Jocko...anytime brudda. I posted the following on SH and feel its important enough to post here. Enjoy...
It's not often that you get a chance to pin down the CEO for a good question and answer period. IMHO, Owen Jones Wallstreet Reporter
interview is a MUST for all Sydsters. Since some can't download Real Networks "Real Player", I did a rough transcription and it follows
below.
Makamai
Summary of Owen Jones interview by www.wallstreetreporter.com
Interviewer is Steve Delucia (sp?) of the Wallstreet Reporter.
1. Describe your background and company history:
A. 17 years in high tech industries (8 years on the tech side, 4 years for a large Canadian co, next 7 years in sales/marketing with large
companies like IBM, last 4 years on public side with SYD).
B. Owen and his partner Grant Sutherland took over a troubled company, gave it a sound foundation, financed it and re-invented it as an
E-Commerce corp.
C. One of our best accomplishments was recruiting a high profile president for the Head Office for Operations, Jim Speros, located in
Herndon Va. This is the center of high tech on the eastern seaboard and close to SYD's major corporate partners Oracle, IBM, AT&T and
SAIC. Jim Speros brings tremendous visibility to SYD. He is a superbowl champ w/Washington Redskins, been in real estate, restraint
business, football team ownership - is a great organizer and financier.
D. Chairman Grant Sutherland brings 25 years of successful merger/acquisition experience.
E. First field office being opened up in San Jose California, so they can keep close technical ties with their partners Oracle, SUN, AT&T and
IBM in that area.
2. Could you give more details on your products/services:
A. SYD is a development company. Efforts are focused on the center of E-Commerce, Customer Service and Customer Care.
B. Our first product, Dr Bean, focuses on the Customer Care arena. It is developed in JAVA for broad compliance on any vendors hardware
platform/operating system. That's why we can work with different manufacturers such as Oracle, Sun and IBM.
C. We are researching the market place E-Commerce arena (Auction environment such as E-Bay, Bid.com) and also the investor community
where the entire community can be involved in discussing a stock, for example, rather than a one on one.
3. Can you give us more detail on the functionality of Dr. Bean.
A. Dr Bean intention is to allow a consumer to get as much info as easy as possible when they go to an e-commerce site. There is a direct
connection with a CRS - who can chat, push out info, can sync screens so they are looking at same info, can pull them through the
E-commerce site.. Also added a lot of intelligent functionality into the system. If after hours, for example, a customer can leave an E-mail that
is resolved intelligently by the software, the end result being to get a fast turn around back to the customer. Also setting up search engines,
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)s, etc. Trying to develop a whole environment of information that the consumer can get at quickly.
4. Where is the company today as far as rolling out the product commercially.
A. Started development 2 years ago. Started to do evaluations in BETA with live customers 4 to 6 months ago. Just started to do
installations and are doing about 4 a week at the present time. Its fairly broad. Going into retail base customers (Driveaustrailia.com)
Austrailias largest travel business group. Also in corporations internally as a help desk dealing with different departments, in Call centers in
deployment, in procurement systems in US Government, broadly accepted in all categories. That's why customer care is so integral to
E-Commerce. Regardless of the market of the use of the internet, really need a high level of support. What that means is that there is a huge
market for Dr. Bean.
5. What would you estimate as the potential for that market going forward.
A. Right now, this year, you can categorize it in two areas - two important numbers in those areas potential in revenues and number of users.
In large companies, enterprise companies, there is about 3 billion in revenues at stake and about 7,000 companies. And 2 billion in software
sale revenues in small to medium companies 1.2 million companies. What's staggering about it is that we are going to see a title wave of
requests for first time deployment of customer care coming sometime soon after the Y2K issue is dealt with beginning in January of 2,000.
You'll see the budget shifting over and the demand is going to be exponential.
6. When we look at the competitive landscape, what sets SYD apart from the competition.
A. There are about 55 companies developing in our state. The majority of them are legacy systems which are older systems based on older
technology. There are about 5 companies that have good products. What sets us apart is First, we focused on developing our product with
Sun Technology in JAVA. Second, integrating our product with the major companies E-commerce applications that is IBM and Oracle. It is a
very difficult and very very comprehensive task to integrate these care systems into a very complex environment which a few years ago only
lets say banks and institutions would consider having. We've done all that and that sets us apart. It gives us preferred or most favored
status with IBM and Oracle. The reason we did that, is because it gives us access to their channels and between IBM, Oracle and SUN, it
gives us about 28,000 resellers of their products. That sets us apart. No other company in our state has done that. We believe that with a
product that is as compatible as ours based on the JAVA technology, and that channel, we can reach and gain and we are shooting for a
market share of over 50% in our state.
7. As we look ahead into the coming year and beyond, what do you see are the major challenges and opportunities for the company.
A. On the Technology side, keeping pace with the direction being dictated by SUN and technology communication partners of SUN. I think
AT&T is the leader in that area. Keeping pace with their direction is why we are opening the San Jose office to on a daily basis to keep our
product synchronized with their direction.
B. The other challenge is the growth challenge. How do we deal with this demand that is coming. How do we install and support this
bursting demand We do have answers for that. One answer is the channels from the sales point of view. Such as IBM and Oracle. The other
is our partnering with SAIC. They have 40,000 employees. They are an integrator. Agreements with SAIC, they are going to, under contract
with us, provide a tremendous amount of integration services so we can very rapidly deploy our product to a broad base of customers. So
we've seen the challenges and we have solutions to them.
8. Certainly we've seen a lot of growth and changes within the internet, if we look out a couple years from now, what do you see as the
environment and what do you see as your companies roll within that.
A. I think we've done such a good job partnering, that I think we are going to be an integral part of the direction of the internet in
E-Commerce. We are part of the founding membership in E-Commerce. We are part of what's called the ASP organization - Application
Service Providers We are virtually the only small company in the same domain as IBM, Oracle, Compact and Microsoft. We see being part of
that group and that group is definitely developing the internet. I'll call it an Internet 2 appearing within market place. It will be a more secure
environment. It will be an environment where you can more easily move through the internet to buy product. That's what the
telecommunication and computing giants are working on. They are focused on the internet becoming the major part of commerce in the
Americas and we are well positioned to
be part of it.
9. What would you say to a potential investor interested in buying shares in your company.
A. Well, we've done what we said we were going to do. We've said we are going to take this small company, center it on the internet, build
real technology, give ourselves a position in the market with our partners in a timeframe and we've done that.
B. Look at the management team that we are assembling and our partnerships very strongly associated.
C. Look at the marketplace. It's the best marketplace in history - the internet E-commerce. Its an expanding and growing market place. It's a
tremendous opportunity for a small companies if they do the right things to be a tremendous investment opportunity. And that's what
SIDEWARE represents.
D. We are also at this time a relative inexpensive investment compared to companies like AOL, E-BAYs, that are trading much higher today.
We are at the present time a Vancouver based company but we have done a tremendous amount of restructuring to move the company to
the states and to be represented on a US exchange sometime in the near future. We are a good investment for and emerging high tech
company.
10. If people want more information about the company, who can they talk to?
A. They can call the company and ask for Rick Simpson.
B. They can go to www.techwest.com
C. They can go to our storefront www.sideware.com
D. They can see Dr. Bean at www.bnti.com |
