Nil,
I have been enjoying the great discussions on this forum about the great opportunity and technologies that Sphere 3D, and now together V3 and Sphere 3D, offer. Your questions are great ones and I can speak for many who would love to share some of the non-disclosable information and things going on in the pipeline and technology roadmap side of things but for obvious reasons cannot… Yet!
I can speak for myself (founder of V3) as well as I believe the CEO of V3 Ric Lindstrom in saying we have been fans of Sphere 3D long before discussions around this acquisition took place because it is great stuff. It is so good in fact that those in the industry accuse V3 of selling for less than it could have been valued at. I think this alone is worthy of addressing your statement that we are all from the V3 side excited about what the combined opportunity means for the market and us as shareholders.
While I cannot address directly the relationships you asked and spoke about, (I do not know any details) I can speak to the average sales cycles which depending on the deal range from 6 months cycles to 2 year cycles. I expect some announcements which will be shared in due time will answer how the blend of these two cycles and everything in between will make a big splash.
Again, I am the wrong guy, thankfully, to address the conflict of interest you talk about, however I have found the best deals are the friendly kind (conflicted but mutually beneficial) and what I see is as announced the amazing channel which Overland brings with the supply chain and support infrastructure to boot. The deal would ideally be structured to take advantage of this and leverage the clear technology leadership coming from the team.
I am, along with everyone else who is familiar with whom Stoney Hall is within the Virtual Desktop and Application world for Dell and healthcare, excited to have a sales person of his caliber on board. I certainly don't know the terms of his deal, however any great sales person I have worked with throughout the years will not come on until the technology is ready and their relationships and experience can be leveraged. On top of this, I have never met a "great sales person" who would want the base more than no cap in commissions. Again, while I do not know the terms of this deal, I would suggest that the deal looks more like that structure, where his upside will be represented by the deals brought and where Dell is no longer offering a no-cap deal to sales guys (I am in no position to actually know the terms of this deal and am speculating here).
As for the beef, if I remember the Wendy's commercials from a long time ago, I believe they have it? Shall we get a bite?
The last two questions are questions I am not qualified to answer nor have any authority or information for those, but similar to the others I would simply provide assurances that there is technology thought leadership being driven from the Sphere 3D team and for the right customer opportunities and pipeline seeding the opportunity with product to get through beta would be a standard strategy for doing so.
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