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Our name for the user conference this year is the Big Easy. Not very original given the location of New Orleans but we felt it reflected our product and its ease of use pretty well - "finally an alternative to the Big-4 - the Big-Easy" <<
But...here's the thing. The European user conference is in two weeks time and is in Amsterdam. So...what can we call it?

I'm sure there could be some interesting ideas given the location but I'm looking for help. Anyone got any ideas....feel free to add them as comments if you do.

If we get a killer/fun idea I'll personally send someone a bottle of something.]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=113 Tue, 7 Oct 2008 15:45:03 -0500 http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=112
Fastest Growing Systems Management Company Announces Second Round of Funding

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – October 7, 2008 – Nimsoft, the fastest growing systems management company, today announced that the company has completed a funding round of $12 million led by new investor Goldman Sachs with follow on investments from Series A investors JMI Equity and Northzone Ventures. The company will use the funds to continue its growth and help achieve its vision of becoming the world’s leading enterprise systems management software company.

“Nimsoft has an innovative, well-run business model with a strong management team,” said David Campbell, Vice President, Principal Investment Area, Goldman Sachs. “To operate modern data centers, it is critical for IT customers to have robust systems management software that is easy to deploy and maintain to ensure they are providing the right level of service to their businesses. Nimsoft has a proven track record of delivering this functionality to both large and small enterprises and managed service providers (MSPs) around the world. We are pleased to invest in Nimsoft to enable further growth as a leading enterprise systems management provider.”

“Despite the tough economic times, we were overwhelmed with interest from multiple prestigious investors,” said Gary Read, president and CEO of Nimsoft. “An investment from Goldman Sachs is further recognition of the strength of our business model, product performance and future business opportunity. With the global market experience and formidable resources of Goldman Sachs added to the existing knowledge of our initial investors JMI Equity and Northzone Ventures, we are confident we will continue to grow a highly successful business.”

According to Gartner Dataquest, the worldwide revenue for IT operations management software was $12.9 billion in 2007, representing 13.5 percent annual growth.1 Nimsoft extended its position in the Gartner “Magic Quadrant for IT Event Correlation and Analysis, 2007” and has expanded to 700 customers in 30 countries. With revenue growth of 534 percent over the past four years, Nimsoft is the fastest growing systems management company in the world due largely to its easy-to-use performance and availability monitoring software that offers a fast and compelling Return on Investment.

An InformationWeek product review ranked Nimsoft the “Best of the Best” among nine application performance management (APM) solutions. APM is a critical segment of systems management because it monitors the performance of the customer experience – in addition to core IT infrastructure performance. InformationWeek reviewers noted Nimsoft was “a real leader” in service level management for its “flexible and robust SLA reporting engine” and ability to “report SLA performance granularly … which many APM tools are unable to do.”

Lead Goldman Sachs investor David Campbell will join the Nimsoft board of directors and provide strategic counsel for the company’s ongoing development and growth. Peter Arrowsmith of JMI Equity and Torleif Ahlsand of Northzone Ventures will continue to serve on the Nimsoft board of directors.
]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=112 Tue, 7 Oct 2008 14:48:12 -0500 http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=111
First, let's talk about the big guys? They like to go elephant hunting...they need to win big, big deals because the expectations are so high from their investors. But...the elephants start to disappear in a down economy (it's the big deals that get scrutinized and canceled by the CFO first). So the mega-vendors try to get aggressive on price to compete for smaller budgets but...these vendors have a fundamental problem...their products require tons of services and support, which means no matter how low the software price is, the cost of ownership is still very, very high and cannot be reduced.

Surely then customers go to smaller vendors where they can typically reduce their costs and reduce their budgets? Well yes and no. One of the issues with the small vendors in a down market is that many of them don't survive. They cannot drive the revenue to make them profitable, the investors don't have the appetite to keep adding to their investment and so they end up being sold off cheaply.

So, where does the customer go to (1) Reduce their costs but (2) Keep their risk to a minimum.

The answer is that customers still need to find the smaller vendors to be able to reduce their costs and cut budgets, but they also need to ensure that their vendors are well funded, have good investors for the long term and have good established customer bases and recurring revenue streams from multiple different types of customers.

More tomorrow....
]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=111 Mon, 6 Oct 2008 17:00:28 -0500 http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=110 MSPmentor list of top 100 MSPs

Guess what? We have signed 2 of the top 10 MSPs on that list as brand new customers in the last few weeks. In both cases we replaced other solutions. More info later as we get permission to reference their names.

Our MSP business is as strong as ever (more so), and, 2 days before the end of the quarter, Nimsoft continues to be incredibly successful. I "think" Friday was our most successful day ever in our history.

The economy sucks but that makes it even more important to gain rapid value from investments.]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=110 Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:38:48 -0500 http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=109
But...can you imagine that....we are in an area dominated by fast growing tech and bio-tech companies and Nimsoft is in the top-50!!!

Huge thank you to our customers, partners and employees for making this happen.

By the way....anyone that reads this....we are hiring and have lots of open positions.]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=109 Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:02:40 -0500 http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=108
Also, the highly fancied and stronger European Ryder cup team got well beaten by the Americans.

Interesting watching the post-match interviews....in both cases representatives of the losing teams made the same statement about the victors “they wanted it more, simple as that!”

Lessons for us all.....winning takes many characteristics but most importantly it is about the will and the desire to win. That is why Nimsoft is such a tremendous company and why we beat competitors that, have far greater resources available to them.

The will to win is irresistible – if you have it then you will win.

We LOVE our customers, their success with our product is personal for us, and our customers see, feel and witness that.
]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=108 Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:56:25 -0500 http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=107
But, suffice it to say that we will be moving immediately to get our solutions certified as part of the new VMware Ready Program. We've already submitted the forms so we should be able to get this done pretty quickly.

Funny really, we're probably one of the most widely used products for monitoring/mgmt of the VMware environment - just need to be quicker on the mark from a marketing perspective.

Next time...]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=107 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:09:16 -0500 http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=105
Friday, September 5, 2008
Gary Read

Co-founder, president and CEO, Nimsoft
San Francisco Business Times


HQ: Redwood City.
2007 revenue: $35 million.
Employees: 165.
Founded: 2002.
Source of startup capital: Personal savings and, in 2007, $10.3 million from JMI Equity and Northzone Ventures.
Background: Born and raised in a suburb of London. Worked a paper route to buy first computer, graduated from high school and started as a programmer for Mastercard. After a series of IT jobs, including stints at Riversoft and BMC, founded Converse Software in 2002, which merged with Nimbus Software in 2004 to form Nimsoft.
Age: 41.
Residence: Los Gatos.
Web site: nimsoft.com.
What it does: IT infrastructure monitoring.
Big picture

Reason for starting business: I’ve always wanted to start my own business.
Biggest plus of ownership: To be able to build something I can be proud of, but also to have control over things.
Biggest drawback: Stress. I take personally the success of the company.
Biggest misconception: Once you’ve got the business to a certain level, people automatically think you suddenly become very wealthy and work less. It’s quite the reverse.
Biggest business strength: We have a hard work ethic.
Biggest business weakness: I really don’t know how to acknowledge my own limitations.
Biggest risk: Buying Indicative Software in April. We’ve never done an acquisition before, and it’s complicated, but it has gone well.
Biggest mistake: I’ve made some pretty big mistakes in people I’ve hired; it sets you back.
Smartest move: Making the decision to merge with Nimbus and the selection of our investors — it’s been tremendous.
Biggest worry: Used to be meeting payroll. Maintaining focus as we get larger is what we’re working on now.
Top source of inspiration: Many things. But I’m a very self-motivated person.
Daily routine

Most challenging task: Keeping everyone on the same page.
Favorite task: Talking to and visiting customers. It’s the best thing.
Least favorite task: Firing people. It’s probably the worst thing.
Biggest frustration: There’s always more that you can do. You can never do everything you want.
Source of support in a business crisis: It can be lonely being CEO, but friends and former colleagues listen and give me advice.
Dreams

Key goal yet to achieve: I’d like Nimsoft to be publicly traded.
First move with capital windfall: I love cars, so I’d probably buy a new Aston Martin.
Five-year plan: To grow dramatically and become the leading company in the industry.
Inducement to sell: I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon.
First choice for new career or venture: I have a ton of ideas for new businesses, it’s all about building something.
Personals

Most-admired entrepreneur: (Virgin founder) Richard Branson, of course.
Most interested in meeting: I’m boring, but I’d like to meet Steve Jobs.
Stress reducers: Running, it’s good thinking time.
Favorite pastimes: I have three kids.
Favorite book: Classic English reads like Thomas Harding or Jane Austen.
Favorite films: (Anything with) James Bond.
Favorite restaurant: (Anyplace) with nachos.
Favorite destination: Best city in the world is London, only when the weather is good.
What’s on my iPod: A lot of high-energy dance music, it gets me going.
What I Drive: A 2006 gold Prius.

—Tony C. Yang]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=105 Mon, 8 Sep 2008 21:28:51 -0500 http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=104
New Orleans - October 6th to 10th
Amseterdam - October 20th to 24th

Tons of technical training, lots of customer presentations, meet the developers and the people responsible for this amazing product of ours and....get to hear me give the opening address.

Oh well, every silver lining has a cloud :)

Sign up here...]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=104 Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:43:27 -0500 http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=103
But...did you see their Service Assurance results (i.e. performance and availability monitoring)...$20m in license bookings for Q1....DOWN 32% year on year. This compares to Nimsoft that reported an 85% INCREASE in bookings.

Now...if we both continued on that trajectory....let's think...we'd be doing more business than BMC in Service Assurance in....not that long.

Imagine that!

(yeah, I know my logic on projections is a little fuzzy...just a bit of fun)]]> General http://www.nimsoft.com/blogs/index.php?itemid=103 Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:38:18 -0500