Was an excellent meeting. Was great to have such a large iHub contingent present and meet many face to face - took a while to figure out who everyone was from their avatars. Had some beers and lunch with the "Eagle contingent" and JB - thanks guys! Also present were Justfacts and The Progressive. Possibly some others I didn't get a chance to meet. I think I might have seen M+ there at the start (had a "the glass is always half empty" T-shirt on and a tin foil hat), but I think he left when they ran out of donuts just as the meeting got started.
We all had access to ALL the management (Overland, V3, Sphere - all very well represented) and then some. So much to report that I don't know where to start. We all were kind of flitting about from person to person after the meeting trying to get as much detail as we could, and most of our questions addressed. So...here are my notes in no specific order and everyone else can jump in and fill in their comments when they get back home;
Celio: This is on, but so many other priorities at the moment that this can wait for now. They have the rights to acquire them and their patents, and there is time.
(juggling priorities was a constant theme throughout the meeting - in other words, so many opportunities, and the phone is ringing off the hook. When the "big boys" call, you have to shuffle your priorities!
Nasdaq: Soon...very soon. Scott Worthington (CFO) was most knowledgeable on this process, and we got the impression from him it would be in the next couple of weeks.
OVRL Merger: No worries whatsoever of this happening as announced. The ambulance chasers? They are down to just 2 firms, and many of the litigants have the same last name as the lawyers. Consider this to be an "acquisition tax".
Corel: Same as Celio, except they can leave this in Corel's hands for now. The enterprise side is too big and too lucrative. Why worry about all the little retail adopters of this at $2/mo when one deal with enterprise B2B is worth $200K.
JB can fill you in on his conversation with Kelly re: VAR's and distributors, but it goes something like "we only need 10% of the 16,000 to sell one deal each with services...."
They currently can virtualize/emulate with a laptop, what used to take rooms full of mainframes. They showed us a new device they have developed that is about 1/2" thick and the size of a large credit card that they have just applied for a patent on, that does the SAME thing. Better yet, they are now working on a single chip that will do it all. This chip could then be installed in any device, so that device can become whatever you want it to be. Working on an Apple and want it to become a PC? No problem. Working on a Blackberry and want it to become an iPad? No problem. As Peter Bookman mentioned to me - the future is software, not hardware (and I'm paraphrasing).
Revenue is coming in NOW, and will continue to increase. Peter will put out Q1 numbers possibly next week, but not much to really get excited about. Expect LOTS of excitement when they get to Q3 & Q4 numbers. The only issue is that this early in the game, it can be a timing thing. The deals come in so fast and furious, that from one Q to the next there could be big spreads based on the deal timing - "lumpy" in other words for the first few quarters.
Peter also played up the fact that most of the engineers at OVRL are highly valued software engineers. They are building a Super Bowl Tech team together with this merger, and culturally they are already very similar.
Novarad from 1st demo at HIIMS, to NovaGlass and becoming a paying customer - 60 days. Unreal.
They demonstrated virtualizing a program (Thunderbird) on the screen for us. I'm no techie, but it took just a moment and there it was. I think we were all looking for something more interesting or explosive or something, but that is the beauty of this - it is so simple and quick to do. Doesn't matter what it is, legacy software, off the web software, really complex autocad type software...whatever. It just takes a moment. That's what got the Novarad guys hooked. Rik Lidstrom was telling me it was amazing watching their faces as they virtualized their stuff from a USB drive right in front of them at the booth. Started with 2 guys, they then brought 2 more guys, etc etc...pretty soon they had 15 people in the booth while all the other vendors were empty.
I asked Peter T at what point will they start to piss off Citrix. He said "I think we just did this morning with the Ericsson announcement".
As Eagle mentioned, the excitement from the expanded Sphere team was very evident - I'm not exaggerating when I say all in attendance could feel it. The phones are ringing, and they are having to re-evaluate their priorities daily. Peter T felt horrible last week when he had to say "No" to a potential customer for the first time. From this meeting they were catching a plane to Texas - big customer, big meeting, no hints given. How many times did we ask about who they were hearing from and they smiled, looked skyward, and shook their heads - "can't say", but they're coming from everywhere.
How many tech guys were there talking to Morelli trying to get him to explain how it worked? He could take it just so far before having to politely say - "sorry, can't tell you any more than that, from this point on it is proprietary IP".
Marketing is all being done through the VAR/Distribution network, social media, and the various events they exhibit at.
Someone asked about the perception in the industry that it is "too good to be true". They are having to deal with this daily, but all it takes is a demo and people are astounded.
I can't think of anything else at this time of night. Bottom line, in 12-18 months, I don't think anyone really knows where this might be, but we can all certainly imagine it being multi billions eventually.
