Cash for Video?

Barack,
Cash for Clunkers... interesting program. Many think its a great program. I'd have to say, the way its structured is totally debatable.

But..really...whats your agenda? Is it to spur the economy? is it to yet again help the auto makers? or is it to help the environment?

I say, lets take $1B (heck, to government types $1B is chump change) and lets to a Cash for Video program. $4500 per video conferencing room as an immediate refund right from the US government. I tell you Barack, it would be enormous ROI for everyone involved.

Let me throw some math your way. If I have a car that gets 18mpg and I upgrade to one that gets 36mpg and lets say I drive 10K miles per year and lets assume gas at $3 per gallon. At 18mpg, its 555 gallons or $1666 per year. Double the gas mileage and I'm at 277 gallons per year or $833 per year. Its a savings of $833 per year.

But, give me $4500 to build a video conferencing room and if I just use it one day per week for one meeting with 8 people. Lets say its a regional busines and we drive to meetings. If its 8 people and say 100 miles each, its 800 miles a week. Do that meeting 50x a year and we're at 40,000 miles. Say we're still drivig 18mpg cars..thats $6666 of gas. Even if we have 36mpg cars...that $3333 of gas per year. That makes my savings 400% greater than the cash for clunkers program. And thats all from just one meeting held weekly.

Imagine if we were uniting people cross country? What if we were having multiple meetings per week? The ROI just increases. The decrease in the amount of energy use. And not to mention the amount of CO2 produced.

Barack, you're certainly the most hip and trendy President I've seen..and you're certainly the most technological. This should be a no brainer. Or..I know you like to play basketball...that makes it an easy lay up.

Lets spend tax dollars wisely.

jeff

Andy Miller

I've only heard a few things so far about Andy. Mostly that he's been spending time figuring out the company. I know that down in the trenches... there have been a lot of what ifs. There are some that are just tired of the every two year sales team shakeups. But..I did talk to a mid level sales manager that so far wasn't concerned at all.

Whatever the sentiment of everyone is, if Andy is going to deliver for the board and the stockholders, he's going to have to formulate a plan and start to execute. I'm sure that part of that plan is going to changing out of mid to high level sales management. It might even mean re-organization

I suspect it will happen pretty soon. The last sales SVP kept his first major changes to 1 year in..and then the second set at 2 years in. I honestly believe that the best course is to make your changes immediately as you then have the most amount of time to execute.

But..the problem also comes with the fact that most Polycom customers feel that Polycom is a revolving door. They either have not seen their sales rep in years... or their sales rep changes every six months.

Criticism, Cyncism, and or just spitefulness

I just want to set the record straight... I'm not a cynic and I'm not spiteful. I hope the best for the entire UC industry. All of them..including Polycom. I'll have to agree...lately I've had a lot of barbs for Polycom. Its not emotion... its just honest criticism.

And its exactly what Polycom and the others need. Too many people get emotional about business... about the companies..about the products. I learned long ago with Novell, that people actualy get product religion. And anything you say bad about their "company"; you either are the enemy or you just dont get it.

Bad things I say against Polycom...are really.. wow...look at this problem, here's how it could have been handled differently..and here's how they could have succeeded.

The UC industry has been an industry of ups and downs. Look at PictureTel. If the right people would have been involved, if the right people could have made suggestions, if the right people would have listened...that company would still be in business and might have turned into the "Cisco" of the UC industry. But..all those things didn't happen and look what occured.. they died and the carcass was bought by Polycom. It was all avoidable.

Thats partly why this blog is here.

Economic Tidbit

This has nothing to do with video...but I thought it was interesting.

I was in Eastern Montana about a week ago..driving back home... and the railroad tracks paralleled the road. For nearly five miles there were parked cars. Not a train sitting...but cars in storage. 3-4 miles were just multi-modal cars..and then a mile or so of bulk material cars (grain, sand, whatever).

I had heard alot of mothballled planes...I get that one... but I was amazed to see rail cars and so many. there had to be thousands of them. The answer I guess is the US is consuming a lot less and less is being shipped.

Definitely a very leading indicator is when they put these cars back into service.

Rumors still flying about TAA

Confirmation of some of my earlier posts:

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/07/16/62456/silver-lake-swooping-for-tandberg/

Silver Lake as well as TPG would certiainly make the most sense as potential acquriers. And I still think an interesting combo would be Avaya + TAA. I'm not talking the NBA dream team here...but more of..hey, those are the peices available and they do fit.

Lets keep watching and I'll certainly share all I hear.

BTW...I have also heard further rumblings about PLCM being bought. Maybe the HP rumor I started might come true. Or...maybe the Cisco giant will wake up and do something? (although they're busying laying off peole this week)

It would explain the sudden rise in PLCM share price lately.

Q2: TAA vs. PLCM

TAA continues to outmaneuver its leading competitor PLCM

Revenue of $204.5MUSD which is 5% y/y growth

Profit of $43MUSD which is 4.3% y/y growth

This is particularily interesting a iIn 2Q09, TANDBERG sold 15,663 endpoint units compared with 16,483 endpoint units in the same quarter last year, a 5% year-on-year decrease (a 4% increase excluding OEM units). Revenue from network products grew 25%, and service revenues grew 22% year-on-year. They grew the business while selling less units...which means their focus on infrastrucutre and upselling is working.

Polycom on the other hand

Revenue of $230M which is a negative 15% y/y growth

Profit of $15.3M which is a negative 15% y/y growth

--  70 percent video solutions, or $161.7 million (56 percent video     communications, or $128.7 million, and 14 percent network systems, or $33.0     million); and --  30 percent voice communications, or $69.0 million.

I was too busy yesterday to catch the earnings call..so I don't have the # of endpoints sold.

which...who makes AP headlines like "Polycom shares climb after strong 2Q results" ??? Sure, they beat their forecast...but thats such old school logic and so manipulative. Its so unfortunate that you can see PLCM slowly dying.

World's biggest NON-secret revealed...

I think we all knew this... Any Miller is going to Polycom

http://www.polycom.com/company/news_room/press_releases/2009/20090701.html

I heard about this 3-4 months ago that this was in the works... it pretty much hit crescendo two weeks ago at Infocomm. Where...just about everyone was joking around about it.

So, what does it mean for Polycom? Not sure. Andy certainly is a hard charger. but..will he get the support behind him from Mike & Bob and the patience from Mike & Bob. That has been the killer of all people before him. Its not like David or Kim were not hard chargers either. Both were passionate and very smart and dedicated... they both had plans on where to move the sales organization and what they needed out of the rest of the company to make it happen. But...they only received partial support.

So... Andy starts on the job soon... but, unfortunately for Andy, his timer also started up and he probably has 24 months before the rumors of him leaving start to surface. I really don't think it matters how good or how bad he performs... past lessons say that his expiration date label has already been printed.