Forum Topics DSE Q2 24 trading update
Solvetheriddle
Added 4 months ago

DROPSUITE 2Q trading update.

Strong numbers. ARR +30% yoy, and paid customers up 25% yoy. Churn reducing back to normal <3>

Cashflow looked much better, 2H is traditionally stronger. (Dec y/e).

Comments from the call.

CEO mentioned several new products, and on every call there seems to be something new, I suspect DSE is following customers and attempting new things to see which gain traction. Fair enough.

Not-for-profit targeted in NA, this is a big area eg Churches, offering a small discount to get business. ARPU was weak in the last quarter due in part to NFP adds and also more sales to clients without add-ons (eg storage). Management says to focus on profitable ARR not Arpu.

CRWD incident only increases the awareness of proper backup. DSE has transparency on the number of customers on its partners' books that use back-up at all and those that don’t. over 80% don’t, that is the opportunity.

The dynamic nature of the business is a bit disconcerting for me and it probably means a few “suck it and see” instances for product launches. GTM and product development remain the focus to drive ARR.

Progress continues to be good


Held.

18
edgescape
Added 4 months ago

I have been keeping my Windows desktop images on Oracle Object Storage as protection against crashes from failed updates too. The note below from Oracle is one way creating windows image on object storage.

https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/secure-desktops/windows-image.htm

And you can store without doing the imaging steps which are needed only for running the image in a cloud VM instance.

Point is that there are lots of storage choices and alternatives for things like this other than Dropsuite. So the crowdstrike thesis on backup storage is not clear cut.

I think there are other ways of playing the crowdstrike thesis.

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Solvetheriddle
Added 4 months ago

@edgescape what you write is probably true, but, not being a tech person, the above is also beyond my understanding. many punters will buy a solution an "expert" sells to them. if they muck around with it they risk blowing up...with no recourse

an analogy that I know, is my old industry funds management, i see many retail punters invested with FM's i think are not institutional grade and would not be interested in at all, yet those FM are big in retail land...they are good and effective sellers and have distribution tied up.

The conclusion is DSE's relationship with the partners and the ability to sell into the underlying client base (SME too busy to be an expert on tech security) is critical. its a big market.

9
edgescape
Added 4 months ago

@Solvetheriddle Only clarifying that I had an issue about DSE or any other backup service being an important component to the Crowdstrike crash.

Because at the end of the day everything usually depends on how you can "survive" an outage as opposed to "recover" from an outage, and I don't think relying on backups is the way to go.

I could spend a whole new thread on disaster recovery and outage avoidance but I would rather someone else do it here and not just me.

No doubt a third party backup like what DSE offers has some value in terms of keeping backups redundant. But it is probably not my preferred play for the Crowdstrike outage.

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