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Do you know how many partners MS have world wide? Over 10,000 Do you know how many "managed partners" there are in the UK SMB space? Around 30 The managed partners are managed by 4 people that go out and meet with them and discuss business planning. They get paid in all business then partners do whether cloud or on premise. You then have an overlay cloud team which consists of a handful of people. There are several hundred "tele managed" accounts who never see anyone as are dealt with on the phone. As I have previously said this is a really small industry and news spreads fast. Everyone attends the same events, launches and corporate days out and we obviously talk. When someone doesn't turn up from a particular company people ask questions and when someone new turns up the same thing applies. If you ask the account managers from MS who deal with one of them in a daily basis they will tell you they have moved on. CRN publish a top 100 resellers in the UK guide and number 100 turns over just over 10m. So again an example of not many large companies doing the same thing. I have spent 20 years in this industry and know a lot of people so when senior people move on it doesn't stay quiet for long. There is also a lack of really good people so when someone is known for being good they tend to get a lot of approaches from solar companies wanting to move in to a space where they have knowledge.

Ha ha wrong, have never worked there. Someone has said that before so that is getting boring. If you don't like what I have to say there is a filter button so you can ignore me. No escaping the fact that this company has never hit one of the targets it has set and the share price has tanked from £1.20 to 20p due to fictitious projections and gross mismanagement. Happy for you to show me otherwise but spending over £50m to get a business that in the last 6 months turned over £3m And showed 0 growth in the same period last FY is madness. Add to that the fact that it is burning cash at a rate higher than its turnover and needs to keep raising funding. That my friend is a complete joke even if I did have a personal vendetta, which i don't, you can hide from the facts, unless you are telling me they are wrong?

Surely with over 500 partners and a direct public sector sales team they must have something to report!!!! Flat first half and I would say they have no chance of hitting the revised £12m revenue target for the year. My prediction is they won't even hit double figures. At what point do they start to accept that the opportunity is there but the cost of exploiting it from such a small base is almost impossible. You need the size and scale of the big boys. All the mention of MS is a red herring as MS are moving on from holsters like this and focussing their attention on Azure and O365. MS have announced they are looking to employ over 500 engineers to help customers get on Office 365 which hasn't made the partner community happy. Even though OUT sell Office 365 there isn't any money in that alone and they don't have any real complimentary offerings such as a service wrap ....

Absolutely agree everyone fails at some point and to be a success you have to keep trying. Genuine question. Do you or anyone else on here know of one thing that Piers had made a success of? Trying to understand why the confidence in his ability to make this a success. Especially with the progress to date.

Ok. Let’s deal with the cash. Cash & trade receivables minus trade payables and debt at the year-end (December 31st) was £2 million. In terms of current assets (cash & trade receivables minus trade payables and debt due within a year) the number was £5 million. Our friends at Edison were forecasting (after the £1 million of costs savings which Outsourcery is re-announcing as news today) an operating cash outflow this year of £5.6 million. If Edison is correct then with the £1.4 million in today plus the CEO salary sacrifice (5 months – i.e. £215,000) the outflow falls to a mere £4 million. That means that at the year-end net cash minus trade receivables payables will be MINUS £2 million. Net current assets (that is ash plus trade receivables minus trade payables and short term debt) will be just £1 million. Without yet another fund raising this company cannot hope to have its annual report classified as a going concern and that – combined with the truly dismal business track record of Piers Linney – means that another bailout within nine months is almost inevitable. I have faith in Linney. His business track record is very consistent – see HERE. I doubt Outsourcery will buck that trend. Sell the shares at 23p. Target price 1p. To get Twitter updates from ShareProphets as they happen - See more at: http://www.shareprophets.advfn.com/views/7203/piers-linney-and-outsourcery-refinances-but-dissembles-sell-this-pos-now#sthash.4R29bQeE.dpuf

Outsourcery (OUT), the POS AIM stock run by serial business failure Piers Linney of Dragon’s Den infamy has announced a refinancing package to stave off bankruptcy. Well at least to postpone it. But the level of dissembling defies belief. Truly Piers if you told me that 2+2 = 4 I’d ask for independent verification. The headline reads: Placing of 7,682,500 new Ordinary Shares at 20 pence per share – Part of an overall financing package creating £4.5 million of working capital. Hmm so Outsourcery has raised £1.5 million pre expenses (let’s call that £1.4 million) plus another £4.5 million of funding. Er not quite. The £4.5 million “financing package” comprises £1.5 million of debt due to be repaid soon is repaid later £1 million of costs cuts which had already been announced are to be implemented. £500,000 will be saved by the joint CEOs not taking a salary this year So in fact the only NEW money going in is the net £1.4 million from the placing. Now before you say that Piers and his co CEO are being generous in not drawing a salary. There are swings and roundabouts. They are surrendering a stack of options with a 1p strike price which were essentially worthless since they were only exercisable on Outsourcery hitting certain targets which of course it has failed to do. Instead Piers and his fellow CEO will get 2,736,304 Ordinary Shares under the existing employee long term incentive plan ("LTIP") at an exercise price of 1p, with a 12 month vesting period with no conditions attached. This exercise in crony capitalism is described today by Outsourcey as being designed “to further align the interests” of management to shareholders. *******s, So for sacrificing £519,000 of wages on which tax would be paid at almost 50% the two men get share options worth at 23p £600,000 on which they would pay far less tax. Now to the still dire maths for Outsourcery. The company says “The Directors believe that the proposed Financing Package of £4.5 million will enable Outsourcery to achieve its aim of reaching monthly run rate break-even and operational positive cash flow during 2015.” Now when was the last time the directors made such a pledge? Aha…the May 2013 IPO when Outsourcery said that if it raised £10 million that would be enough to get it to breakeven. It raised £17 million and has still almost run out cash as the losses continue to rack up. So a Piers pledge of this sort is worth jack ****. The actual maths are that Ok. Let’s deal with the cash. Cash & trade receivables minus trade payables and debt at the year-end (December 31st) was £2 million. In terms of current assets (cash & trade receivables minus trade payables and debt due within a year) the number was £5 million. Our friends at Edison were forecasting (after the £1 million o

Yep and I also said I hoped to see MRR at 7-900 at the end of the half. A flat half is a real concern as can only mean churn as even I can't say they haven't sold anything. In the cloud you have to keep customers to make it profitable and if they are losing them at the same rate as adding them this is a real problem. More cash will be needed unless dramatic changes are made. Lots of good senior staff gone and no good senior staff bought in. With the additional shares going to come in to play and the added debt position I see this now a bit lower. I would go as far as to say that I am now not sure I would buy in at all as this will end up a fire sale unless we see a major shift. Today the share has hit an all time low and I don't care if you agree or not. Time will tell if I am right or not but I know this sector very well and have seen it all before.....Dot Com all over again......

As I have said before I am sharing my knowledge of the industry and maybe giving you an insight and saving some people from these charlatans. You may think I am a de-ramper or Angle of doom but this share has gone from an original listing price of 120p to 22p. A lot of people have lost a lot of cash and that wasn't down to me posting on this forum. For that you only have to look at the management and board of the company. If you don't like what I have to say and see no value you can always filter me out. If I can save one two people from these modern day snake oil salesman I will. And yes I would buy if the price was low enough and with the new issue if the optics reaches around 10p then I might. Depends if they can get the MRR moving upwards and stop the cash drain. I have never said the model doesn't work just only these muppets don't know how.....

Just a realist....

As reality kicks in and the weekend approaches I expect this will drop today. Wouldn't be surprised to see teens...

What do you mean the results are in September we will know more then? They have stated in today's release that the revenue is £3.6m and MRR £600k for the first half. That means they have shown zero growth in the first half of the year......that can only mean one of two things, they have sold nothing or they have churned as much as they have sold.... For a business that has doubled it's partner base to over 500 partners and brought online some strategic partners that is appalling. Not to mention the direct sales team...... I know the company is more the Piers but with 6 senior people exited over the last 6 months and none of them replaced I am not sure where the industry experience is coming from. IMHO things will get a lot worse before they get better..... Mark my word they will be after more cash within 12 months.....

The big risk here is that they won't get another chance to raise cash. They now have to make it work. The realism here is that Linney has absolutely no clue about this sector. He bangs on about cloud and partners and how they have doubled since launch and all these big names they have partnered with. The reality is they have stood still for 6 months and burnt millions in the process. Where is all the talk of £100m turnover in 2015??? You are all hot air my friend..... IMHO they will be back to the market within 12 months and then the market will say sorry Piers we are OUT...... I just hope the constant desire for self publicity doesn't cost many more while Piers continues to line his own pockets...Sadly while in the limelight people continue to hang on as they want to be part of it.... Sad really....

No growth in turnover or MRR for the first 6 months. Shocking considering they claim to have doubled their partner base in that time. Means only one thing, churn. That only happens because of price or poor customer experience. The options thing is a joke. I would sacrifice a years salary to get my options replaced with non performance options. I know the leadership team need to invested but it is their fault they are not going to achieve their targets. In my opinion try should be let go. From what I hear things still not good and with all the personnel changes and no big names coming in to run things this is going to continue to struggle.

That is the current IL 1/2 O cloud and nothing to do with the new (in progress) IL3 platform that they raised the £4m to be built......

Looks like this will just bumble along until the funding announcement or another customer win comes along. Seeing as they have 500 partners the large wins are very few and far between.

Just come across this news from Fordway http://www.fordway.com/News/News/ Great to are some are head of the game and have already got themselves classified to the new status. Another entrant to the secure market ahead of Out: Did a search on Official and found this post from March. https://digitalmarketplace.blog.gov.uk/2014/03/06/security-accreditation-whats-changing/ A planned move away from IL2 and 3 etc to a new simpler classification. Surely Out will be going for this rather than having to go through the process of re accreditation as they transition away from IL3 as a recognised standard. Also the IL3 build was due to finish in July so why no update to say it is finished? Because guess what? It isn't.....

Hi Bob, Some fair observations and good points made there. A quick question for you though. Cloud is the future and truly believe people will move but would you move your business critical systems to a business that turns over less than £10m and is burning through cash at an alarming rate? Or would you move it to a business that could offer the same services and is financially secure? The important part being financially secure rather than turnover. we all saw the panic and mess that ensued when 2E2 went under.

I don't suppose this will be the last round of funding required. The trouble is that break even so far away and still so much cash to be burnt to get there that I reckon this £5m is going to be costly.

Not much happening her at all right now. Looks like everyone waiting to see the outcome of the debt / equity discussions before any major trading goes on here.

I am not sure Piers Ego would let him stand to one side and for someone else to make it. Mr Burton has lots of knowledge but i don't think he would be the right person for CEO of OUT as he is currently tied up with his job in Zynstra (Hybrid Cloud Startup) to give this the full attention it needs. Also Rise was his pet project at Fasthosts and in the 2/3 years that was running it didn't really ever get going. Their big challenge is getting the sales engine working and that is not unique to OUT. The IT sector for a long time have been used to selling large upfront deals with sales people getting large one off commission cheques. Selling MRR is very different and getting the rewards right for sales people to keep them interesting is challenging. A lot of sales people don't want to make the transition and continue to sell what they know. Out claim to have 500 partners and the likes of HP, Voda and Vurgin Media all out selling their products. Add to that the direct sales force then that is a lot of people. if every partner did 6 small deals a year that would mean 250 customer adds a month, even at a small value that starts to add up. They are lost in direction and need to get some focus. The 80 / 20 rule will apply here (20% of the partners doing 80% of the revenue) and they are the ones they need to keep focusing on. Lots of companies burn cash on-boarding partners, training them for them never to sell anything. They also need to decide if they are dedicated to the channel or not and how they handle channel conflict when going direct. Lots of vendors in the IT space only go through channel with the larger ones doing both, because they have significant presence in the sector to be able to deal with channel conflict and if some partners don't like ti then tough, Out are nowhere near big enough to do that. Serving two masters is painful and expensive. All i see is this continuing to burn cash through 2014 and 2015 until breakeven in 2016 (they don't stay when in 2016) So right now who know what will happen but this round of funding wont be the last of it. If they can get it to break even in 18 months from now then that may be a time to think about how it can grow from there but the questions are Do they know how to strategically? - My view No - Can they keep raising the cash needed? - It never ceases to amaze me hoe people invest in tech stocks but i think this will be a struggle. When we see the HY results we will have a much better idea if the 2016 break even is looking likely or just another date / target to be missed.