As a technology investor, one of the more intriguing presentations of Enterprise 2006 was the "Next Big Thing" where five up-and-coming private software companies present to the audience of enterprise CIOs, institutional investors and software executives.
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NetSuite -- CEO Zach Nelson provided the best demo of the conference, showing off the NetSuite product in a live demo that showed all in attendance his CEO portal. I wasn't surprised by what I saw of NetSuite, having written about it many times, but I was impressed that Nelson was so confident in his company and its product that he allowed us all to see real-time year-to-date financial metrics. NetSuite had generated $64 million in bookings year to date, approximately 80% year over year growth. Nelson also did a great job showing some on the fly KPI indicators that had the audience abuzz including metrics that tracked replacement wins against specific industry competitors.
Outlooksoft -- Outlooksoft is a competitor in the business performance management space (in other words, financial BI) and CEO and President Phil Wilmington gave an overview of the Outlooksoft offering. To be honest, I don't think the presentation did a great job of framing Outlooksoft versus its competition or in painting the broad market opportunity in financial planning and business analytics. Although Outlooksoft is Microsoft-centric, it's a very formidable competitor to Hyperion for a lot of reasons; and that didn't shine through at the conference. Nevertheless, Outlooksoft is a company to watch in a space that's ripe with M&A rumor and innuendo.
Zimbra -- CEO Satish Dharmaraj had an energetic presentation that I felt showed up the sexy features of the Zimbra offering, particularly as it relates to embedded web services and the use of mashups. Ultimately though, Zimbra looked far too much like Microsoft Office plus widgets for the intended audience; Satish should've done a better job articulating use cases for Zimbra and how it can help companies improve their productivity processes over the conventional options.
SOA Software -- SOA Software was the lone company to have a non-CxO level executive present, as EVP Roberto Mendrano took the helm. Mendrano did a credible job of selling SOA Software as a major player in the build out of SOA within enterprises. But the presentation was light on specifics or product details and heavy on slideware; something that has been all too common among SOA-related software vendors large and small. Much like a few of the other vendors, I think some specific use cases would've been welcome considering the audience. Putting aside the presentation at Enterprise, SOA Software remains one of the more interesting stand alone SOA players left on the market, as Infravio and Actional have been taken off the market (by WebMethods and Progress, respectively).
SensorLogic -- SensorLogic was the only vendor of the five I was unfamiliar with prior to the conference. SensorLogic provides an array of sensors built into machinery that allows for dynamic monitoring of machinery processes, maintenance and repair. President and CEO Ray Hood did a solid job of articulating his company's offering, including giving very digestible examples of ROI use cases and market opportunities. The two most compelling points of his presentation were a) that SensorLogic helps companies leverage their existing investments in legacy ERP systems and b) that SensorLogic goes to market with established industry partners in niche industrial verticals. Both of those selling points really resonated with the CIOs I spoke with following the session.
Note: At the time of this writing I, and/or funds I maintain discretionary control over, maintained long equity positions in MSFT and WEBM, but did not maintain positions (long or short) in HYSL or PRGS. We also may, at times, carry derivative options on underlying positions as a hedge.
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