23 April 2015

WANdisco plc

2015 Q1 sales update

WANdisco Fusion attracts first Big Data customers

WANdisco (LSE: WAND), the leading provider of non-stop Big Data, reports on first quarter sales.

Highlights

· Revenue up 20% to $3.0m (Q1 2014: $2.5m)

· comparethemarket.com selects the WANdisco Fusion Big Data product

· Four Big Data contract wins, including a premier global retail bank (previously announced on 11 February)

· Joining the Open Data Platform partnership brings new Big Data sales opportunities

Revenues were $3.0m (Q1 2014: $2.5m), up 20% on last year's first quarter, benefitting from the roll-out of deferred revenue from prior period sales bookings.

Sales bookings were $2.0m (Q1 2014: $4.0m). Variable timing of customers' purchase completions impeded some substantial sales opportunities. During a period of rapid evolution in our products, partnerships and sales organisation we continue, as recently indicated, to expect volatility in quarterly bookings as we add to and convert our sales pipeline.

Big Data

We have completed the evolution of our Big Data product into the next generation WANdisco Fusion, which provides, for the first time, common and seamless access to data across all Hadoop-compatible data storage providers. This significantly expands our addressable market, beyond Hadoop distributors and into the wider storage market including vendors such as Oracle, EMC, Teradata, IBM and Amazon. WANdisco Fusion is easy to integrate with other vendors because it does not require access to underlying data storage architecture.

We opened up a new sales channel for WANdisco Fusion by joining the Hadoop Open Data Platform to collaborate and integrate with Hortonworks, IBM, Pivotal, EMC and others. This has added to our sales pipeline some early stage but promisingly progressing opportunities, as indicated at the time of our results statement on 17 March 2015.

There were four Big Data contract wins in the quarter, bringing sales bookings of $0.4m (Q1 2014: $0.2m). comparethemarket.com, the UK insurance price comparison website, selected WANdisco Fusion for mixed storage, including cloud-based storage. This selection by a customer of Cloudera's Hadoop distribution demonstrates that our resilient data replication is unachievable through other Hadoop technologies.

Other Big Data customer wins in the period included a premier global retail bank (previously announced on 11 February 2015), and a global operator of undersea cables to connect data centres.

Application Lifecycle Management ("ALM")

$1.6m of bookings in the quarter came from our ALM products, (Q1 2014: $3.8m). ALM sales were impacted, as expected, by the transition during the quarter to a dedicated sales force under new leadership, as indicated at the time of our previous results statement on 17 March 2015. ALM revenue grew 8%, benefitting from deferrals of prior period sales.

Bookings came from a mix of new customers, add-on features and renewals, indicating a well-established business with growth potential. Given its scale and revenue growth, it remains our objective to advance ALM towards profitability for this financial year.   

David Richards, WANdisco Chief Executive Officer, comments: 

"In ALM, our transition to a dedicated sales model under new leadership has, as expected, impacted sales in the quarter. We continue to move ALM towards profitability.

Our new Big Data customer comparethemarket.com shows that we have capabilities that Hadoop distributors cannot provide.

WANdisco Fusion, with its replication of mixed data storage, is already attracting significant new partnership and sales opportunities, positioning us as an integral part of the rapidly evolving Hadoop-compatible storage market."

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About WANdisco

WANdisco (LSE: WAND) is a provider of enterprise-ready, non-stop software solutions that enable globally distributed organizations to meet today's data challenges of secure storage, scalability and continuous availability. WANdisco's products are differentiated by the company's patented, active-active data replication technology, serving crucial continuous availability requirements, including Hadoop Big Data and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), including Apache Subversion and Git. Fortune Global 1000 companies, including Juniper Networks, Motorola, Intel and Halliburton, rely on WANdisco for performance, reliability, security and availability. For additional information, please visit www.wandisco.com.

Disclaimer

This announcement contains forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations or beliefs, as well as assumptions about future events. Undue reliance should not be placed on any such statements because they are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and can be affected by other factors that could cause actual results, and WANdisco's plans and objectives, to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. WANdisco undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement contained within this announcement, regardless of whether those statements are affected as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, save as required by law and regulations.