Re McAfee: "The competitor also happens to be the incumbent and is currently providing 100k copies of encryption s/w to the buyer. They're naturally putting up a fight to keep this business, but ironically they're doing this by "practically giving away" their SED management product, thereby commmoditizing that and possibly jeopardizing the pricing of their bread-and-butter FDE s/w products." - New Wave
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64540727
Three observations:
1. Incumbents price their competing products to zero but can still make money off their existing software product set. This is the old MS strategy and it is effective and also anti-competitive.
2. Wave's solution scares them into slicing their pricing.
3. Customers - either for reasons of caution or because they value their existing relationships - have been willing to give the incumbent security software providers time to develop competing solutions.
One conclusion:
Wave has a highly competitive SED product but incumbents have the ability to undermine Wave's pricing and to get their customers to delay their decisions. At the same time, zero pricing is a desperate measure and sends a signal - the zero-pricing company's product isn't worth so much. In a challenging environment in which CEOs are exposed, the zero-price defense may prove less successful than it has done. The damage to reputation, the risk of data loss and business disruption are likely fast becoming greater risks than the cost of purchasing the premiere solution.
One hypothesis:
I'm leaning towards a logjam rather than a molasses theory of Wave's future. If the elastic of zero pricing breaks, then there isn't much left to hold Wave back.
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