1)
"- Olson says that customers are coming to them through AWS/Emersent/Carbonix saying they have the manual/automated drones or data capture technology but don't have a platform to process/interpret all that data so you have wonder why a utility worth 10s billions would be fussed about a $1-2m budget to leverage all that data which in itself would have cost quite a lot to capture"
That is not how large organisations work, in particular, as regards to procurement.
Until very, very recently, Digital twins, Lidar, Saas, AI, Analytics, were not even on the road map of these large organisations, let alone appearing as a budgeted item with funds to be allocated in a fiscal year. They have only just awoken to the leverage that such facilities can provide to their extensive operations. There is a step change occurring worldwide in these large organisations as they come to terms with the possibilities offered by these services to their operations and hence to their cost base.
What Ian is at pains to point out in the Raas interview is that currently, no one/single vendor in that space has provided that single compelling service that the large organisations can seamlessly bolt into their systems of operation to solve ALL the immediate pain points of their various divisions. Not only that, a single power utility (say FPL) can present multiple clients to 3DP – each with their own set of needs. But again, what we’re speaking of here are just about the provision of technical solutions for each pain point. There’s been no mention (here) of the commercial arrangements that would need to be in place in order to service those needs. And all these technical/commercial issues are just for one customer (with multiple divisional clients) in just one target industry vertical (in this case, US Power utilities).
But the collective systems on offer by the various vendors have had to grow adaptively for each client division of each customer in each vertical in response to client feedback. The customer managements (and Ian says this) are demanding that, while the customer goes about organising their own multi-year programs, the various vendors should go and collaborate and come up with expanded and tailored solutions to fit their individual needs. Hence the collegiate solutions being offered by the various vendors such as Emesent, Carbonix, IKEGPS, Pointerra et al. According to Ian, the customers are saying “we want your collective solutions, but do you have the capacity to service our needs?”.
2)
"The only upside seems to be Amazon, ......if this is as ground breaking as they say it is, it should have progressed irrespective of internal restructures."
That is not how large organisations work.
3) "I believe those utilities currently have not committed to any spend, and the hope is that they will sign up by 1Q"
You may be right. We shall see.
3DP Price at posting:
4.1¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held