Comcast confirmed that Ken Klaer is now leading Comcast Technology Solutions, a division focused on multiscreen video distribution and advertising technologies and services, on a permanent basis.
Klaer, formerly SVP of strategic infrastructure at Comcast, had been heading up CTS on an interim basis, assuming the duties of Matt McConnell, who left CTS earlier in the year.
Comcast launched Comcast Technology Solutions last fall as a division that combined three of its media and tech businesses – Comcast Wholesale, thePlatform and This Technology.
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Klaer, a former Cisco Systems exec who joined Comcast in 2014 as SVP, premises technology, will continue to oversee other areas of the company’s strategic infrastructure group.
According to materials reviewed by Multichannel News that were distributed internally by Comcast in October, Klaer also announced a revision of the CTS organization whereby it will be aligned under four general managers who will lead the unit’s Ad Platform, Wholesale Platform, Syndication and Video Platform businesses.
Here’s how the CTS leadership team, reporting to Klaer, currently stacks up:
-Josh Arensberg, GM, Ad Delivery, a division that the unit’s AdStor Platform and AdDelivery businesses. Arensberg had been serving as CTS’s Group Technical Advisor.
-Allison Olien, GM, Wholesale. She had been serving as product manager for two of the Wholesale Platform businesses: HITS and Content Services.
-Jack Heney now leads CTS’s syndication businesses as GM, Syndication. Previously, he was VP of syndication, leading a team focused on the syndication of Comcast’s X1 platform (Cox Communications, Rogers Communications, Cox Communications and Videotron are among MSOs that have inked deals to license/syndicate X1).
-CTS has begun a search for a GM, Video Platforms, who is to be based in Seattle (Rob Banga has decided to pursue other opportunities).
“This structure is based on the organization principle of having integrated teams that are owners, empowered and that are accountable,” Klaer explained in a memo that was distributed last month.
Also reporting to Klaer is Mark Hess, SVP of business and industry affairs at Comcast. As part of his new role, Hess, who has joined Comcast’s Strategic Infrastructure team, will support the company’s syndication business.
Hess’s team will continue to report into him, including Steve Heeb, president and GM of RDK Management LLC, the joint venture of Comcast, Liberty Global and Charter Communications that manages the Reference Design Kit, the preintegrated software platform for set-tops and gateways.
