Did I like that he and his Apollo partner were giving what seemed like smirks while talking about this? No, but give John credit for addressing the topic without a question from the audience to set up addressing the elephant in the room.
I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough about all the biz units to know how competitive Intrado is in each category. I do know that I use some of the products we build or resell on a daily basis and that experience is not encouraging. There are usually much better products on the market and often at a cheaper price point too.
Lots of talk about UCaaS and even some rather dismissive talk of a younger, more aggressive competitor or two in that space. Maybe Intrado is selling UCaaS to mostly the biggest of big enterprises and the offering makes sense for that customer base. But the people I talk to in mid-large size companies are not even considering Intrado (OK, West) for UCaaS. Intrado/West is not even on their radar.
The transformation of moving from a holding company to an operating company? This makes sense if you can execute on consolidating the product lines and make the consolidated product better than the previous products were individually on their own. (Or you can k–l off the competition by scooping it all up. Good luck with that one.) The consolidated product strategy is extremely difficult to do. Look at the track record of well known tech companies attempting this magic trick. There are far more failures than successes on that front. Intrado is trying to do it with a lot of acquisitions. I think Apollo is figuring out what makes sense to keep/consolidate, what makes sense to sell on its own, and what needs to go away. They'll likely get more aggressive as we draw closer to year 3.
Good post from @10hCydLS-1bog, deserved to be on top.