Good post, CC. Further thoughts:
Don't forget that Net Shepherd, especially through its acquisition of Chronologic, is involved in systems integration. Specifically it has positioned itself as a strong MS Exchange systems implementer. This product fits some of the verbiage NS's president used to describe its goals as well. It is high margin business, which is good, but does little to differentiate NS from many others in the field. Let's say at the least if they are good at it (and they seem to be successful) it will finance their other growth.
I'm interested in NS for its own products for collaboration and community building, which is where Answer.com fits. It will take great strategic thinking to find how to really leverage Answer.com (why did ideaLab! never really go anywhere big with this? Too busy with other things? Not interested in the execution/operational aspects?), and then all that stands in the way of success is execution...and I hope NS is brilliant.
I have great respect for ideaLab!, and as I said, one of the things that really holds me to this stock is that ideaLab! traded one of its stable not for cash - which it would have if all it wanted was out - but for shares. You don't do this if you don't believe in the gestalt.
FWIW, Business Intelligence is a term that is applied in IT to data analyis and reporting (esp. analysis, as in Cognos' Impromptu and PowerPlay, which pretty much defined the market), and is often related to data warehousing. Though it would look like it could mean business research (as in Answer.com), this would be a non-standard definition. I'd like to know more about what Net Shepherd means by it.
I'd like confirmation that ideaLab! has a position on NS's board; that would really seal for me the value of this whole deal. I'm going to try to contact IR to get a copy of the transcript of the AGM, which could tell me many things.
Thanks again for the research.
WUWT |
