We watch companies who are transitioning to the cloud with particular interest because of the insight they provide into the growth of the cloud and impact on the market. StatPro Group, the asset management portfolio analysis company, appears to be making the move with minimum trauma.
Its trading update for the six months ending 30 June 2011 showed H1 2011 trading that was in line with expectations, although expectations were lower than the comparative period last year because a contract with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange was closed off early. However, the company reduced its net debt to approximately £5.2m (from £6.3m) despite increases in capital expenditure and dividends.
It is the off-premise and cloud activity is where the interest lies from our perspective. 27 existing clients of the legacy StatPro Seven product that, as we said in StatPro – managing its own assets into the cloud can now only be purchased as a hosted product, extended their investment. But we're not clear whether any new customers signed up to hosted StatPro. It will be interesting to see what proportion – if any – existing on-premise customers opt to move to a hosted deployment.
The 11 new customers acquired during H1 came for StatPro Revolution, the new built-for-the-cloud product. The offering had only been available for three months at the time of the trading update, so StatPro is understandably remaining cautious.
However, we think it is a promising start and will watch progress with interest. Despite a good initial launch, the company will still have a delicate task balancing its on and off-premise business lines.