Saturday, November 22, 2014 10:32:14 AM
dig, I very much agree with your observation...
"i think Solms experience is with large credible companies, he looked at Wave's products, looked at the market and was confident he could stage a turnaround and overestimated Wave's credibility or underestimated the consequences of weak credibility."
My concern over the past year has not been so much about demand for a VSC solution (several large companies had actually approached Wave for this in late summer 2013), nor did I doubt Solms' ability to refine the product according to customer preferences and to make it commercially viable. My concern, expressed in person at the 2013 TC conference, has been the challenge of F500 size corporations becoming comfortable buying from a small, unknown and financially limited company. When Solms first embraced the VSC opportunity for Wave as North American sales director the market was basically limited to large sophisticated enterprises with existing PKI based network architectures. There was really no middle market.
I've all along felt the need for a parallel pursuit of the SMB market, particularly with Wave Cloud for SEDs, as a means to slowly but surely build a broad base of revenue, but it seems that Wave hasn't had sufficient resources to meaningfully push that market and at the same time properly develop the greater VSC opportunity in both sales and engineering. Solms is very ambitious for the company and shareholders, and I applaud him for his determination and problem solving abilities, but the path he's followed has been a little more challenging than I believe he anticipated.
The good thing, however, from a product development standpoint is that Solms has been very astute to advance VSC 2.0 so that it just works out of the box for both PKI and non-PKI companies - of all sizes. From the cc..."What that means is something that will solve a problem that our customers have and that it will be based on our cutting edge technology, but not necessarily require them to understand that cutting edge technology to make it useful to them. It’s this change in focus that led to virtual smart card 2.0, and it’s guiding our focus on products and services going forward from Wave."
As you pointed out, Solms' efforts to strengthen Wave's position by partnering with heftier entities (WYY just doesn't make the grade
) is another good example of his problem solving abilities and being quick on his feet. The notion that the 'partnering' he mentioned in the cc might involve a strategic investment is just one of several possibilities. As you know, partnering might also involve a form of revenue sharing for future VSC deals. It might also just involve a strong recommendation from that USG agency whose contract was described as strategic.
Assuming a partner is not a government agency, then my belief is that it would most likely be an organization with systems integration and/or consulting capabilities. A partner and customer could be one and the same, or separate.
There are all sorts of variables that could lead to the first big enterprise deal. They just need to get it done.
"i think Solms experience is with large credible companies, he looked at Wave's products, looked at the market and was confident he could stage a turnaround and overestimated Wave's credibility or underestimated the consequences of weak credibility."
My concern over the past year has not been so much about demand for a VSC solution (several large companies had actually approached Wave for this in late summer 2013), nor did I doubt Solms' ability to refine the product according to customer preferences and to make it commercially viable. My concern, expressed in person at the 2013 TC conference, has been the challenge of F500 size corporations becoming comfortable buying from a small, unknown and financially limited company. When Solms first embraced the VSC opportunity for Wave as North American sales director the market was basically limited to large sophisticated enterprises with existing PKI based network architectures. There was really no middle market.
I've all along felt the need for a parallel pursuit of the SMB market, particularly with Wave Cloud for SEDs, as a means to slowly but surely build a broad base of revenue, but it seems that Wave hasn't had sufficient resources to meaningfully push that market and at the same time properly develop the greater VSC opportunity in both sales and engineering. Solms is very ambitious for the company and shareholders, and I applaud him for his determination and problem solving abilities, but the path he's followed has been a little more challenging than I believe he anticipated.
The good thing, however, from a product development standpoint is that Solms has been very astute to advance VSC 2.0 so that it just works out of the box for both PKI and non-PKI companies - of all sizes. From the cc..."What that means is something that will solve a problem that our customers have and that it will be based on our cutting edge technology, but not necessarily require them to understand that cutting edge technology to make it useful to them. It’s this change in focus that led to virtual smart card 2.0, and it’s guiding our focus on products and services going forward from Wave."
As you pointed out, Solms' efforts to strengthen Wave's position by partnering with heftier entities (WYY just doesn't make the grade
) is another good example of his problem solving abilities and being quick on his feet. The notion that the 'partnering' he mentioned in the cc might involve a strategic investment is just one of several possibilities. As you know, partnering might also involve a form of revenue sharing for future VSC deals. It might also just involve a strong recommendation from that USG agency whose contract was described as strategic. Assuming a partner is not a government agency, then my belief is that it would most likely be an organization with systems integration and/or consulting capabilities. A partner and customer could be one and the same, or separate.
There are all sorts of variables that could lead to the first big enterprise deal. They just need to get it done.
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