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The next version of Lync ad announced previously will be called Skype for Business. The cloud / hosted version is available direct from Microsoft in April. Where now Out? http://blogs.office.com/2015/03/16/get-ready-for-skype-for-business/#.VQb1Cj_c5hw.twitter

Did you see the pictures on Twitter of Piers Linney at Virgin offices the day they launched sitting on a big horse? I wonder if he got off the started flogging it :)

Yes the same light they shined back in 2013: http://www.outsourcery.co.uk/News/PR/Pages/Virgin-Media-Business-.aspx Reminds me of the HP light they shined ion 2013: http://www.outsourcery.co.uk/News/PR/Pages/Outsourcery-delivers-UC-to-SMBs.aspx And the same HP light they shined again in 2014: http://www.outsourcery.co.uk/News/PR/Pages/Lync-provides-cost-effective-UC-for-HP%E2%80%99s-clients.aspx The original HP announcement in 2013 and then exactly the same announcement in 2014 has yet to yield any noteworthy results. The original Virgin Media announcement in 2013 never yielded any results and we will see on the exact same release 2 years later (yesterday) Incredible they can keep launching the same thing to the same company at different times and this gets seen as news.

A lot of the finding was people getting in on the hype as cloud was the next big thin and investors needed to be in it. A bit like for com round 2. A lot of money has been made in the boom as well from some of the companies and a lot lost in the bust. There was talk of a £500m business and cash needed to fund datacrnters abroad to fulfil the international requirements of Pearsons. We have heard no more from the Pearsons contract. The last £1m surprised me but with a balanced portfolio an investment house might have seen it at a good punt at 20p but they were the only one. The management team have no credibility in this space or a proven track record and this performance my be hoping that.

You have to consider that based on the progress so far they will struggle to publicly attract anyone. If private they can do different deals without upsetting existing investors and will have access to a completely different pool of funding.

Yep. Until someone can show me the light.....

They will be happy with the bad news to drive the price down before they take it private. There is no way they can continue to raise funds if the latest results fail to show any real progress. By taking t private they wont be under such rigorous scrutiny that will allow them to be a bit more creative and relist in the future. They get to disappear for a few years and either sell it privately and save face as the sum will never be disclosed. Or get some traction and relist as a success story and get more people to invest.

It went as slow as 9 but that was a couple of days downward spike before settling back around the 25 p mark where it has been for months since the drop from over £1.25. Seems to be settling back there again after the upward spike and don't see this as profit taking. Still no mention of when the results are coming and that wont be helping.

I am not so surprised at how fast it has gone back down...

Question is when will we see them? Are they being saved so any recent news can help remove the focus from the pain?

He certainly is and this is good news for them. They need to get the year end figures out of the way and get more of these. Interested to see the MRR position at the end of this half now they have the FTSE win and this. If this is a Lync deal on their platform it would be work about 40k per month. It sounds like they are taking hosted servers in 2 datacenters and building their own Lync solution on that it will be a lot less.

This is worth understanding: http://www.comms-dealer.com/industry-news/westcoast-appointed-tier-2-csp-microsofts-cloud-solution-provider-programme In the current traditional market all IT resellers buy MS licensing direct from a Distributor. Three of the biggest distributors in the UK are Techdata, Ingram Micro, WestCoast. In cloud land MS have owned the customer directly to date including billing and paid the reseller a margin for every user. We saw this change when they launched the Cloud Service Provider program and announced about 10 Tier one partners of which OUT is one. MS then allowed the tier 1 CSP partners to provision and bill the customer themselves. This program has run for a few months and to be honest the numbers aren't that great and MS aren't really ready and are having to do a lot of the back end process manually. None of the 10 have put any significant business through to date. MS have now opened up tier 2 providers for CSP. Tier 2 providers are the main UK distributors and they now allow the resellers to carry on dealing with the distributor for all the services as they now do but also for MS cloud services and the Distributor will bill in your name or you can do yourself. Seeing as every IT reseller in the UK already has a relationship with a Distributor this will see all IT resellers in the UK and is starting to come on stream. Worth noting that most major vendors HP, IBM, Lenovo, Symantec etc all go through these main distribution channels.

They have 6 months to release full FY end results so could be end of June. They wont be far off completing them so if they have any good news I would expect to see them in March.

No mention of the IL 3 platform that was supposed to be up and running by the end of last year. They have the IL2 platform but no mention of any decent orders for it. I noticed they haven't posted a date for the final year end accounts but this time last year they had already done that. Waiting to see the results and some plans for this year as from what I am hearing not all things in the camp are good.

I did see somewhere that the curry business was no longer trading.

I ask myself the same thing and have done ever since it listed. I have heard they are short on cash but then that's no surprise. Haven't heard anything on the other 2 points. I said in my earlier post that i bet they will use the PL leaving DD to give this some focus as a strong selling point to raise more cash. The fact is he has no idea about how to get this to work and a company of this size does not need 2 CEO's at £250k per year each.

Lot of small trades today. I wonder how many are just blind investors off the back of the Dragons Den man building a £bn business without any kind of research.

Now PL isn't spending his time messing around on DD he might actually put some focus on OUT. I did have to laugh at the article that states he is leaving so he can focus on turning OUT in to a Billion £ business. I would focus on any positive growth first. Word has it that investors were losing faith due to the lack of time being spent at OUT due to other commitments. PL needed to show some commitment to this and with a potential of new funding around the corner the celebrity lifestyle had to give. With the lack of any decent contracts or growth they can at least use this as another reason why it is going to finally work. Look out for the line in the EOY results that says PL is pulling out of other commitments to give this all of his focus.

Maybe now he will focus on his business http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/11379135/Piers-Linney-quits-Dragons-Den-after-just-two-years.html

All down to the results which I am still betting wont be in line with expectations. Will be interesting how they try and spin the lack of growth this time. On a separate note I see Kelly Hoppen is leaving Dragons Den. Maybe Piers should do the same and put some focus in here to try and get shareholders some of their 80% loss back from listing price.