We want to develop the most innovative product we can, and if that means we need to produce a large solution over a number of years we won’t be reluctant to go ahead, provided we believe in the product. We will incur a greater commercial risk but we also end up with a product that is much more difficult for competitors to emulate. We have a product which has a longer lifecycle with the potential to become a valuable asset.
Malone
What have you found to be the most successful element of your marketing mix used for Lync Software?
Welsby
Place—the biggest challenge is access to the market. Our partnering strategy has already delivered benefits by giving us the credibility of a blue-chip client base while allowing us to learn from these customers. For example, Lync Software recently undertook an audit for a major Australian organisation which quantified the extent of the USB control problem—we identified more than 1800 security breaches in just 10 days.
Welsby
How important is profitability when it comes to designing QMSoftware’s growth strategy?
Malone
There is a fine balance between managing investment in infrastructure and maximising profits. The question is how big an enterprise do you need to create to maximise profits from a product?
The answer will of course be different for different market sectors. We believe in small efficient business, not small profits, and we think that our largest infrastructure cost will be support and that this can be easily defined, if not easily managed.
Fortunately our system is very scalable; in fact we can run the entire system on a USB memory stick including the Cache database which is identical to that which runs the New York Stock Exchange, so we have parallel markets that can be exploited at very low cost.
We also have product to secure laptop data—this is another sector that is not a traditional data backup market that has enormous potential.
We are still coming to terms with what kind of infrastructure will be required for the company. One thing is certain, and that is we are in a growth market and profitability should not be our biggest concern.
Malone
How would you judge market penetration for your products to date compared with opportunity and marketing efforts you have planned to achieve further growth?
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