Well after 4 years under the "leadership" of Swainson and his CA lackeys, the writing on the wall is pretty clear. He succeeded in turning 5 billion in acquisitions into a 2 billion dollar org what Dell now wants nothing to do with. If you think Francisco is going to watch the trend continue, then you really have no idea how VCs work. They're looking to increase their investment, not decrease. Thanks to the DSG "leadership", sales has been AFU for a couple of years now so two things have to happen - sales has to increase and costs have to be cut. They're going to have to increase headcount to build things like HR, legal, ... so the only way to cut costs is to cut existing headcount. All that is left is R&D, sales, and marketing. They need sales and marketing to grow a pair and bring in some revenue. That only leaves R&D as a place to cut. Given the expansive portfolio of products, that means that any products that don't meet a profit bogie number are on the block. Math is math and numbers don't lie.
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"Ah, your grace forgetteth again. He always scourgeth me, when thou dost fail in thy lessons." ~ The Prince and The Pauper
Quest on a collision course with the ground. Inside sales guys are clueless about technology and serving their customers. The bloated, process-bound campaign and web team are largely the-blind-leading-the-blind trying generating real sales-ready leads. The strides made by product management to shift from on-prem products to SaaS were wiped away during the November layoffs. Perhaps Jeff "The Bison Slayer" Hawn has a vision to put things on track but it doesn't seem obvious at this point. In lieu of a real plan, expect more cost cutting with additional RIFs and reorgs.
The only way new Quest can pull out of this death spiral is to shift to a hybrid software model, cozy up with Microsoft and hope like hell they buy parts of the business that add useful features to their Azure program.
Quest was on the ropes when Vinny tried to take it public. The dirty secret of Quest was that it was horrible at developing anything - people or products. R&D was a joke, and HR did nothing but hire, fire and have a funny haircut. And good old Doug never missed a chance to pay two reps on a deal, so costs rose while bookings fell. If vinny had won the deal he'd have cut a third of the Si plies, so we were lucky he lost and Dell won - for awhile.
Becuae under Dell, it was Better Togther for awhile. Then Dell began putting its own folks into DSG and also making DSG sales teams alight with hardware teams. Disaster. Johnny Swainson should have been fighting to keep DSG independent, but he sold his soul to Michael Dell and let it all happen - and no one on his sycophantic leadership team pushed back or told King John he had no clothes. What a bunch of overpaid lackeys! And as mentioned earlier, By the time John got done reviewing spreadsheets for 2 years the value was cut in half and loads of employees got the sack. Shanpme on Swainson. Shame on his lackey leadership team.
You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig... You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change it's still going to stink after years of the same management in place. Joyce and Swainson are gone but management a level below them hasn't changed. Going nowhere fast...
Problem is Quest/Dell/New Quest has been laying people off and closing projects/products every year for the last 9 years and the slide has not stopped. The idea that a reorg is the first step to rekindle growth is just BS used by upper management during their "happy talk" conference calls. Most of the staff ( those that have not already jumped ship) stopped listening to that BS years ago.
Let them eat cake! Or not...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/01/quest_congrats_heres_a_pink_slip/
Day 1 at the new Quest resulted in layoffs in the Support organization!!!
We all know the Quest portfolio is bloated with wasteful and obsolete products that never have generated any revenue. Elliot/Francisco has no choice but to cut the crap (the fat has been cut so much that they're tapping bone marrow). They may be able to thrive IF they make the decision to hack these "pet projects" and find a key set of profitable products to sell.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/18/dell_software_changes/
The core products of Dell Software include much more that Quest. Ocarina for one is world class. The Quest portfolio is also rock solid an should bloom outside the Dell shadow.