Hi tprchris, I'm not at all concerned about spookfish. I...

Hi tprchris,

I'm not at all concerned about spookfish. I actually believe SFI's presence is a positive for NEA. But to understand my point here, we need to digress a bit and look at the visual analytics and Big Data markets, both of which are undergoing incredible growth. Simply put, the market is growing much faster than any impact SFI will have on NEA's share in $ terms. SFI will actually help to grow the market pie but will not be just a pure discount price operator because they will have the financial disadvantage of having to amortise about $20m in development costs (yep...need to get a reasonable ROI). Discount pricing models work well at the retail level but less so for corporate/enterprise as they prefer more specific customer features and services. So NEA's big contracts are not going to automatically jump across to SFI just because of pricing.

But we still have yet to see what the real product/price differential is for SFI. If its largely the same product but offered at a cheaper price, then NEA can play that game and, being the incumbent, will likely win. SFI's product has to be "at least twice as good at a 25% discount" (kfann; 29 April 2016, arm waving best guess on Hot Copper) to have any possible impact on NEA. And maybe they do....but I cant find anyone who can verify this for me.

Another reason why I like SFI around is....the competitive grudge match! Its great! Here we have 2 opposing teams who really do hate each other. 4 years ago, I was concerned that NEA was shelving their 3D initiatives as I saw this as this as the only real weakness in keeping ahead/abreast of competition. So SFI have help spur NEA back into this and will be able to role out product by the end of the year to existing customers. Competition has always been good for companies....but don't forget, Australia just absolutely thrives on Duopolies. So no concern in this area.

And anyway, the Aussi visual analytics market is not really what NEA's value proposition is about. It's US/global...but more and more it'll become a proposition about Big Data valuations. Who owns the biggest/best data sets. In that regard, NEA is insurmountably ahead of SFI.

Cheers,