I understand your perspective. I still am trying to rationalize Q1. I can't go all Thailand on that.
There was a moment at some point where SKS said something to the effect of ... acquisition > training > ready to hit the field again.
Somehow one has to get all the way from Q3 or Q4 new billings all the way down to Q1 new billings (sans BP) and not describe it as nothing more than a collapse of their products.
O.K. 1. There was Dell, and that is costing them dearly, and I support the notion that this may well be transient, lowering the fee for ESC (mostly non-users) and raising the fee for TDM etc (users) will pay off if transition actually occurs. Taking 25 cents off of the volume item and replacing it with dollars of the lower volume item. It doesn't take a huge transition to recover that gap.
O.K. 2. Maybe some deals delayed over SEDs availability. Garter is not shy about calling Wave a one-trick (SED) pony. (this was pre-safend). But, seeing that their all important up-front cash deals are all depenedne ton SED volumes, I'll acccept some sales problems there.
So 1) Dell royalties down 2) no big deals - blame it on Thailand.
Still, on my abacus (pulled it from the smoker, took the fish of, its a little sticky now) I can't make reported numbers explain it using 1 and 2 from above.
So, how bout 3. Perhaps this "training" etc was really a more significant integration effort than they had "forecast". So while SKS indicated sales had been redeployed Q1, he hedged and said he expects ROeffort in Q2. He was excited about Q2 (and this was back at the annual CC not the Q1 CC).
So, as a temp Wave apologist, I'm willing to pretend that sales staff simply was not in Frankfurt or Dubai or Chicago ... they were in Granlibakken ( http://www.granlibakken.com/ ) *learning* and *retooling* and not selling.
So, with items 1, 2 and 3 ... I can then explain Q1.
Any Q2 surge is item 3 IMO. If so, that restores the forever DigWorshiped below 8k sales, and makes my gooey abacus much more pleasant to work with.
But seriously, 20-40% QtoQ?
And yes, as you mentioned ... they will require events Q3.
The claim is they will bag some Samsung revs this year (prev notions of mine of SamDevRev dismissed).
It is my experience that while America claims the mantle of innovation, on items that you don't covet but might need, EU is quicker (Safety, Security, Compliance, Identity). The culture simply accepts some costs more readily.
So who knows, maybe a significant Sierra hiatus and refresh cost more than expected, and the rebound is rapid.
I don't have parking lot photos, I don't know, and where I in Granlibakken, I doubt I would have had the discipline to notice.
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