Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
I assume many would agree latent demand is present and it's siginifiant ie. a very large number of enterprises have deployed an authentication solution that is far from perfect but it's an entrenched deployment. Challenge is for a new vendor to unseat the deployment with a solution that is worth the customer making the change.
I agree...lol.
Wave definitely could have engineered a solution to overcome the early obstacles. Might not have produced a gigantic market share right away but it would have produced better positioning for today's opportunity ie. cyber security keeps getting bigger and Windows is more TPM-friendly.
If Wave had a solution to these problems, it would be selling like hot-cakes, and would have been selling like hot-cakes over the last several years. It can't sell shit. Therefore it must not have any sort of desirable, workable solution. Period. We can post all the articles we want about the NEED for a solution, which is more than well documented, but Wave obviously does not now have, nor has ever had, an answer to these issues. Period.
I realize you may have an agenda against the stock, however for the serious reader, investor or follower of Wave it's not that simple.
There have been numerous complexities since TPMs began shipping on enterprise machines in 2006, complexities which have impeded their adoption:
1. On Win XP the BIOS had to be manually accessed by the user or an IT administrator to activate the TPM ie. the machine had to be physically touched unless the network had a remote BIOS access tool such as those contained within Altiris or LanDesk network resource management platforms. Now that Win Vista/7/8 provide a TPM initialization wizard the manual BIOS step has been eliminated and Wave's ERAS can now remotely activate TPMs in scale.
It's become my opinion that back in the days of Win XP Wave may have had the theoretical potential to develop their own remote BIOS access tools but neglected to do so. In any case Win XP was the widely deployed enterprise OS for many years and without being able to offer remote automated TPM activation the Wave TPM solution was doomed.
2. Also going forward from when TPMs began shipping on enterprise machines in 2006, enterprises had partial pentetration of TPMs in their network ie. only as machines were replaced during refresh cycles did they acquire TPMs. So for a number of years it was part TPMs in the network whereas today it's essentially 100%.
3. A TPM solution requires the use of digital certificates. Therefore from the beginning of when TPMs began shipping on enterprise PCs, in order for Wave to have offered a complete solution on all a customer's machines (those with TPMs and those without), they would had to have the ability to support a PKI certificate on both TPM and non-TPM machines. While non-TPM-secured storage of PKI keys is inherently less safe, support of "soft certificates" would have nonetheless provided Wave the ability to offer an "all machine" PKI solution addressing the "partial TPMs" issue above . Without this, sales were doomed because customers require an "all PCs" or "all devices" network access solution.
4. TPMs remain essentially unavailable on mobile devices which may be an impediment for certain customers to deploy a TPM solution on PCs only.
5. Because the TPM-based network authentication solution is PKI (certificate)-based, any customer who is evaluating deploying it is essentially doing what they wouldn't consider doing previously ie. deploy a certificate-based environment. Apparently Wave's previous TPM solution (finally dubbed VSC in the SKS era) was not sufficiently scalable in terms of certificate management for a customer to deploy it. In creating VSC 2.0 Solms' was faced with the challenge of making the solution more scalable from the certificate management perspective.
In any case for large customers to deploy a completely different all users/devices network authentication solution completely replacing a current deployed solution is a major decision and creates a long sales cycle for Wave.
6. Discounting a deployed smart card solution (if a smart card deployment implements a TPM solution the smart cards are retained for physical access functions), Wave's VSC solution seeks to dipslace a customer's deployed external tokens solutions (e.g. RSA/Vasco OTP tokens) and as such any customer evaluating switching solutions will face fierce opposition from their incumbent vendor, always a much larger company than Wave. One can be sure the vendor will fight to prevent losing the business.
--------------------------------
Adding together all the above, Wave needs to have a fully scalable TPM solution (including remote automated TPM activation, automated certificate life cycle management, automated audit and compliance reporting, and more) and the sales organization to sell to all levels of the enterprise market (SMB/large enterprise, both gov't and commercial).
Beyond any doubt, setting and achieving goals relating to improved product development and sales is Solms' primary objective in restructuring the company.
I've noted before that Solms indicated ERAS for SEDs needed improvement. I heard through the grapevine that GM, BASF and BP all required high degrees of customization to deploy the solution. Although I haven't been able to authenticate those rumors, it wouldn't surprise me given SKS's poor record of building scalable enterprise solutions.
There is this recent (11/14/14) case study which gives high marks to the solution from the customer (I realize all case studies do), so hopefully ERAS for SEDs is now "top drawer":
https://www.wave.com/case-study-vpv-versicherungen
I haven't seen any reports that the current ERAS for SEDs or VSC is clunky to use. Perhaps Blue can substantiate that.
Also you might want to review my preceding post as I added a response to what you added to you post.
I understand you see the issue as intrinsic to PKI. Blue thinks it is product-related.
If Blue doesn't realize Wave's VSC product and the customer's requirement to implement PKI to deploy it are inextricably linked then Blue doesn't understand the opportunity. I've been attempting to elucidate on the ability Wave's products must have to make deployment/management of certificates easy/transparent for the customer otherwise they won't make the shift away from external tokens to a certificate-based solution.
There's not much point in folks discussing the prospects of Wave's products breaking into the enterprise authentication market (do they or do they not have the product?/is the product good enough?) unless they are willing to get a bit more specific on the technical side.
It's a mighty task for him to increase Embassy inflows to around $4.5m by year-end. That's a triple. And that is about what is needed to reach break-even as it isn't coming from any place else.
If you review the last CC (or the preceding one) you'll find a reference that VSC is not their only product implying that large orders are possible for SED management or Safend.
Post quotes from CC. (eom)
Basically the $18m/yr. Dell bundling business went away beginning a couple years ago exposing what has grown into a $16m/yr. SMB enterprise authentication/encryption business in a crowded market. The enterprise business has actually ticked up over the time since Dell began to go away as discussed here a couple q's ago.
$16m/yr. doesn't support a 150 employee company with R&D that is attempting to position itself in a large customer marketplace. Without a growing and sustainable large customer business Wave is stuck in a niche in a crowded authentication/encryption market. To say they can't sell anything is not accurate, but they do need to scale up enterprise sales or become a 50 employee company to live within billings. Obviously Solms wants to scale up to a larger company.
Wave's hardware root of trust solutions in a crowded authentication/encryption marketplace could be a significant differieniator drawing large enterprises off their incumbent solutions. It could take Wave from it's so far sustainable $16m/yr. enterprise business to a higher level.
There may still be some tweaking of ERAS-supported VSC going on to make the deployment/managament of certificates more feasible/attractive for large enterprises who currently don't use PKI? Going from no PKI to PKI is a major move for any large organization and the new solution needs to handle/faciliate all the certificate management. Maybe ERAS/VSC already does it well enough...I'm not sure. I'm confident with the sales personnel Wave now has that if anything in the products need improvement to generate sales to any customer including large enterprise, that the info is passed along by Sales to Management to Engineering and the products are improved.
A number of folks here like to do all kinds of analysis and predictions on the future of the company without addressing the technical realities of what it takes to draw these large customers into PKI. Wave may or not be able to do it, but basically it is the key.
As I noted, the VSC 2.0 July 22 launch begs the question how long in advance of it did customers deploy a pilot. We have reports of interest going back to the summer of 2013. In any case 18 months doesn't mean they all take that long.
As for lack of traction, Wave sells product every day. Even after the loss of Dell, Embassy is billing around $2m/q...ERAS for SEDs, ERAS for VSC, OEM bundling. Add Safend and it's still not enough to support their current cost of operations (150 employees or whatever) but to claim as some do that Wave can't achieve sustainable sales in any of their products is not accurate. They continue to be stuck in a mode where the sustained scale of the sales isn't enough to support the size company they are.
Folks, thanks for the nice pm's. (eom)
Please provide quotes from the CC.
Solms Said They Are Having Trouble
Solms admitted that they are having trouble making sales.
In any case it's impossible to say they are having trouble making sales when Embassy/Safend billed $3.4m last q. Yes, that is way down from the three years when Dell was $16m/yr. bundling and total billings were $30m/yr. but to say they are having trouble making sales when they sell product every day is not accurate.
An issue is they don't sell enough currently to support the cost of operations. They are more than the 38 employee company I posted that does $4m/yr. (CSS Security) and $16m/yr. billings isn't enough.
Solms' strategy includes moving from the SMB business where 2000-3000 seats is a large order to the large enterprise and in particular the TPM solutions business which as you may know was never able to launch from the previous product set, hence the development of VSC 2.0. Sales cycles to large enterprises is not short especially for something as broad reaching as an authentication solution for all users/devices involving a restructuring of the network and the removal of deployed solutions including politics relating to the incumbent vendors.
It's still early in my view to determine how much trouble they are actually having selling VSC 2.0. The launch was just four months ago, begging the question how old is the earliest pilot deployment to a large customer ie. how much in advance of the official VSC 2.0 launch July 22 did a large enterprise deploy a pilot? Smaller VSC 2.0 orders have likely closed imo but billings are small like the ERAS for SEDs order to the German firm e.g. around $50k. Embassy is doing around $2m/q even with the huge loss of the Dell bundling business, so expect that to consist of numerous/many small ERAS orders like the German firm including imo ERAS for VSC 2.0.
We should all know by now that large IT departments can take up to something like 18 months duration from initiation of evaluation to the decision to deploy so it may be a bit early to say a product launched last July 22 isn't selling to large customers.
You keep claiming "no sales" although you have conceded there is in fact some revenue...after all $3.4m billings does show something is being sold. Safend might be $1.4m plus $2m for Embassy products so it's not like it's zero. Granted, it's been declining mostly in the face of Dell going to zero and Embassy not scaling up (primarily because of the time consuming transition to large customer TPM-based sales).
Here is a recent 1000+ seat ERAS for SEDs case study recently put up on the website:
http://www.wave.com/case-study-vpv-versicherungen
The TPM solutions market has been a historical challenge. First, you had an inept CEO who failed to build a deployable solution. Actually part of that challenge in the beginning (before customers reached today's 100% TPMs on their machines) was developing a soft certificate solution for non-TPM machines (doable), like this little company below which btw shows a mere $4m annual revenues (25% of Wave's) according to one estimate. It was also difficult to remotely activate TPMs on Win XP machines without remote BIOS access though this too was solvable for Wave imo with the correct focus.
http://www.css-security.com/
http://www.css-security.com/about-us/our-team/leadership/
http://www.css-security.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/CMS-4.0-datasheet_Enterprise_P_10.29.14.pdf
http://www.manta.com/c/mmjzxy7/certified-security-solutions-inc?ftoggle-frontend-prod-on=abTests.revenue.test_10312014_control&utm_expid=82789632-25.oHnsZFf0S6aL6ZTTV65kcg.1&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
Second, was building a deployable solution (VSC 2.0) and the lag time it takes to get pilots deployed and the pilots converted to orders. Btw certificate-based authentication is still not widely deployed in the enterprise so one of the challenges in building VSC 2.0 is to make the implementation of certificates and their management transparent to the customer's deployment.
It's encouraging to see the interest in Wave's TPM-based VSC solution as evidenced by the growing scale of pilot deployments. It's possible the solution has required ongoing tweaking and enhancing to provide the level of transparent certificate deployment and management referenced above and that this is causing further delays for some customers. We'll see.
For many years there was never any langauge relating to the use of certificates in describing a Wave TPM solution. Finally we see it:
A sample enterprise scenario begins with the deployment team determining initial use and rollout schedule. In this case, they have determined that they will use VSC for Windows Logon, DirectAccess, and Office 365 access. Using Wave’s EMBASSY Remote Administration Server (ERAS) Management Console and VSC Deployment Tool, the agent software is deployed to the target machines. By using a certificate authority, system and user certificates are added to the certificate store, and additional capabilities are added as needed (e.g. Virtual Desktop) during the IT lifecycle.
https://www.wave.com/white-paper-enhancing-organizational-security-through-virtual-smart-cards
given the explanation of his development process, i have considerable faith in solms to deliver on the products in wave's current portfolio. but delivery is going to involve bobbing and weaving to conform with demand.
Don't know if you agree that the vendor must create demand by marketing including advertising and most important by creating a core of pioneer large customer adotpers for the solution (in this case VSC-enabled hardware root of trust).
Initially the vendor has to create an attractive scalable product that is designed to be a superior, compelling and cost-effective alternative to the solution the customer has already implemented. The vendor designs and builds product to (pent-up) demand, however "pent-up demand" is converted to "real demand" by marketing and sales execution.
Before Solms Wave had some initial success by landing several large marquee customers for SED management but with a TPM solution failed to create an off-the-shelf product that scaled and was manageable. They also failed in marketing and sales execution to parlay their initial base of SED customers into sustained larger sales. This inability in marketing and sales execution portended poorly for success with a TPM solution, a solution that was not correctly designed and engineered for the market under SKS.
As we shift the company's focus from smaller opportunities to larger enterprise opportunities, it requires a different type of sales person, and I am pleased with the changes that we've been making, but we continue to evaluate how we're doing as we go forward.
We also need to improve the demand generation, and in particularly marketing. We have launched an innovative for Wave marketing campaign for Virtual Smart Card 2.0 called the Don't Be Next campaign that focuses on Wave's ability to stop companies from being a breach lead to a hacker or loss of data.
We went live with this campaign just on Tuesday of this week, November 4. We've already been seeing some very positive signs. And we have the ability to track those metrics separately and be able to correlate the contacts and the leads that are generated, specifically through the campaign that we've done.
That campaign includes for the first time for Wave the use of very precisely targeted television ads, a correlating YouTube and Twitter feed as well as other electronic media. And over the first couple of days, the first three days, we're seeing some encouraging results. And we'll continue to track it to see if this leads us to the type of response in terms of increasing our demands for opportunities.
Already there is slippage on that front and I believe there is a far more serious one coming up soon--his prediction and his reiteration on Nov. 6 that Wave will be CFBE by year's end. How will he reach that goal if there are no new sales?
On that basis, I believe shareholders are justified in requiring Bill to explain exactly why he made the prediction and missed it, if in fact Wave is not CFBE.
Are you sure you wish to claim Solms made a prediction? Perhaps you need to review his wording and concede the difference between a
"prediction" and a "goal". Otherwise you're misrepresenting reality, not non-analagous to your criticisms of the former CEO (many of which I agree with).
From the Q3 CC:
But importantly I still stand by my previously stated goals for this year and I acknowledge that it’ll take some strong sales execution in order to achieve them. For those of you who don’t remember the goals that I stated from the time that I became CEO, the first was to become - to hit the cash flow breakeven point or the point between which we’d be cash flow positive, and then secondly to make us profitable in terms of our revenues.
I - as I mentioned before, you know, I stand by the goals that I established when I first took over, and it’s up to us now to do those last steps of execution in the final remaining weeks of this quarter and to roll that success into 2015.
1. Lack of awareness among gov't/military IT managers.
2. With some awareness among gov't/military IT managers, the lack of a solution to remotely deploy and configure TPMs into their PKI environment including on Win XP machines. VSC 2.0 appears to be the first such solution although presumably not for Win XP.
I'm not disagreeing with you in entirety over the FIPS issue, I just don't think it's the defining cause for lack of deployment.
I don't doubt what you post, but if would contend the lack of FIPS certification is a primary cause for lack of deployment in the gov't, I wouldn't agree.
Btw TPM RNGs have been FIPS-compliant for a long time. Here's one from '08:
1. Features
• Full Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Version 1.2
Compatibility
• Compliant with TCG PC Client Specific TPM Interface Specification Version 1.2
• Single-chip Turnkey Solution
• Hardware Asymmetric Crypto Engine
• 2048-bit RSA® Sign in 500 ms
• AVR® RISC Microprocessor
• Internal EEPROM Storage for RSA Keys
• 33 MHz LPC (Low Pin Count) Bus for Easy PC Interface
• Secure Hardware and Firmware Design and Chip Layout
• True Random Number Generator (RNG) – FIPS 140-2 Compliant
• NV Storage space for 1280 bytes of user defined data
• 3.3V Supply Voltage
• 28-lead TSSOP Package or 40-lead QFN Package
• 0–70°C Temperature Range
http://datasheet.octopart.com/AT97SC3203-X5M30-Atmel-datasheet-11804580.pdf
Plunkett gave the green light to using TPMs. The FIPS issue is a gray area (note the "where applicable") and imo this leaves up to the gov't/military IT manager implementer the decision to move forward using non-FIPS TPMs, and we see this with Wave's customer unless one thinks they have only FIPS TPMs.
Any IT manager who decides to deploy TPMs knows the non-FIPS-certified device gets the job done rendering the FIPS certification process redundant. Nonetheless the certification is becoming standard moving forward.
“All COTS, IA, and IA-enabled IT products acquired for the use to protect information on National Security Systems shall comply with the requirements of the NIAP [National Information Assurance Partnership] program in accordance with NSA-approved processes and where applicable the requirements of the FIPS [Federal Information Processing Standards] cryptographic validation program. In light of the fact that hardware and firmware-based security mechanisms can enhance the overall security of IA and IA-enabled IT products, TPMs should be used”.
Plunkett gave the green light to using TPMs. The FIPS issue is a gray area (note the "where applicable") and imo this leaves up to the gov't/military IT manager implementer the decision to move forward using non-FIPS TPMs, and we see this with Wave's customer unless one thinks they have only FIPS TPMs.
Any IT manager who wants to deploy TPMs knows the non-FIPS device gets the job done rendering the FIPS certification process redundant. Nonetheless the certification is becoming standard moving forward.
“All COTS, IA, and IA-enabled IT products acquired for the use to protect information on National Security Systems shall comply with the requirements of the NIAP [National Information Assurance Partnership] program in accordance with NSA-approved processes and where applicable the requirements of the FIPS [Federal Information Processing Standards] cryptographic validation program. In light of the fact that hardware and firmware-based security mechanisms can enhance the overall security of IA and IA-enabled IT products, TPMs should be used”.
Not a theory. It's a fact. TPMs don't have to be FIPS certified to be deployed by gov't/military IT people.
I agree, Wave has to find many other gov't/military customers. Just saying, it's not entirely the FIPS 140 issue ie. an implementer can move forward today without the certification.
TPMs don't have to be FIPS certified in order for gov't/military IT managers to deploy them. It's highly unlikely or impossible that Wave's VSC gov't customer has 100% FIPS TPMs and they moved forward with it, being described by Wave as having "significant security requirements". The point is, the lack of FIPS certification doesn't preclude an IT department from using TPMs. It's a question of undestanding what if any limitations exist in various deployment scenarios resulting from the lack of FIPS 140-2 certification.
“This is an important milestone for Wave,” said Bill Solms, CEO of Wave. “Wave Virtual Smart Card 2.0 has been purchased by a government agency with significant security requirements and one that requires redundant means of system authentication due to national security interests. This initial sale is modest compared to the addressable market within the Federal Government sector, but it is important to our strategy for marketing the Virtual Smart Card to address critical government infrastructure defense.”
“We believe that this sale, which was completed on a shorter sales cycle than we had anticipated, supports our view that customers are interested in the type of cyber security solution that Wave’s Virtual Smart Card 2.0 provides,” Solms added.
The VSC is going to be sold to the customers that use the smart card infrastructure as a primary token to hold the user PKI credential. That's not the consumer.
Assuming OTP (e.g. RSA/Vasco tokens) is the predominate solution deployed in the commercial enterprise sectors (we know some large organizations particularly in DIB have deployed smart cards but less in other sectors), then VSC is being sold predominately to OTP-type infrastructure not smart card infrastructure. That's why we keep hearing references in the Wave sales material to devices being lost and the cost to replace them and how VSC circumvents that liability. Not so much smart cards imo (they're in wallets) it's more things like RSA SecureID key fobs or USB devices. Actually even if any of these devices including smart cards are not lost and succumb instead to wear and tear, that's still a liability VSC doesn't have.
Snackman, I'm backing player1234 up on this one! His post doesn't uncategorically state large companies won't do business with Wave, it merely cites challenges a small company in Wave's situation could face doing business with large organizations.
I assume there are a number of (perhaps many) large companies included in the 100 VSC opportunities Solms referenced in the call. He has stated a number of times the sales focus has shifted to the large enterprise segment. As for the company's financial etc. credibility I can't see these customers engaging a pilot deployment if they aren't prepared to do business with Wave. Probably not all the 100 VSC opportunities have advanced to the pilot deployment stage but we know the "dozens" stated in the gov't customer PR have and imo it's a certainty some of those are large customers and wouldn't deploy pilots if Wave was not qualified to be an approved vendor.
Agreed barge, I could have "toned down the rhetoric". In any case you seem to agree with my underlying point namely that incompetence was afoot with the old Wave. Let's hope the new Wave is more competent. It does look that way.
Fine barge.
My point was, if the Solms' Wave lands an initial large VSC customer, I personally hope/expect more to follow and in quick succession whereas previous management was unable to capitalize on their initial large customer success. I don't think a more capable management would have had a similar failure. But I concede, it's water under the bridge at this point.
I would hope with Wave's revamped management and sales organization that a first large VSC 2.0 customer would lead to others and quickly. It's hard to imagine any organization being as inept as (the SKS-led Wave) to land GM, BASF and BP and then be unable to exploit that position. First it takes being a BS sales organization to be able to not get additional large customers after getting three of them and then being a BS product development organization to be unable to develop a TPM product ie. VSC that IT departments can actually deploy.
Yup. One offs don't work.
It has already been proven.
You need a mix and a continuous pipeline of deals.
100% agreed, however there is some indication of initial VSC 2.0 customers and a pipeline. First, the PR was clear about the first gov't customer and the dozens of pilots across multiple commercial enterprise sectors. Second, to take the liberty of speculating, it's a reasonable assumption imo that the gov't customer is not the THE first VSC 2.0 customer. I suspect there are other probably small orders. For example 500-2000 seats (e.g. the gov't customer) allowing for $50/seat= $25-100k billings which would be hard to see even if they were in Q3.
On the matter of the pilots I have both listened to the CC and read the transcript and imo it's a no-brainer Solms was confused by the questioner's phrasing "pilot projects" and didn't understand he was referencing the dozens of pilots in the PR and whether customers pay for the seats they use in a pilot deployment. Instead Solms thought "pilot projects" was product development-related (e.g. Micron or Samsung) and imo the comment about booking associated revenues in Q3 is for engineering e.g. Micron. As for Solms later reference to something like "100 VSC opportunities under various stages of development", I personally believe this is straight-up sales pipeline and nothing else.
It's a positive imo Shepard provided a range of quarterly expenses going forward ($7.0m-7.4m). With that at least investors have a reasonable idea what it will take in billings to reach CFBE. It's about freakin' time Wave has a CFO who has a clue.
One issue for enterprises deploying TC and TPMs is the implementation of the PKI it requires. Especially for large IT departments this is a major decision and move away from what they are doing. Not so long ago PwC was an example of one of the relatively few major organizations other than federal/military with a PKI. VSC was only released 3 1/2 months ago and sales cycles to large IT departments are notoriously complicated and long in duration especially in evaluating and deploying a solution that involves an entire network of users and devices and is a fundamental transition away from deployed methodology.
It's hard to deny that a first federal customer and dozens of pilots across multiple commercial sectors is an encouraging development and shows demonstrable interest in the solution. Solms indicated there are about 100 customers in varying stages of development. It seems unlikely imo that this isn't the start for VSC 2.0 and the TPM solutions-based side of Wave's business in general. Wave has been repopulated with personnel who have experience in selling solutions to enterprises, federal and commercial, SMB and large. Imo it's unlikely many of these folks leave good positions with reputable firms for an opportunity that's a loser.
No point in arguing or speculating. Some perspectives are optimistic, some pessimistic, some in between, there can be agendas on different sides and so on. We can only wait for the business to happen or not.
"regarding the scope, depth, preparedness etc. of the content of the CC, the fact is he summed it up at the end, something to the effect of 'we are just jabber jawing here folks, we really need to start selling stuff(soon), we believe we can, there is really nothing more to say, watch the RP wire, there is nowhere else to look'."
A dandy of a summation. Just kidding.
Here is what was said at the end:
Operator:
There are no further questions from the phone lines at this time, Mr. Solms. I’ll turn it back to you.
Bill Solms:
So thank you all for joining. This is an earnings call I think with both you know, strengths that we’re here to talk about and also some disappointments that it hasn’t happened yet by the end of Q3. As I mentioned in the call I believe we’ve done the right things. We’ve rebuilt the foundation, we’ve put the pieces in place. It’s required now for us to execute on the potential, on the opportunities that are right in front of us, and to make sure that we have a process in place that looks out beyond the current quarter or even the current, you know, year so that Wave is a company that has strong potential for multiple years going forward.
I believe we’re doing all those simultaneously. I - as I mentioned before, you know, I stand by the goals that I established when I first took over, and it’s up to us now to do those last steps of execution in the final remaining weeks of this quarter and to roll that success into 2015.
As I stated before, the only thing that really matters at this point is our ability to launch, or to show that we have sales billings. Well, it’s the most important thing, anyway, and so I encourage you to stand by for those announcements. Thank you very much for joining the call and we’ll be talking to you all soon.
How one interprets the closing remarks, the opening remarks, the Q&A responses etc., is all dependent on one's perspective, insights, opinions etc. etc..
on the pilots, RoT speculates that Solms was referring to other pilots, but based on the words ... the question was for the dozens of pilots in the PR, and the answer was those pilots were not VSC pilots, they were forward looking engineering pilots for which they get some services revs (and some was booked).
I don't see how my analysis can be taken as speculation when clearly Solms was referencing pilots relating to future products ("to be released 2015/2016"). He obviously misunderstood the question. The questioner was not asking about pilots for future products he meant the dozens of VSC pilots and if Wave charges for the evaluation seats. Perhaps Solms assumed the questioner was referencing pilot activity relating to the Micron/Wave/Lenovo/AMI project.
Your wording above implies that Solms was saying the dozens of pilots in the PR were for future products not VSC. Perhaps you worded it the wrong way? The gov't VSC customer/VSC pilots PR was for VSC customer pilots not engineering pilots for products to be released 2015/2016.
Since the Virtual Smart Card 2.0 became commercially available in late July 2014, Wave has entered into dozens of pilot deployments in multiple sectors, including healthcare, financial services, automotive, energy and utilities. However, today’s announcement marks the product’s first sale in the government sector.
https://www.wave.com/buzz/pr/wave-systems-announces-first-us-federal-government-customer-wave-virtual-smart-card-2.0
Did someone say the pilots are not really "pilots" but more like "engineering projects"? That would be bad in a couple of ways.
The questioner re: the pilots was presumably referencing the dozens of pilots PR'ed, however Solms appeared to have thought he meant pilots for future products not the customer VSC pilots. If one listens to Solms' response it's obvious he's referring to pilots for future products not the VSC customer evaluations. I had wondered as well if customers license their evaluation seats or they are courtesy of the house. In any case the questioner did not clarify his question before the session moved on to the next question.
Although Solms misinterpreted the question, his response did reveal imo a fundamental inner working in any tech/other company, namely the perpetual future product roadmap.
wd, I assume the capability Wave is developing for supporting TPMs on mobiles would almost have to include providing the tools to the enterprise to install and/or configure them.
Good point.
Actually I can't assume Wave supports a TPM running on a Chrome OS (Linux) platform. If the enterprise market for Chromebooks was significant, they might if they don't already?
Wave doesn't support a Chromebook TPM?
You're not confusing "support" with "bundled with" are you?
Solm's is pushing Wave to support the Android system first because Android is the largest OS used with 80-85% market share.
No wonder Solms is targeting Android for Wave's first smartphone support. Not only does the OS dominate the market dwarfing Apple, but because of the large consumer share we can expect Wave's Bell ID alliance (and more to come imo) to provide higher security on Android smartphones than what Apple and the MNOs currently offer.
Yup, where there are TPMs Wave is in the picture, therefore when they come to smartphones it will expand Wave's opportunity.
PCs still king for online commerce, hence the Bell ID alliance with more coming imo.
Mobile conversion rates still trail PCs, indicating that users frequently shop from their phone, but often place their orders later using PCs. While mobile devices made up almost 37 percent of site visits, they accounted for only 23 percent of online orders and just over 18 percent of revenue.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/07/14/mobile-shopping-to-reach-near-50b-in-2014-as-apple-inc-ipad-retains-80-percent-share
Better to keep the order placing on PCs where with a TPM it will be more secure than on a mobile including Apple device.
As long as not having a TC solution on smartphones is not preventing enterprises from deploying TPMs on PCs then enterprise smartphones don't affect Wave's market. Obviously a goal is for Wave to support all enterprise devices not just PCs. If in addition to PCs they can manage smartphones for their customers it will provide additional revenue.
Android appears to have large chunk of the enterprise market. As for Apple devices it's up to Wave to work their magic on supporting them. Solms has stated Wave is going after Android first so they must see potential there, possibly in the federal space?
http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2014/08/12/ios-drops-67-enterprise-share-q2-2014-android-grows-32-windows-phone-stays-flat-1/
I agree the MNOs' world of SIM/SE is likely to be/remain a player on the consumer commerce side. You probably know it's the enterprise side for the TPM that I've been asserting in my discussion with alea going back. I'm not sure who will take ownership of the TPM on enterprise-owned or enterprise-use BYOD devices but whover does the enterprise administrator will need access to the TPM. If TPMs on enterprise PCs get deployed in scale, the IT guys will want the same network security (user/device authentication, UEFI health etc.) for phones that they will have for PCs. Wave is working on this for 2015, so we'll see which phone OEMs provide the TPMs first.