It began as a good year like all New Years do. At least for Solix it did. Early on the year, we entered new markets – and continued that through the year with customer acquisitions in Eastern Europe, support of JD Edwards archiving and application sunsetting, support of DB2 on both IBM’s i-series and z/OS and strengthened our partnerships through our integrations with Oracle’s Universal Online Archive and HDS HCAP But it was a Bad Year. The US economy tumbled and the global economy crashed. Retailers have already reported the worst year in history and many lost their jobs and their homes. Bankruptcies led to the fall of many big names. For the IT industry, it was tough times as decisions took longer and there was pressure on prices and margins. It was an Ugly Year. The Mumbai tragedy was horrific. The scene of the ugliest carnage – the Taj Hotels – also happened to be one of our customers. We pray for all the victims and their families. Talking about ugliness, the Madoff scandal could not have come at a worse time.
I am sure we are all desperately looking forward to the New Year –and hoping that the worst is behind us. There’s a lot of hope and expectations. But it will be a U – rather than a V recovery, and we need to prepare ourselves for that. The new US administration, taking office on 20th January, is talking about structural changes through a “ new energy and environment plan”. The gestation period may be long but the rewards would be ever lasting. Along with many in the IT industry, we too are doing our bit in helping to create Green IT Centers and we will continue investing in this area.
We will soon announce our new Release. It will have a number of industry-unique enhancements in Data Privacy, Long Term Data Retention, support of industry vertical applications and SaaS-enabled features. We will closely follow the trajectory of Cloud Computing. Still in its infancy, we do believe the current economic climate would accelerate its adoption. Once that happens, Data Management would become a critical support function.
In a difficult year, we grew. For that we thank our customers. Many of you were great references. And that means a lot in our business. To our partners – who enabled a market reach that otherwise would just not have been possible – we thank you for your support. To the Solix team – thank you for making our customers happy.
And this is to wish all – our colleagues, customers, partners a great year ahead of us.