We are small enough to listen and big enough to deliver, and the day-to-day things you do can make a big difference.

8. CC: What trends in the marketplace today excite you for the future? MK: One exciting trend we are watching very closely is the Software Defined Networking (SDN) movement. SDN is an approach to computer networking that allows network administrators to manage physical assets in the cloud. For instance, envision a complete network becoming virtualized into a data center where we can overlay different types of cloud services on demand as customers need them. I get excited thinking about how transformative this will be—our approach to our assets and customer solutions will be very different. SDN will change subscription models around capital and resourcing, and the management of product lifecycles. It’s mindboggling to me to contemplate the number of

opportunities with SDN, and we are setting up the framework now to become a leader in the industry when this becomes a reality.

9. CC: Piece of career advice that has stuck with you along the way?MK: My grandfather was an electrical engineer who worked on gyroscopes and instrumentation back in the 1950s. His advice was to seek to understand a subject at a deep level so you can articulate the value to many different audiences. I have held onto this belief from early in my career through today because it helps create value, appreciation and buy-in to whatever I do. It’s not just what you do it’s how you communicate it that will be remembered. As the leader of the Product Management group, getting the collective buy-in from our stakeholders is necessary for our products and services to take hold.

10. CC: How do you spend your time when you are not working?MK: As I mentioned, my wife and I have three small children and we spend quite a bit of time chasing them around the ski hill and riding around town on our bikes. We love the outdoors and all that Colorado has to offer.