Over the last two years you seem to have shifted focus from PC centric communications to mobile centric communications. What opportunities do you see on the mobile side?
Many of our customers are mobile operators as well. So unifying the user experience across desktop and mobile is a big opportunity for us. Apart from the service providers we also have our OEM partners like Nortel collaborating with us across our desktop and mobile product offerings.
You have invested in FMC and handover technologies through the Firsthand and Bridgeport acquisitions. What are the prospects of handover technologies once wireless broadband becomes ubiquitous?
The FMC and handover technologies turn the Internet into a large roaming network. That is very valuable for a service provider. It also enables a service provider to offload a lot of voice traffic over to IP. So from a service provider standpoint there are several benefits at this stage. This kind of technology also facilitates a lot of new wireless data services.
How far have the Firsthand and Bridgeport acquisitions been assimilated into your other product lines? And are there going to be further acquisitions?
We have had two new deployments that involve 3 of the 4 solutions acquired by us. So the integration of the acquired solutions has been satisfactory. There are more things we can enable through a more tighter integration: things like mobile centrex and widgets for various features. We are working on those bits. We were partners with these companies before we acquired them. We validated the prospects of joint products with our existing customers prior to the acquisitions.
On the acquisitions front, making three acquisitions in nine months is a huge task. We grew from 50 people to 150 within a year. So we have to be careful. But if they make sense and they have interesting solutions around mobile, identity, presence, and they add value to our existing customer base and strategy, we are prepared to consider. But it is not going to be our big focus for the next two quarters.
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