country bob->"Comments suggesting that IWG won't go anywhere...

country bob->"Comments suggesting that IWG won't go anywhere until they get access to US Govt contracts have been made many times over the last couple of years. Have they been put to rest now?"

iWebGate won the Global Security Challenge back in 2010, and part of that prize was direct sales exposure to the US DoD Technical Support Working Group (TSWG). One of the reasons I was initially so negative on IWG was the fact that they had this much coveted right to tender directly to the TSWG market, but had not achieved anything with it. How can a company have access to customers who have a purchasing position which is close to "money no object for the right product," and with very little in the way of competition, and yet not have made an absolute killing? Something not right.

This agreement has not opened any new doors in that respect. All it has done is move the responsibility for selling the iWebGate products to US Federal Government from iWebGate themselves to another company. It is just another "outsourcing of sales" and hence "outsourcing of profits" type of agreement. If they had a product which flew off the shelves then they could just sit back and watch the cash roll in while others do all the sales work. Shame they do not have that type of product.

country bob->"Surely our friends Hoyt and Wagg won't be able to claim that the people at Bluetech are just being sucked in like everyone else."

Sucked into what? Blue Tech do not appear to have paid any money up front for this agreement. It is not like they handed over a pile of cash to buy the exclusive rights to sell iWebGate's products. It is a revenue-share and licencing-fee-on-sales agreement. Blue Tech have not been sucked into anything.

In fact, as far as I can see it is a deal which would suit Blue Tech rather nicely. Add the iWebGate products to their portfolio and if they sell, Blue Tech cream off the profits. If they do not sell, "well, it was worth a try, not much lost, let us move on." Blue Tech appear to have taken on the same amount of risk as Telstra in Australia: a bit of time invested up front, but that is about it. The rather stupid thing from iWebGate's perspective appears to be that it is an exclusive deal. If Blue Tech can not get easy sales and lose interest, iWebGate can not just go to someone else and give them a similar contract. Is that smart?

To me it is the usual IWG press release. Plenty of fluff and promises, and even a trading halt, but no actual substance. The big number this time round was "$22 billion". $22 billion! They got it in 4 times too. But how much of it will iWebGate ever see?