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Commvault Systems, Inc. (CVLT)

Q3 2008 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 5, 2008

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen.Thank you very much for your patience and welcome to the CommVault's fiscalthird quarter 2008 Earnings Call. At this time all of our participants are in alisten-only mode. Following today's presentation, instructions will be givenfor our question-and-answer session. At this time, for opening remarksand introductions I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Michael Picariello,Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead sir.

Michael Picariello

Management

Good afternoon. Thanks fordialing in today. With me on the call are Bob Hammer, Chairman, President andChief Executive Officer, Al Bunte, Chief Operating Officer, and Lou Miceli,Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I like to remindeveryone that statements made during this call including in the question-and-answersession at the end of the call, that relate to future results and projectionsare forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private SecuritiesLitigation Reform Act of 1995 and are based on our current expectations. Actualresults may differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, whichare discussed in our SEC filings in the cautionary statement contained in ourpress release and on our website. The company undertakes noresponsibility to update the information in this conference call under anycircumstances. Our earnings press release was issued today over the wireservices after market closed and it also has been furnished to the SEC as an 8-Kfiling. The press release is also available on our Investor Relations website. Onthis conference call we will provide non-GAAP financial results. Thereconciliation between the non-GAAP and GAAP measures can be found in Table IVaccompanying the press release which is also posted on our website. This conference call is alsobeing recorded for replay and is being webcast. An archive of today's webcast willbe available on our website following the call. I will now turn the call over toour CEO and President, Bob Hammer.

Bob Hammer

President

Thanks Michael. I would also liketo welcome everyone to our third fiscal quarter of 2008 earnings call. We hadanother record quarter as we continued to make progress in achieving our long-termstrategy for the company. We had strong performance from our internationaloperations and we made excellent progress in increasing our market penetrationof our non-backup or emerging products. In addition, we recently launched ourfirst SaaS offering which we call Remote Operations Management Service or ROMSfor short which I will talk about later in the call. The demand for our Simpana 7.0Software Suite remains very strong and it has fully helped us accelerate thegrowth of emerging products as well as strength in our position in our coredata protection business. Specifically we have seen strong demand forarchiving, single instancing, data classification and search. We continue to outperform ourcompetition and increase our market share. For the quarter, we achievedrevenues of $50.3 million, up 31% on a year-on-year basis, versus $38.3 millionin fiscal Q3, 2007. Software revenue grew on a year-on-year basis by 28%, whileour services business grew 36% year-over-year. For the quarter, non-GAAPoperating income or EBIT was $8.6 million, up 51% year-over-year versus EBIT of$5.7 million to the same period a year ago. Non-GAAP net income was $6.9million for the quarter and non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.15 for thequarter. Our CFO, Lou Maceli will provide more details on the quarterly financialresults later in the call. I will address deal stats first.We added 389 new customers in the quarter. As usual new customer adds did notinclude a large number of small orders from new OEM customers who registeredthrough the internet. Our customer base now totals approximately 7,500 whichdoes include the OEM customers who registered thorough the internet. We hadsolid growth across both our backup products as well as accelerating sales ofour emerging products. For Q3…

Lou Miceli

Management

Thanks, Bob and good afternooneveryone. As Michael mentioned I will be referring to mostly non-GAAP numbers.A full reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results can be found on Table IV toour press release. Let me begin with the review ofrevenues. Total revenues increased 31% year-over-year and 6% sequentially overthe prior quarter. Software revenues increased 28% year-over-year and 2%sequentially. Approximately two-thirds of our software revenue continues tocome from our installed base with the rest from new customers. Services revenue increased 36%year-over-year and 12% sequentially. The higher services revenue growth was favorablyimpacted by higher utilization of professional services due in part toincreased implementation of Simpana 7.0. The rate of maintenance renewalscontinues to be very high on a worldwide basis largely due to the company'sreputation of outstanding support and consequently we continue to see growthopportunities in services revenue. The revenue mix for the quarterwas 54% software and 46% services, which is a slight shift from 55% and 45% forthe prior year period. The overall growth in software revenue was driven bythree primary factors, a higher volume of purchases from both new and existingcustomers, significant growth in our international operations, and a highervolume of sales greater than a $100,000. Specifically for the nine months ended12/31/07, thegrowth in software in foreign locations was 73% and in the U.S. it was 11%. In addition, the number ofsoftware transactions greater than a $100,000 was up by 38% over the prior yearwith a significant amount of transactions over a $100,000 occurring in the U.S.Software revenue generated through indirect distribution channels wasapproximately 80% for the nine months ended 12/31/07 and approximately 70% forthe prior year period. The increase in software generated through indirectchannels is a result of both an increase in software revenue from internationaloperations and a shift to indirect distribution channels in the U.S.The shift to indirect distribution channels…

Bob Hammer

President

Thank you, Lou. I would like tospend a few minutes on a brief summary of our newly announced ROM service and abroader perspective of our future product direction. ROMS, which we believe isthe most sophisticated subscription based automated support service in theindustry, was launched in our current quarter. This new service, which has beentwo years in the making, provides our customers with an automated interfacethat gives them a real time view of their storage and data environment andenables real time identification of problems, their root cause, and cures. ROMSoffers comprehensive on demand reporting and monitoring capabilities for datamanagement, access, and protection technologies. Through a user friendly intuitiveweb dashboard, our customers can access and track real time alert trend andstorage usage reports anytime, anywhere. ROMS integration will enable customersto dramatically reduce both operational cost and system downtime. ROMS enablesreduction of personnel expenses associated with data management activities byallowing customers to offload their responsibility to CommVault's ROMS systemspersonnel. We expect that time to resolution for issues effecting managementsystem will be greatly reduced as ROMS provides CommVault's support with allthe necessary information to address alerts as they occur. We believe that Simpana 7.0 andROMS enable the best value proposition to the customers in this industry. Iwill just want to take a minute about future direction. I will talk more aboutthis as time goes on. This is beyond Simpana 7.0. Going forward, we have focusedour product development efforts on areas that we believe will providesignificant additional high value add to our customers. These includeinnovative new ways to manage data protection, innovations in singleinstancing, and de-duplication, next generated automated records management,better ways to manage workstations and laptops, better ways to mange the growthof databases, and enhance data management capabilities in virtualizedenvironments. We are confident we can add value in each of the areas mentionedand believe…

Michael Picariello

Management

Thanks Bob. Before we open up thelines for your questions, I would like to highlight a few upcoming InvestorRelation events. Al, will be speaking at the Goldman Sachs TechnologyInvestment Symposium in Las Vegason February 26, 2008.And either Bob or Al will present at the Small Mid Cap Mini Conferencesponsored by Wachovia in Park City, Utah on March 13, 14, 2008. BothBob and Al's respective presentations at each conference will be available liveon our investor relations website and will also be archived for 90 days. Please open up the call forquestions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much, sir.(Operator Instructions). We will take our first question from the line of TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

Hey, good afternoon, andcongratulations on another strong quarter.

Bob Hammer

President

Thanks, Tom.

Lou Miceli

Management

Thanks, Tom.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

You have not provided anyguidance yet for fiscal '09, that's correct, right?

Lou Miceli

Management

That's correct, Tom.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

Just given the comments oninvestments, should we assume that -- how do we think about the trajectory ofoperating expenses relative to revenue? For fiscal '09, I realize you may notbe willing to provide specifics, but there is definitely language in yourprepared comments that would suggest those growth rates are perhaps convergingor at least will be closer to each other than they were in '08. So how shouldwe think about the trend? Do you think OpEx will grow roughly as fast asrevenue in '09?

Bob Hammer

President

Well, the issue we are facing,Tom, which is a kind of a -- it's a positive issue in that as I mentioned inthe call, the Simpana acceptance in the market has been -- has exceeded expectationsalmost across the board. So we are really confident about [primarily] on corebut in our emerging products -- and this is global. So we are confident aboutthat. Our distribution network is as strong as it has ever been in the sensethat not only our channel partners but our CommVault teams globally have allbeen upgraded to sell high-end solution cells. So we have got a really strongfoundation there. And the basic fundamental demand appears to us globally to bevery strong. So given that, we feel very prudent to increase spending andemphasize a little bit more on the growth side than optimizing our operatingincome. It doesn’t mean we will see operating income accretion because weprobably will, but we’re working through that right now. So we just see moreopportunity than we thought, and we think it prudent and we kind of re-look atthe strategy and take advantage for the growth opportunity in front of us alittle bit more than we recently had anticipated.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

And when you say operating-incomeaccretion, you’re speaking on a percentage-margin basis?

Lou Miceli

Management

Yes, on a percentage marginbasis.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

So, it’s I guess, possible to I guess a possible scenariowould be that operating margin for fiscal ’09 would be similar to fiscal’08?

Bob Hammer

President

That would be at this time, anddon’t hold to me this but that -- we’ve not given any guidance there, but thatshould be the worst case in terms of what we’re going suggest but we haven’tlocked it down.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

Okay, and then just oncompetition in the quarter. Symantec has a new version of net backup out. Haveyou seen any unusual behavior from them on the pricing front or bundlingtactics, just what’s the latest I guess specifics on?

Bob Hammer

President

Well, in general we continue toincreasingly take share from Symantec, and we haven’t seen any let up in ourability to beat them either in the major accounts for the mid-market. We justhaven’t seen any material change that we could see yet -- doesn't mean we won't-- but we haven’t seen that. In regards to pricing clearly, when they see usand our major account that they think is strategic, they will get extremelyaggressive meaning they will take software to down to zero. We’ve seen that;we’ve seen them take software down to zero and to discount maintenance to keepus getting an account. And some of the accounts we won anyway. But they willget that -- what I call paranoidcallyaggressive when we -- they see us coming in their strategic areas.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

And are you seeing more of that,just because that's a major change, even for an existing net backup customerright to do that upgrade. So I would imagine there is -- there are more dealswhere things have opened up, right?

Bob Hammer

President

There are more deals when thingshave opened up, that is correct.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

I mean, Bob, with that are yousaying then I guess even more aggressive or a greater mix of deals where theyare very aggressive in your pipeline?

Bob Hammer

President

Well, in the past we used to seethem drop software prices down 75% or 50%. This is the first time we're seeinga few deals where they have actually dropped it to zero.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

Okay. And then finally on the Sunagreement, can you elaborate a bit on the nature of the product, how you invariablypackaged through that channel from a product perspective and then just from ago-to market how you view at-large enterprise versus mid-enterprise, how doesthe go to market look?

Bob Hammer

President

So, let me comment on it at the$100,000 foot level. Clearly, when Sun decided to bring and decided to supportMicrosoft's 64-bit architecture and operating system, they were looking toprovide -- they did a management capability along with that both from theserver and storage side. If you read their press releases, they made statementslike "it's not all about historic it's all about the data," which wassimilar to our perspective on the market. So both Sun and Microsoft, given thatperspective, were looking for a best-in-class partner here, and both Sun andwith Microsoft's strong support suggested that, that partnership be consummatedwith CommVault. And clearly this announcement was focused on some key areas,and those were Exchange and SharePoint. Now you know, Tom, Sun covers both theenterprise and SMB markets. So it's too early to tell where we are going to seethe traction, but I think they have trained a lot of their people on it. Itwill launch in mid-February. And as we go a little bit further down the road,maybe we can give you a bit more color as to where we are seeing the tractionon it. But I think all three companies are quite optimistic that this is goingto be quite successful.

Tom Curlin - RBC

Analyst · TomCurlin of RBC. Please proceed

Okay, thank you very much.

Bob Hammer

President

Thanks, Tom.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much, sir. (OperatorInstructions). Our next question comes from the line of Derek Bingham ofGoldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Fred Reid - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Derek Bingham ofGoldman Sachs. Please proceed

Hi, guys. This is [Fred Reid] forDerek.

Bob Hammer

President

Hi, Fred.

Fred Reid - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Derek Bingham ofGoldman Sachs. Please proceed

Hi, are there any verticals whereyou are seeing a particular strength or weakness perhaps like financialservices or government?

Bob Hammer

President

We are seeing very strongstrength in government globally and, surprisingly enough, our strength in thefinancial services market relative to where we have been has been strong.Across the board within the United States, we have not seen any drop in demandin the financial sector from our customer base yet.

Fred Reid - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Derek Bingham ofGoldman Sachs. Please proceed

Great. And one follow-up, theSimpana upgrade cycle, can you quantify how that's impacting ASPs or deal sizesat all?

Bob Hammer

President

There is a stat in our Q, and itis impacting more the number of deals we getting over $100,000. And I justmentioned in my summary that in deals over $100,000 that 33% of the revenue inthose deals is coming from product sales and backup. If you look at ASP, it isa meaningful because it's a bit of a large number of accounts they don't see itbut so we don't look at that stat, but we just see from our Q that in dealsover $100,000 the average ASP there is $200,000.

Fred Reid - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Derek Bingham ofGoldman Sachs. Please proceed

All right, great thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much sir, andladies and gentleman, our next question comes from the line of Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed

Good afternoon. Last quarter, youhad mentioned that you had seen little leverage from the OEMs in the quarterbecause there was still on boarding with Simpana. I was just wondering, couldyou provide an update on that and then two -- did that have an impact in thequarter? I know Dell can be sort of up and down, and maybe last quarter it wasnormally on the up side, but it did look because it may be little lower thanexpectations this quarter.

Bob Hammer

President

Well, Dell has got a staggeredquarter, so that Aaron you won't Dell impact until full Q4. Right?

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay.

Bob Hammer

President

Because most of Dell revenue lastquarter didn't include the upgrade. So the first impact you'll see from Dell isgoing to be in the March quarter.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed

So, you would expect that to bestronger than the March quarter relative to the quarter you just printed?

Bob Hammer

President

You'll certainly see a lot moreSimpana 7.0 from Dell in the March quarter than in the December quarter.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay, because I am just trying toreconcile from your comments. It sounded like you are pleased with the largedeal upon you gained a lot of the metrics around the larger on transactions,and it seems like Dell was more of the volume-based deals, and just given theseasonality of December and where you are at in the product cycle, I think someexpectations were for a little better license growth in the quarter. I'm justwondering it may be the volume business and Dell has been pushed out a quarteror just sort of trying to reconcile all those comments?

Bob Hammer

President

No, the issue, and I've saidthis, and in case you didn't catch it between the lines, I'll say it a littlebit more clearly. If you look,our international revenues were up substantiallyright, 86% year-on-year, and that's because we invested heavily, and it's beenon the street internationally. And then invested just as heavily domestically,we're going to kind of turn that around here in the new term. So that is morerelevant to top-line growth than any other stats that you got.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay.

Bob Hammer

President

We got the product, and we gotthe demand. We're doing well versus competition, et cetera. It really comesdown to this whole investment strategy of ours, and we're addressing that,trying to be more effective and more consistent about it.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay. So it seems like you arestill optimistic about the pipeline, so you're just trying to invest more tomay be feed better execution in terms of the pipeline to dollars?

Bob Hammer

President

Well, that is exactly correct.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay. And then just a follow-upon all the subscription-based announcements you had in the quarter and some ofyour comments: How do you actually envision that impacting the model longerterm in terms of what will be maybe higher deferral rates around product salesfor that?

Bob Hammer

President

That's a good question. I mean,we're seeing it now. We are -- it's a subscription-based model, but the revenuefrom those deals is recognized in the current quarter. In other words, overtime those subscriptions build up, and they get recognized on a quarterlybasis. So it's not that deferred is growing, it's just that oursubscription-based revenue as a percent of total licensed revenue is growing.It is not going to defer.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay, and then lastly: thequestion I had is in terms of your partnership with Microsoft, I know it hasbeen an active partnership, but nothing had been formal. With the acquisitionof (inaudible), did that change anything there in terms of potential workingtitle with Microsoft?

Bob Hammer

President

Well, its got the potential to dothat. Yes.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Schwartz ofJP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay. Well thanks for taking myquestions.

Bob Hammer

President

Welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much, sir. Ladiesand gentlemen, your next question comes from the line of Brent Bracelin ofPacific Crest Securities. Please proceed.

Brent Bracelin - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst · Brent Bracelin ofPacific Crest Securities. Please proceed

Thank you. Bob, my first questionconcerns the demand environment. Could you just compare-contrast your kind oforder pipeline today versus kind of three months ago going into last quarter?

Bob Hammer

President

Going into the December quarteror going into the March quarter?

Brent Bracelin - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst · Brent Bracelin ofPacific Crest Securities. Please proceed

Compared today versus threemonths ago?

Bob Hammer

President

It's significantly higher.

Brent Bracelin - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst · Brent Bracelin ofPacific Crest Securities. Please proceed

Okay, follow up to that: Would beas you look at the large deal,s you did see a kind of a slight down tickarguably from that nearly high level last quarter? Did you see any sort oflarge deals slip out of December? Large deals are always tough to predict whenthey close. But could you comment a little bit on kind of your visibility inthose large deal kind of pipeline?

Bob Hammer

President

Well, we certainly had visibilityto more large deals than we closed.

Brent Bracelin - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst · Brent Bracelin ofPacific Crest Securities. Please proceed

Okay.

Bob Hammer

President

So the answer is yes, but we sawsome -- but for any other, there is no trend reason. It is just we did see someof that.

Brent Bracelin - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst · Brent Bracelin ofPacific Crest Securities. Please proceed

Okay, and then another follow-uphere for me is: You look at kind of the timing around kind of making someaccelerated investments in marketing and sales. Today, clearly, you saw 2.02 25 internationally.How do you know the slowdown in the U.S. isn't kind of economic-drivenversus kind of a sales-marketing issue?

Bob Hammer

President

Because we look at sale-forceproductivity, and the numbers for sale-force productivity were right on-targetlast quarter. It was just numbers. In other words, we weren't seeing budgetcuts or anything else, and your sales productivity that was going to tally-upwith pretty much with what was going on. We slice that in a number of differentways. We got, really got hand on that.

Brent Bracelin - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst · Brent Bracelin ofPacific Crest Securities. Please proceed

Perfect, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much, sir.(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from line of Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed.

Aaron Rakers - Wachovia Securities

Analyst · Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed

Yeah, thanks guys. A couple ofquestions from myself as well. I guess the first one I want to go back to thecomment about behind the goals in terms of recruiting for the company. Can youwrap some color around that, specifically as it references to the sales force?What's your target in terms of sales force additions and then kind of segwaythat into what you typically see in terms of productivity ramps from new hiresin that sales force?

Bob Hammer

President

Well, we don’t give out thosenumbers, Aaron, but clearly we wanted to be further ahead in the U.S. than wewere on recruiting side. And there is couple of factors. There are lots ofreasons, no excuses for that, but we had this massive product launch, and inaddition to that is part of that product launch in several regions globally anddomestically. We did some fairly significant retooling to prepare those areasto sell a much broader enterprise suite. So, we are extremely successful on theretooling side. We are exactly where we want to be and from a number standpointdomestically. We didn't hit the target we wanted, and we just have a lot morefocus on it and trying to get in terms of our internal processes to deliverthat in an effective way. We're spending some extra time and attention there.

Aaron Rakers - Wachovia Securities

Analyst · Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed

And in terms of productivity asyou look to incrementally add more people. How do we think about the preferredramp-up new hires coming on?

Bob Hammer

President

I'll let Al answer that becausehe deals and we review that really in-depth detail every 30 days, and Al's runsSaaS model. So he can answer that for you.

Al Bunte

Analyst · Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed

Aaron, it's as Bob says. We lookat and slice it in a number of different ways. So it makes a big differencebetween a guy going into an existing what we call existing territory versus abrand new territory or even a country. But in general when you average that allout its two to three quarters for a sales team to get up to speed from minimalproductivity to our full levels of productivity.

Aaron Rakers - Wachovia Securities

Analyst · Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed

Okay. And then the secondquestion or topic would be, you talked about Symantec becoming it sounds likeincrementally more competitive in the market. Can you talk about others outthere in the market namely EMC, is that the low hanging fruit for you, is therebeen any change on the competitive landscape on that front?

Bob Hammer

President

We don't see EMC very much, wesee Avamar on occasions. But in a big enterprise data management informationmanagement DOE we don’t see them as a significant competitor it's mainlySymantec.

Al Bunte

Analyst · Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed

Or IBM.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed

Okay. And when do you expect, Inow you mentioned the launch of Sun in the mid-February timeframe, clearlythere is a training cycle that has to take place. Is it more of a second-half'08 when we start to see a revenue contribution or is it even in calendar 2009when we think you start to see some material revenue from the Sun relationship?

Bob Hammer

President

I can tell you from the planningpoint of view it'll be later in 2008. But we could see it -- we could getsurprised here it could be significantly better. But typically CommVaultwhether it's a new product a new relationship, we don't forecast a lot of majorup tick early until we can validate it. So, it is quite conservative there, butI think that the relationship has got a lot of potential.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed

And then final thing for me, lastquarter you gave a little bit of flavor around what you are seeing in terms ofthe installed base upgrading to the Simpana 7.0 platform, an update on thatfront, where that currently stands and when you expect to see may be that hitthe 80% plus mark? It would be helpful.

Bob Hammer

President

I stretched that one a littlebit, Aaron. But clearly, ourinstalled not what's been purchased but our installs off Simpana 7.0 are nowwell north of a 1000 installs. So, we are really confident about wherethis product is and its ability to produce the desired results. So, the majorconstraint about how many are still there is really tied to our servicesorganizations' ability to upgrade people fast enough. So, we are as happy aboutthat as we can be. And these upgrades have gone exceptionally well. So, we arereally happy about all that. The quality level of 7.0 is the best, from ourinternal stats, the best release we ever had and it was our largest release.So, we are very happy about that as well.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed

And final thing for me, youmentioned earlier. I will take a stab at this. Your pipeline sounds like itspretty healthy going into the quarter. When you compare that relative to yoursequential revenue growth, have you seen your pipeline grow substantially morethan your sequential revenue growth? Any kind of flavor you can give on thatfront and I will end there? Thanks.

Bob Hammer

President

On a relative basis -- relativeto our expected result, our pipeline in the March quarter is higher than in theDecember quarter.

Aaron Schwartz - JP Morgan

Analyst · Aaron Rakers of WachoviaSecurities. Please proceed

Fair enough. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen your nextquestion comes from the line of Tim Klasell of Thomas Weisel Partners. Pleaseproceed.

Marks Griffin- Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Thomas Weisel Partners. Pleaseproceed

Hi, how are you doing? It's MarksGriffin stepping in for Tim.

Bob Hammer

President

Hi, Mark. How are you?

Marks Griffin- Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Thomas Weisel Partners. Pleaseproceed

Good, how are you guys doing?

Bob Hammer

President

Good.

Marks Griffin- Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Thomas Weisel Partners. Pleaseproceed

Not to beat a dead horse, butjust one question on the increased S&M. Have you started the hiringalready, or like have we come to some kind of a percentage or we’ve got a thirdof the guys already on the books or something like that?

Bob Hammer

President

We’ve definitely started.

Marks Griffin- Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Thomas Weisel Partners. Pleaseproceed

Definitely started in the?

Bob Hammer

President

But, we still have a fair way togo, but we’ve definitely started.

Marks Griffin- Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Thomas Weisel Partners. Pleaseproceed

Okay, alright that kind of[killed]. Can you enlighten us a little bit more on the Hitachi relationship? You kind breezedthrough that one. You kind of just said it was going well, and then I was justwondering if you can give.

Bob Hammer

President

Well, I mean the numbers isyear-over-year in the percentage are up substantially.

Marks Griffin- Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Thomas Weisel Partners. Pleaseproceed

So it's up.

Lou Miceli

Management

It is still very choppy, meaningthere is certain areas which has been consistent with what I've said in thepast. There are certain international areas that are going really well, we'vewon a large number of large deals and there are some very large deals in thepipeline going forward with Hitachi.But its not a, what I'd say, a global, well-oiled machine like Dell at thispoint.

Marks Griffin- Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Thomas Weisel Partners. Pleaseproceed

Okay. It sounds good. That’s itfor me. I appreciate it.

Bob Hammer

President

Okay.

Operator

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen our nextquestion will come from the line of Phil Winslow with Credit Suisse Pleaseproceed.

Dennis Simpson - Credit Suisse

Analyst · Credit Suisse Pleaseproceed

Yeah, this is Dennis Simpson forPhil. Just a real quick on the supply line, can you talk about which modulesthat are showing the more strength?

Bob Hammer

President

Yeah, I think we said in thecall, if I pick them up pick.They were single instancing, archiving, there is a very large dataclassification and search -- they are the major ones.

Dennis Simpson - Credit Suisse

Analyst · Credit Suisse Pleaseproceed

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, your nextquestion comes from the line of Dan Renouard of Robert W. Baird. Pleaseproceed.

Dan Renouard

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Pleaseproceed

Hi. Thanks. Most of my questionshave been answered. But can you guys talk about the hiring environment, hasthat changed at all? And are most of your hire is coming from competitors, orare you guys typically training on your own? Maybe you could just enlighten usa little bit on that front? Thanks. Robert W.Baird: Hi. Thanks. Most of my questionshave been answered. But can you guys talk about the hiring environment, hasthat changed at all? And are most of your hire is coming from competitors, orare you guys typically training on your own? Maybe you could just enlighten usa little bit on that front? Thanks.

Bob Hammer

President

Yeah, Dan, what we've found isthat we need a special skill set and a special set of experience to succeedwith the breadth and the depth of our software suite, particularly as we focuson the enterprise, which requires really sophisticated solution side. And so,we are very selective in the process. And the environment right now I'd sayseems to be a little bit easier internationally than it is domestically. But ifI had to put a trend on it, it's probably getting a little easier than harder,where maybe a year ago it was probably harder versus easier.

Dan Renouard

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Pleaseproceed

Thank you. Robert W.Baird: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, your nextquestion comes from the line of Steve Koenig of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Pleaseproceed.

Steve Koenig - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Pleaseproceed

Hi guys. Thanks for taking thequestion.

Bob Hammer

President

Hi, Steve.

Steve Koenig - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Pleaseproceed

Just wondering about, kind of alittle color on the composition of revenue growth going forward here, yoursources revenue accelerated nicely as you utilized some of the new hires thatyou made in the first half in consulting. Should we expect, as we get throughQ4 here and in the next year, that consulting is going to continue to sustain. It's kind utilizations,and the mix should shift a little bit more like towards consulting. And thentherefore on the software revenue line you have been flirting with 30% growththere. But should we count on that 30% coming in to (inaudible) or should themix kind of be where it was this quarter?

Bob Hammer

President

Well, this quarter -- what I saidlast quarter was that in the September quarter we were down sequentially inservices, mainly because we had taken a lot of our field engineering force, andthey were focused on training for Simpana 7.0. So, we lost lot of utilization.We expected that it will come back strongly in the December quarter, and itdid. So, you saw a spike up, as a result of that. We are not giving guidance onthis, Steve. But going forward if you look at the fundamental strength of thecompany, the services and license revenue should be pretty much in syncovertime and unless we step that up like with things like (inaudible) so youmay get some increased leverage. But fundamentally, if you look at where isthat growth coming from. If we have accelerated growth, clearly if you can workwith the numbers in products other than back up and recovery. There is noreason given where we are in back up and recovery that we shouldn’t seereasonably strong growth there. And we have strong growthinternationally, on top of all that. And we are adding distribution. So, thefundamental price for us is to sustain our good solid growth rate, both inservices and in license revenue, we just have to translate that to guidance andwe will always be prudent in our guidance.

Steve Koenig - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Pleaseproceed

And so, is it reasonable for usto expect that given the lag time between hiring and making reps productive --any acceleration, there or would it be more around the second half and therelease of product functionality?

Bob Hammer

President

We don’t need additional productsto drive growth.

Steve Koenig - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Pleaseproceed

Okay.

Bob Hammer

President

Additional functionality reallywill impact FY10. We have sufficient products in our pipeline to sustain; buildgrowth for FY09.

Steve Koenig - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Pleaseproceed

Okay. But it’s reasonable for usto think it’ll take a couple of quarters to make the reps productive?

Bob Hammer

President

Yes, the new reps that we bringin will take a couple of quarters to get productive.

Steve Koenig - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Pleaseproceed

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) This time, we have no furtherquestions in queue. We like to thank you very much for your participation intoday’s conference call. This concludes your conference for today and you maynow disconnect. Have a good day. Thank you.