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| IOSA.OB > SEC Filings for IOSA.OB > Form 10-Q/A on 9-Sep-2009 | All Recent SEC Filings |
9-Sep-2009
Quarterly Report
As used herein the terms "we", "us", "our", the "Registrant," "ISA" and the "Company" means, Information Systems Associates, Inc., a Florida corporation.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS
BUSINESS OVERVIEW
We have been in business since May of 1994. During the first twelve (12) years of operation, the primary focus of the business was to offer for sale, through ISA's Value Added Reseller Agreements in place in several of the industry leaders, software products and services that allow companies to track and manage assets, primarily in the realm of corporate real estate and corporate IT network infrastructure including equipment maintained in corporate data centers. We refer to our product and services suite as asset management solutions. Our solutions can reduce sourcing, procurement and tracking costs, improve tracking and monitoring of asset performance and reduce operational downtime.
In 1995, we became a Business Partner (a/k/a Value Added Reseller) with Aperture Technologies, Inc. of Stamford, CT. (It should be noted that the term "Business Partner" is somewhat misleading because in reality we are simply a subcontractor for Aperture). At that time, Aperture's Network Management tools ("System"), was one of the leading solutions in it field. For more than five years, Aperture Technologies, Inc. has provided enterprise asset management solutions to customers in the United States, Europe and Asia and Pacific Rim. During this same timeframe, we have offered Aperture's enterprise asset management solutions to customers and prospects in North America.
The typical Value Added Reseller Agreement allows the vendor's partner/subcontractor (in this case ISA) the ability to offer to its client's and prospects a Commercial Off the Shelf software solution to address a particular business problem. The primary focus of ISA's business is working data center operations, network management department and corporate real estate department to identify and then implement a software solution which addresses their needs based upon extensive research done prior to the selection and culminating in the purchase by the client and implementation by ISA of the chosen solution.
All of the products listed under our Value Added Reseller relationships (Vista, Vision FM, the Facilities Manager, AutoCAD, and RACKWISE DCM) are products developed by third parties.
The products obtained from third parties are done so through executed Value Added Reseller Agreements. Although each of the vendor's agreements differs to some degree, the basic understandings are the same. Information Systems Associates is authorized by each of the vendors to offer the vendor's software as solutions to Information Systems Associates' clients. In return, Information Systems Associates receives a commission on the sale of the software. The percentage ranges between twenty (20) and thirty (30) percent of the sale. On occasion, Information Systems Associates provide pre-sales support services to the vendor's clients. In addition, Information Systems Associates is given the opportunity to implement the software solution and provide training to its clients. On an ongoing basis, Information Systems Associates can and does provide additional consulting services beyond those provided initially to the client.
The need for a better way to capture corporate asset information became evident
to ISA's management team. After reviewing the methods and technology in use at
that time (1st Quarter 2006) for the purpose of data collection, it was decided
within ISA to define a data collection process and subsequently to design and
build a software solution capable of delivering quality data (output) through
the use of programming techniques that incorporated many of the much needed
features and capabilities, especially real time data validation. The result was
that by year end of 2007 OSPI (ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM ) was available for
resale.
Our customer list includes a number of leading organizations, such as Northrop
Grumman Electronic Systems, Charles Schwab, Bank of America, Comcast
Communications and General Electric.
Our application products are also used by corporate Real Estate departments to manage their real property lease obligations (as both tenant and landlord), to determine their company's use of corporate space and to develop plans for relocations, mergers and acquisitions as it relates to the use of space (office, manufacturing, warehousing).
On April 17, 2009, we entered into a strategic alliance and became an investor with Rubicon Software Group, plc. This agreement will create an opening into the European market as well as provide cost effective software development.
INDUSTRY BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW
Asset management software has existed for more than thirty years, initially through computerized maintenance management systems, and more recently including more comprehensive and robust enterprise asset management and enterprise resource planning solutions. The early computerized maintenance management systems automated daily management of assets, while enterprise resource planning solutions consolidate basic asset information with financial information at the corporate level. Enterprise asset management solutions encompass elements of both, serving as the next evolution of computerized maintenance management system solutions by bridging the gap between asset management and corporate-level planning and tracking requirements.
The key value proposition for enterprise asset management solutions is that they can provide a quick and quantifiable return on investment and return on assets. Cost and productivity improvements can immediately and measurably benefit organizations, and thus are highly desirable to potential customers, particularly in difficult economic times where the focus is increasingly bottom line oriented.
In addition to enterprise asset management solutions, we offer facilities solutions. These are natural extensions to enterprise asset management solutions, as organizations seek to extend asset management and corporate-level planning and tracking onto other elements of the asset lifecycle. The reference to "facilities solutions" includes software application products that are used by corporate Real Estate departments and to software application products used by Data Center Management (Information Technology) to track their computer assets from a financial perspective as well as their usage and connectivity within the corporate IT (Information Technology) network.
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Aperture's VISTA
Historically, IT organizations have operated as reactive cost centers that customized one-off services for the demands of customers. However, the influx of growing complexities, continual changes and higher demands for "better, faster and cheaper" has instigated a trend towards tighter IT management and control. The new "value-driven" approach, combined with pressures for high availability and with increased SLA penalties have many IT executives operating under a mantra of "avoid problems before they happen" or "no surprises permitted."
The term "SLA penalties" refers to Service Level Agreement performance
metrics. In most sophisticated corporate operations, the end user is guaranteed
a specific degree of network and application availability. Usually items such as
systems maintenance are taken into consideration when guaranteeing this
availability as are items like built in redundancy (network circuits and the
hardware used to deliver the connectivity) as well as Disaster Recovery plans
that would insure the end user a specific level of availability (although
typically less than that guaranteed under normal operating conditions) in the
event that a natural or other type of disaster cause an interruption in
corporate IT services.
In order to reduce operational risk and increase operational efficiency, it is
essential for IT organizations to define best practices and implement IT
frameworks (for example, the IT Infrastructure Library, ITIL) that create a more
service-oriented organization. This includes standardizing and automating IT
processes from a disparate set of ad hoc tasks to a cohesive, consolidated
environment and developing a central repository of information to create
institutional memory for the IT organization.
Many organizations have assessed the various facts of the IT organization to improve the logical environment. However, one component which seems to be overlooked quite frequently and that continuously operates within individual silos is the overall physical infrastructure of the data center.
Aperture VISTA provides IT Management with the key information and intelligence to reduce operational risk and improve efficiency in the data center.
VisionFM
Vision FM includes a very flexible asset management system capable of tracking everything from building components to office supplies. The Facilities Manager can define complex products such as systems furniture that include a bill-of-materials or simple items such as keys and cell phones that can be assigned directly to individuals.
Once products are defined then assets can be added by inserting symbols in AutoCAD or by using VisionFM forms such as a purchase order. Unique information about each asset can be recorded including a barcode number, purchase date and price. The system then tracts the asset from purchase through to disposition including depreciation, maintenance history, condition, warranties and insurance.
RACKWISE DMC
RACKWISE DMCTM services and products deliver key features to simplify and reduce the time consumed designing, modeling and operating the physical infrastructure of your datacenter.
· Graphical design and marketing of datacenters
· Auto-build visual documentation from imported bill of materials
· Advanced operations and reporting
· Modeling and impact analysis of datacenter designs
· Space, power, cooling, and cable management
· Generate detailed datacenter and rack visualizations
· Ensure racks and the datacenter are within design limits
· Instantly find available datacenter resources
· Improve utilization of power and space
· Import and document the datacenter in minutes
Rubicon Software Group
Rubicon Software works closely with organizations to develop customized software solutions.
RELATED SERVICES
In connection with our software offerings, we provide the following services to our customers:
Consulting
A significant number of our customers request our advice regarding their business and technical processes, often in conjunction with a scoping exercise conducted both before and after the execution of a contract. This advice can relate to development or streamline of assorted business processes, such as sourcing or procurement activities, assisting in the development of technical specifications, and recommendations regarding internal workflow activities.
Customization and Implementation
Based generally upon the up-front scoping activities, we are able to customize our solutions as required to meet the customer's particular needs. This process can vary in length depending on the degree of customization, the resources applied by the customer and the customer's business requirements. We work closely with our customers to ensure that features and functionality meet their expectations. We also provide the professional services work required for the implementation of our customer solutions, including loading of data, identification of business processes, and integration to other systems applications.
Training
Upon completion of implementation (and often during implementation), we train customer personnel to utilize our Solutions through our administrative tools. Training can be conducted in one-on-one or group situations. We also conduct "train the trainer" sessions.
Maintenance and Support
We provide regular software upgrades and ongoing support to our customers.
We have been providing consulting, customization and implementation, training, maintenance and support services to our customers since 1994.
We will soon be offering version 2 of ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM.
THIRD PARTY OFFERINGS
Other Partner Relationships
In addition to the sale of our core solutions and services, we intend to enter into marketing or co-marketing agreements with companies that offer services that are complementary to our offerings. We would market these complementary services to our customers and prospects and can earn a referral fee if these services are purchased. In some cases our marketing partner will be able to market our solutions to its customers and prospects and can earn a referral fee. At the present time, we have two marketing partners. They are Forsythe Solutions Group, Inc. and Total Site Solutions, Inc.
Forsythe serves as a technology infrastructure solutions provider, helping organizations across all industries, including Fortune 1000 companies, manage the cost and risk of their information technology. Forsythe's data center services help organizations navigate through some of the more infrequent aspects of owning and operating a mission-critical environment-data center planning and information technology relocation. Our data collection solution ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM, and the services offered by us in conjunction with ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM are perfectly matched to the needs of Forsythe's customer's, for whom they (Forsythe) are either planning a new data center, expanding an existing data center or moving a data center to a new location. In the current environment of corporate acquisitions and downsizing, the services offered by Forsythe and in turn complimented by our offerings are well suited for these purposes. We have concluded two data collection opportunities with Forsythe.
Total Site Solutions, Inc. (TSS) specializes in providing a single source solution for companies requiring highly technical facility integration and precision project execution for mission-critical facilities. ISA's data collection solution ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM and the services offered by us in conjunction with ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM are perfectly matched to the needs of Total Site Solutions' customers. We have entered into an agreement with TSS and have begun data collection services for two TSS clients.
Since many of our customers are large organizations or quasi-governmental entities, we may experience increasingly longer sales and collection cycles.
CUSTOMERS
We provide our solutions to customers in a variety of industries, including:
healthcare, public authorities, and financial services sectors.
The services provided vary depending upon the needs of the customer and the solution concerned. We collect service fees for implementation and training, and support and maintenance fees. The criteria used to select the customers listed in the business section and other sections of the document are based on their prominence within their industry, such as Northrop Grumman, General Electric and Comcast Communications. We do not list companies based upon any specific amount of revenue derived or whether or not they are currently active clients, but rather we have selected these clients based upon the scope of the consulting engagement. This approach provides us with clients from various industries as this sometimes becomes crucial to a prospect in their vendor selection process.
We began our relationship with General Electric in 2008. We began by providing data center audit services. This was followed by providing data collection services. In September, 2008 GE purchased one of the first licenses for OSPI and all the related handheld devices and support services.
SALES AND MARKETING
We market our services primarily through referrals from companies with whom ISA has either a reseller's agreement in place, is authorized to provide consulting service to their client's, or both.
Potential customers are identified through direct contact, responses to requests for information, attendance at trade shows and through industry contacts. We principally focus on professionals and ongoing lead generation through our partner relationships and their VAR (Valued Added Reseller) program referrals.
We use reference customers to assist us in our marketing efforts, both through direct contact with potential customers and through site branding and case studies. We also rely on our co-marketing partners to assist in our marketing efforts.
Our strategic alliance agreement with Rubicon will create an opportunity to begin marketing, initially in the United Kingdom through current Rubicon clients and then eventually throughout Europe.
TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM
As Valued Added Resellers, Information Systems Associates, Inc. has sought out and identified those solutions that are based upon proven technology platforms and contain the desired functionality to meet or exceed its client's expectations.
Our partner's technology platform are based on Microsoft core applications, including the Windows operating system and a SQL server and/or Oracle relational database, all residing on scaleable hardware. The software is constructed using HTML and XML framework and resides on N-tier architecture as well as proprietary solutions.
ISA is the developer and at this time the exclusive marketer and distributor of ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORY™. Our activities as a VAR (Value Added Reseller) are best described as being authorized to resell a partner's software solution as well as being certified to implement the solution on the client's hardware and to deliver training in the use and operation of the software application.
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Based on the relative pricing and functionality of products available in the marketplace today, we believe that the opportunity exists for ISA to develop software to compete in a segment of the industry. We believe that this segment is defined as any technology infrastructure (a/k/a data centers) whose size (raised floor area) is less than twenty-five thousand square feet in size. Therefore, we have focused our software development and technology efforts on the development of our proprietary software offerings.
Our initial software development and technology efforts will be aimed at the defining the core functionality elements of our software application (ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM), the features and functionality of the follow-up release, the development of new software components, and the integration of superior third party technology into our environment. Production involves the development of reusable applications to reduce programming time and costs for customer implementations.
The strategic alliance agreement with Rubicon has allowed for the rewrite of ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM, version 2, on budget and within the prescribed time frame. This relationship will also provide more favorable pricing for future software development. In the third quarter of 2009, we began BETA testing ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM, version 2.
COMPETITION
The market for each solution comprising our asset management suite is intensely competitive. Many of the companies we compete with have much greater financial, technical, research and development resources than us.
The system integration consulting field is comprised of many categories of specialties. There are integrators who specialize in software integration by industry (automotive, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, defense, etc.) and therefore are not considered to be competitors. Our primary competitors in this space are the other Value Added Resellers representing the same products as Information Systems Associates. The relationship with the vendor (software developers) is crucial in gaining an edge on the competition. This relationship is usually strengthened by such factors as the client relationships that the Value Added Reseller already has in place as well as the Value Added Resellers ability to successfully implement and maintain the vendor's solution to the vendor's satisfaction. We believe that Information Systems Associates has developed strong relationships with the solution vendors that it represents which in turn has and will continue to provide Information Systems Associates with sales of its consulting service offerings. We at Information Systems Associates believe that the foundation for this relationship is built upon trust.
The data collection services field has been in existence for many industries for years. The idea of hiring outside companies to conduct inventories of corporate data centers is not new either. There are many vendors in this space today that are using techniques that employ the use of text based list or a formatted spread sheet. Information Systems Associates has developed a data collection process for IT assets that employs real time data validation combined bar code scanning which as best as can be determined is unique in the industry. The major importance of this approach is that the data exported (extracted) from Information Systems Associates' data collection application has been validated and is available to be imported into the client's asset management solution. This saves a significant amount of time (could be days or even weeks) in researching errors that are uncovered by the application at the time of the data import.
To become more competitive, we will need to make investments in new product development and improve our market visibility and financial situation. A prime example of this investment is ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM, version 2 which will provide a cost efficient solution.
Although we offer a broad range of asset network and facilities management solutions as Value Added Resellers, we face significant competition in each of the component product areas from the following companies:
º Enterprise asset management - related solutions - Visual Network Design,
Inc., ShowRack, Nlyte, Visto
º Facilities Managements - related solutions - Archibus
In addition, we face competition from organizations that use in-house developers to develop solutions for certain elements of the asset management.
ISA considers data collection and the software it has developed to perform these services ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM to be one of the two areas of focus for our business. It is the intent of ISA management to promote the software as the practical solution to the specific problems encountered during the data collection process for IT (Information Technology) assets. The promotion of the product and services will occur through marketing via industry trade show exhibition as well as mailings to a targeted audience.
ISA competes for business based on the recommendations of the software vendors for whose product solutions our data collection software is compatible. At the present time, ON SITE PHYSICAL INVENTORYTM is compatible with two vendor's solution; VISTA500 by Aperture Technologies, Inc. and RACKWISE DCM by Visual Network Design. ISA believes that its current pricing structure combined with the extensive number of data validation processes included in its product make it very competitive. In a recent trade show at which we exhibited in San Francisco, ISA was the only vendor offering a data collection solution. The vast majority of data collection services in existence are focused on the retail industry. Of the competitors that we have been able to identify, our research has not produced any information that would lead us to believe that the competitors can provide the same level of quality services that ISA is capable of delivering with its software solution.
Visual Network Design does not assign exclusive geographical areas to Value Added Resellers as this would limit the VAR's potential as it relates to the sale of software and services. ISA in now being actively engaged by Visual Network Design to deliver consulting services to its customers (solution installation, data load and training) and plans to offer a "turnkey" service to their clients in which ISA provides the IT asset data collection, RACKWISE DMC software installation, data import (using the data collected previously) and client training in the use of the RACKWISE DMC software. ISA is training an additional resource for this purpose and intends to make this resource exclusive to Visual Network Design. ISA and VND management has had several discussions regarding the role that ISA will play in supporting Visual Network Design's deployment of RACKWISE DCM.
RESULTS OF OPERATIONS FOR THE SIX MONTHS ENDED JUNE 30, 2009 AND 2008
The following discussion should be read in conjunction with the financial
statements include in this report and is qualified in its entirety by the
foregoing.
FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS
Certain statements in this report, including statements of our expectations, intentions, plans and beliefs, including those contained in or implied by "Management's Discussion and Analysis" and the Notes to Financial Statements, are "forward-looking statements", within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the ""Exchange Act"), that are subject to certain events, risks and uncertainties that may be outside our control. The words "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "Optimistic", "intend"' "will", and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date on which they are made. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include statements include statements of management's plans and objectives for our future operations and statements of future economic performance, information regarding our expansion and possible results from expansion, our expected growth, our capital budget and future capital requirements, the availability of funds and our ability to meet future capital needs, the realization of our deferred tax assets, and the assumptions described in this report underlying such forward-looking statements. Actual results and developments could differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements due to a number of factors, including, without limitation, those described in the context of such forward-looking statements.
CRITICAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES
Revenue recognition
We recognize revenue in accordance with SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 104, "Revenue Recognition" and Emerging Issues Task Force, or EITF, Issue No. 00-21, "Revenue Arrangements with Multiple Deliverables".
Consulting services and training revenues are accounted for separately from subscription and support revenues when these services have value to the customer on a standalone basis and there is objective and reliable evidence of fair value of each deliverable. When accounted for separately, revenues are achieved and accepted by the customer for fixed price contracts. The majority of our consulting service contracts are on a time and material basis. Training revenues are recognized after the services are performed. For revenue arrangements with multiple deliverables, we allocate the total customer arrangement to the separate units of accounting based on their relative fair values, as determined by the price of the undelivered items when sold separately.
In determining whether the consulting services can be accounted for separately from subscription and support revenues, we consider the following factors for each consulting agreement: availability of the consulting services from other . . .
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