Another Globes article:
globes.co.il
Wednesday, Nov 10, 1999 Sun-Thu at 18:00 (GMT+2)
High Tech Features
Johnson Pushes BackWeb
By Ronny Lifschitz
BackWeb Marketing Vice President Todd Johnson gets stressed when asked whether talks are in progress with Intel, one of BackWeb's minority shareholders. He is aware of Intel's shopping spree in Israel, and apparently also of the local weakness where selling companies is concerned.
"There are all sort of contacts", Johnson demurs, and goes on to explain. "The American definition of success is to construct a company worth billions of dollars". That means that BackWeb, with a current market value of $1.033 billion, is still not up for sale.
On the contrary, as things stand, Johnson is making every effort to elevate the BackWeb share, which in recent months has climbed from a low of $16 to its present $27 level.
Johnson, 36, recently joined BackWeb, after leaving his post of senior vice president for all-products marketing at Silicon Graphics. Now in charge of BackWeb's business strategy, he defined its latest initiative: an aggressive marketing campaign designed to brand the Push technology as a de facto Internet infrastructure standard in the e-commerce era.
This actually means the branding of BackWeb by sending the market messages that revolve around an existing technology, on the basis of a series of new products and services that BackWeb supplies to various US conglomerates, some of them old and some very prestigious indeed.
As far as the share is concerned, Johnson will have his work cut out for him. Since being launched in June 1999, the BackWeb share has fluctuated wildly. Its first trading day ended at a price of $20 per share, whereupon it immediately plunged to $16. Later, the BackWeb share emerged as a restless, independent entity. At the beginning of July, it shot up to $30, rested there for a few days, then hit a record $35.
To reach his target, Johnson will have to nurture the share and jack its price up to more than $100.
The successful installation of the products with Cisco, Compaq, Hewlett Packard and Deloitte & Touche found expression in a 156% increase in last quarter sales, amounting to $6.2 million (compared to $2.4 million in Q3 1998). BackWeb is now firmly resolved to integrate into the information industry's principal growth engine, namely e-commerce infrastructure. This is no longer a matter of simply streamlining decentralized organizations. This has to do with business between partners and services rendered by large portals to their end users.
"Globes": Are you going back to the kind of portals that communicate with private surfers?
Johnson: "US West, the communications company of the western United States (excluding California), provides 13 million subscribers with its Internet access service. They install our systems in order to provide customers with electronic voice-mail via the Internet. The pilot project will take place in December, and at the beginning of 2000 the service will be extended to customers. We also made a deal with Ericsson's partner YPay, which provides free Internet access service in return for advertisement viewing, and we are talking with a few other Internet service providers".
Where is BackWeb heading?
"BackWeb and Push will be part of Internet infrastructure. They will be a de facto component of Internet".
How do you navigate a company with its development center in Ramat Gan and its management in San Francisco?
"On the contrary, if BackWeb had its management in Israel, I would not have come to the company at all. The Israelis cannot build a large Internet company. You must understand how it works. All my personal friends, in San Francisco, are senior people and industry leaders. These things are so important for business, but if I were to sit here, I could not utilize these contacts from a distance.
"There are other reasons why it is economic for BackWeb to keep its development team in Israel. Israeli engineering expertise in communications and security no longer needs mentioning, and the fact that the engineers are at a distance from Silicon Valley assure me that it will be harder to steal them and tempt them to switch to a rival company. Of course, nobody actually says this. It can be gauged from dryer statements. For example, employees here are more loyal to their company than US employees".
Published by Israel's Business Arena November 10, 1999
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