Hello All,
I can't believe that we are not seeing more talk and traffic on this thread ... this is great news!
There are several parts of this release which contain some *very* good news ...
> The Company also received $20 million in gross proceeds in late
> December 1999 from private placements of its common stock with an
> affiliate of GE Capital and three other investors. The funds are
> earmarked for the Company's expansion and launch of its
> applications Service Provider (ASP) business.
The ASP area - outsourcing of software services - is becoming a huge trend in the industry. I believe that many of the people who would consider the conferencing product, might be hesitant to install, support, and maintain the servers themselves. It sounds like WPNE is going to solve this for them ... the are going to become an ASP providing outsourced voice/video conferencing services ... very powerful.
> "With the market now embracing Internet communications, we are
> finding ourselves ideally positioned to leverage our technological
> lead by investing in a business model that will enable ISPs,
> portals, and businesses to rapidly and easily enhance their own
> businesses with integrated visual communications over the
> Internet," Mr. Caballero continued.
And this is also on target ... the voice/video over IP market is growing ... more and more users on higher-bandwidth links ... the market is starting to take form ...
> "The market is ready for integrated visual communications, but
> enterprises and portals are not necessarily ready nor able to
> provide the infrastructure necessary to get the deployment off the
> ground rapidly. We believe our years of experience in developing
> and managing video communications over the Internet make us ideally
> suited for hosting these types of applications."
This is a great move for the company ... it now extends their offering beyond just selling a software solution to a customer, but instead sounds like they are going to be able to sell the *service* ...
> -- Shortly after the close of the fourth quarter, White Pine
> announced several changes to its Board of Directors. Arthur Bruno
> retired from his post as Chairman, and Killko Caballero, the
> Company's CEO and President, was appointed to replace Mr. Bruno.
> Joseph J. Esposito was appointed to the board of directors. Mr.
> Esposito was the President and CEO of Tribal Voice, a provider of
> instant messaging, interactive communications and online community
> solutions, until he effected the sale of the company to CMGI late
> in 1999.
This is also a very important appointment ... Tribal Voice is an extremely innovative company with their PowWow product, and they were driven by a vision that was centered around enhanced Internet communications. I'm sure that Mr. Esposito will bring a huge amount of knowledge and advice to the company in this space ...
Still *Long* on WPNE ... ;-)
Scott C. Lemon |
