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I'm concerned, they've pretty much started to saturate their target vertical in the government (military/intel). I've also noticed that new installs are startin

I'm concerned, they've pretty much started to saturate their target vertical in the government (military/intel). I've also noticed that new installs are starting to go in at pretty large discounts over a year ago. The government, while large, is finite in size. It doesn't take too many enterprise deals to max it out. If they aren't making money yet, and at their tremendous burn rate, is another $90million really going to bring them to self-sustainment? I'd bet that the curve on their growth rate is starting to drop off now, the next logical place for them to push into is local law enforcement. But at their prices, compared to the de facto competitor (i2) I can't see them getting much traction except for maybe the very largest municipalities (I know they have one in the DHS funded NYC Fusion Center for example). Their going to have to put more resources behind their non gov/intel verticals I think for this to make sense.

MaysonL 16y ago
Well, I'd guess it depends on what their support/upgrade revenues are like.
- elblanco 16y ago
  Their initial installs are quite expensive. Small orgs <50 have been getting prices from $250k-$750k depending. I've seen larger organizations with $5-6million per install prices, but there are fewer of those. I've heard that their quoted maintenance fees are a bit higher than that. I think at their last conference they said they had ~200 staff and still growing. So their burn rate is ~$30-$40 million a year. This latest round will keep them alive for another year or two.
deleted 16y ago
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- elblanco 16y ago
  I agree, it's actually where they were born -- financial fraud detection. Their finance product is really mature and quite powerful. Not sure how big the market for it is though. They'll probably do well in other types of research areas, think tanks, large news agencies, etc. They'll definitely have to start to push out into non-US governments though to survive. But from my experience, just due to funding differences, other governments are far more stingy with their purchases.
  - orp 16y ago
    Can they do real time? They sound like a batch oriented system, and the financial fraud market is all about real time.
    - elblanco 16y ago
      I don't know. All of the demonstrations I've ever seen have been forensic (after the fact) investigations. They spent a bit of time at the last conference trying to build a case for why their government product would be a great network security tool, but I never saw or heard anything that would indicate it could be used as a real-time tool. Their focus recently seems to be on scale, lots of spin on how they can cluster and use billions of records on commodity hardware, link together installs at different sites, etc. etc. They did a demonstration of and investigation into the housing crash by analyzing millions of mortgage applications, then built aggregate bar charts and heat maps they could drill into a bit. It was "ok". I think if they are serious about penetrating the network security market, they'll need all new technology that can be used in real time. But they seem to already be well regarded in financial fraud as a post event investigation tool.

MaysonL 16y ago

Well, I'd guess it depends on what their support/upgrade revenues are like.

elblanco 16y ago
Their initial installs are quite expensive. Small orgs <50 have been getting prices from $250k-$750k depending. I've seen larger organizations with $5-6million per install prices, but there are fewer of those. I've heard that their quoted maintenance fees are a bit higher than that. I think at their last conference they said they had ~200 staff and still growing. So their burn rate is ~$30-$40 million a year. This latest round will keep them alive for another year or two.

deleted 16y ago

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elblanco 16y ago
I agree, it's actually where they were born -- financial fraud detection. Their finance product is really mature and quite powerful. Not sure how big the market for it is though. They'll probably do well in other types of research areas, think tanks, large news agencies, etc. They'll definitely have to start to push out into non-US governments though to survive. But from my experience, just due to funding differences, other governments are far more stingy with their purchases.
- orp 16y ago
  Can they do real time? They sound like a batch oriented system, and the financial fraud market is all about real time.
  - elblanco 16y ago
    I don't know. All of the demonstrations I've ever seen have been forensic (after the fact) investigations. They spent a bit of time at the last conference trying to build a case for why their government product would be a great network security tool, but I never saw or heard anything that would indicate it could be used as a real-time tool. Their focus recently seems to be on scale, lots of spin on how they can cluster and use billions of records on commodity hardware, link together installs at different sites, etc. etc. They did a demonstration of and investigation into the housing crash by analyzing millions of mortgage applications, then built aggregate bar charts and heat maps they could drill into a bit. It was "ok". I think if they are serious about penetrating the network security market, they'll need all new technology that can be used in real time. But they seem to already be well regarded in financial fraud as a post event investigation tool.