The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results ofoperations should be read together with our audited financial statements andrelated notes which are included in Part II, Item 8, "Financial Statements andSupplementary Data" of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Our actual results coulddiffer materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statementsincluded in this discussion as a result of certain factors, including, but notlimited to, those discussed in Part I, Item 1A, " Risk Factors " of thisAnnual Report on Form 10-K.

Overview

Key Financial Terms and Metrics

Sources of Revenues

Fulfillment - Our Fulfillment product provides fulfillment automation andreplaces or augments an organization's existing staff and trading partnerelectronic communication infrastructure by enabling easy compliance withretailers' rulebooks, automatic, digital exchange of information among numeroustrading partners through various protocols, and greater visibility into thejourney of an order.

Cost of Revenues and Operating Expenses

Cost of Revenues - Cost of revenues consist primarily of personnel costs for ourcustomer success and implementation teams, customer support personnel, andapplication support personnel as well as network services costs.

Sales and Marketing Expenses - Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily ofpersonnel costs for our sales, marketing and product management teams,commissions earned by our sales personnel and marketing costs.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overhead Allocation - We allocate overhead expenses such as rent, certainemployee benefit costs, office supplies and depreciation of general officeassets to cost of revenues and operating expenses categories based on headcount.

Metrics and Non-GAAP Measures

Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Internal-Use Software

Business Combinations

Results of Operations

Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to Year Ended December 31, 2020

Revenues - The increase in revenues resulted from two primary factors: theincrease in recurring revenue customers, which is driven by continued businessgrowth and by business acquisitions, and the increase in average recurringrevenues per recurring revenue customer, which we also refer to as wallet share.

The number of recurring revenue customers increased 13% to 37,500 at

December 31, 2021 from 33,150 at December 31, 2020 due to sales and

marketing efforts to acquire new customers and due to new acquisitions.

Wallet share increased 9% to $10,050 at December 31, 2021 from $9,250 at

December 31, 2020. This was primarily attributable to increased usage of

our products by our recurring revenue customers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cost of Revenues - The increase in cost of revenues was primarily due toincreased headcount which resulted in an increase of $26.3 million inpersonnel-related costs and an increase of $2.8 million in stock-basedcompensation. Additionally, as we continued to invest in the infrastructuresupporting our platform, depreciation expense increased by $1.7 million.

Other Income (Expense) - The change was primarily due to unfavorable foreigncurrency exchange rate changes and decreased investment income.

13,127

5,538

18,936

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The following table provides a reconciliation of net income to non-GAAP incomeper share:

2020

18,936

5,538

Realized (gain) loss from foreign currency on cashand investments held

Year Ended December 31, 2020 Compared to Year Ended December 31, 2019

Liquidity and Capital Resources

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

88,562

(120,469 )Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities $ (8,361 ) $ 2,328

Net Cash Flows from Operating Activities

Net Cash Flows from Investing Activities

The decrease in net cash used in investing activities was primarily due todecreased cash used for acquisitions of business and intangible assets, drivenby the larger acquisition in 2020 as compared to 2021.

Net Cash Flows from Financing Activities

The change in net cash flows from financing activities was primarily due to thedecrease in net proceeds from stock option exercises.

Contractual and Commercial Commitment Summary

Future Capital Requirements

Our future capital requirements may vary significantly from those now plannedand will depend on many factors, including:

costs to develop and implement new products and applications, if any;

sales and marketing resources needed to further penetrate our market and

gain acceptance of new products and applications that we may develop;

Historically, we have experienced increases in our expenditures consistent withthe growth in our operations and personnel, and we anticipate that ourexpenditures will continue to increase as we expand our business.

We believe our cash, cash equivalents, investments, and cash flows from ouroperations will be sufficient to meet our working capital and capitalexpenditure requirements for at least the next twelve months.

Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We do not have any off-balance sheet arrangements, investments in specialpurpose entities or undisclosed borrowings or debt. Additionally, we are not aparty to any derivative contracts or synthetic leases.

Foreign Currency Exchange and Inflation Rate Changes

During the last three years, inflation and changing prices have not had amaterial effect on our business and we do not expect that inflation or changingprices will materially affect our business in the foreseeable future.

Recent Accounting Pronouncements

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edgar Online, source Glimpses

See the article here:
SPS COMMERCE INC Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (form 10-K) - marketscreener.com

When Willem Groenewald took over as CEO of the Automobile Association of South Africa (AASA) two years ago, the not-for-profit organisation was 90 years old and in dire need of an overhaul. Being a turnaround specialist he realised that an ageing Membership base and a lack of clarity around what the AA actually does meant that a lot of work had to be done to give the brand new relevancy and to connect with a younger market segment.

The work is ongoing to win the hearts and minds of new customers, especially the younger market, while also providing excellent quality service to our most valued corporate customer base. Product and service diversification was required in the business to move away from the brand being perceived as a being only roadside assistance business.

Most people talk about the AA as a service that their grandfather or dad used to have, but Groenewald decided to move away from that and use emerging technology to change this narrative: I wanted to change how we connect with the public, creating something that provides more value for our Members and corporate customers, and more touch points that we can use to engage and interact with our customers. Our loyal member base is extremely important to us they are the core and foundation of our business.

The aim, adds Layton Beard, Spokesperson for the AA, is to move away from just being a traditional automobile association which Members join to enjoy certain benefits related to the ownership of a vehicle to something much more, providing support across every aspect of a motorists life.

Groenewald says the idea is to create a movement developing and showcasing the different services the AA has to offer. Today, the AAs different offerings typically fall under five key pillars. Firstly, the AAs conventional business provides mobility services such as roadside assistance, with access to medical support where necessary. The second pillar, says Groenewald, focuses on the services offered across the brands AA Auto Centres. These facilities include car services and provide the analysis and validation reports needed to prove that a car is in good working condition before it is bought or sold. The third pillar incorporates the AAs financial services offerings, including insurance, service plans and warranty products.

The fourth pillar is the technology side of things. As part of their efforts to transform the business, the AA is building a connected environment called AA Connected.Me which provides products and services like vehicle telematics and connected devices such as GSM panic buttons. The AAs Connected.Me offering includes asset trackers, which can be used to keep track of your valuables, or even to keep tabs on your loved ones. It also provides AA Connected Vehicle functionality, which can be used to do everything from monitoring vehicle health and setting up geo-fencing to tracking driver behaviour and analysing vehicle performance.

The AA also offers a Connected Home experience, which turns regular homes into smart homes via smart geyser solutions and electricity, water, geyser and security tampering management systems.

Finally, the AA has an accommodation network nationwide where ratings are applied to different venues. Incorporated into this the travel-related offer is the issuing of International Driving Permits (IDPs), and Carnet de Passage, an international customs declaration identifying a vehicle that can be used for cross-border travel.

So, what is enabling all of this innovation?

Huawei Cloud

For us, Huawei is an execution platform, enabling us to deliver all of these services, notes Groenewald. Before partnering with Huawei, the brand had a very scattered environment, with physical hardware and backups sitting on-premise. The challenge with this approach, he explains, is that they had to duplicate all of the data stored on these physical devices and then store it elsewhere: a massive expense.

Using cloud technology, Huawei has helped us to consolidate all of these platforms from a hosting and capacity perspective so that it is possible for us to scale and move forward with our future plans.

According to Jay Zhou, Managing Director of Huawei Cloud South Africa, we live in a continuously evolving world, and all companies must be aware of new ways of working and leverage new forms of technology if they want to survive in the future. Today, digital transformation is a means of survival. Cloud has a key role to play in this transformation. Companies that embrace the cloud can bring new offerings to market quickly, they can innovate easily and they have the ability to scale as and when they need to do so. But migrating to the cloud demands that the business adopt a different business-technology model, which can be difficult to get right without the support of the right technology partner.

Today, the AA is a very different business. All but one of the innovation pillars I mentioned earlier didnt exist just two years ago. Our service centres, financial services offering and our Connected.Me products are part of our business optimisation efforts, none of which would have been possible without the technology and the support of Huawei Cloud, says Groenewald.

For Huawei, joint value creation is the goal. When value is created both for the customer and the supplier, then a supplier like us works with a customer in a totally different way, says Zhou. Working together achieves things that end up being so much better than anything we do alone.

Having executed his first cloud migration back in 2006, Groenewald is well versed in the value that can be gained and the efficiency that can be realised via virtual environments. Hes not alone. The global cloud computing market is expected to rise in value to more than $947-billion by 2026; industry experts forecast that around 80% of organisations will migrate to the cloud by 2025. In South Africa, cloud adoption is expected to grow up to 25% annually and generate revenue of as much as $1.5-billion by 2024.

From a cost optimisation perspective, cloud just makes sense. Cloud also allows us to access a larger pool of data and storage, which makes it possible for us to scale our business, Groenewald says. From a business continuity and data recovery perspective, having a cloud solution is a good business decision, because it reduces the risk of physical disasters. If youre conducting business in the 21st century, you have to move with the times and, as part of this, I firmly believe that you have to have a cloud solution in place.

This strategy could also enable the brand to reach a global market. As a member of the Fdration Internationale de lAutomobile (FIA) Region 1 management council, Groenewald can connect with about 150 other automobile clubs across the globe. As we build our digital capacity and enhance our capabilities into the future, we have the option of selling software licensing agreements to other similar clubs globally; clubs that have been around for a long time and that face the same challenges we faced just a few years ago. The beauty of what Huawei Cloud offers us is that by white-labelling our solution, we can allow others the option simply to dial into our cloud platform and, as such, we can sell our software to other clubs around the world. In this way, software could become a new revenue stream for us.

As industries change and technologies evolve, businesses need to realise that being competitive in the future is made easier when you have help from others, notes Zhou. We already know that the age of digital transformation demands that companies collaborate in order to survive and grow. In any strategic partnership, if you are open and honest about where you want to go and how you want to get there, the right partner will know exactly what to do to help you achieve your goals as quickly as possible.

A question of culture

When you change processes and challenge the status quo, your people have to buy into it or your efforts wont get off the ground, says Groenewald, which is why making such a big, bold company culture shift can be difficult. Were an old business. If some kid comes along and questions the way youve been doing things for 90 years, its understandable that youd be a bit put out by their suggestions and ideas. Mitigating this uncertainty comes down to illustrating and demonstrating the benefits that the change can bring.

Speaking of culture, in his early interactions with Huawei, Groenewald was struck by the brands collaborative culture. It really impressed me that they wanted to work alongside us to improve how we do business. Whenever we meet with them, they ask how they can partner with us and they are always so willing to introduce us to products and solutions beyond their cloud hosting offerings.

A prime example of this can be seen in the AAs call centre environment. According to Groenewald, Huawei technology is currently being investigated as an enterprise-wide solution for the AA. He says Huaweis willingness to introduce proof of concept discussions are underway. We are yet to engage with another service provider that is willing to go the extra mile in this way, he says.

Platforms and partnerships like this, adds Groenewald, allow the AA to access best-of-breed future technologies. Bringing robotics and automated call centre systems into our environment could enable us to open up different digital channels of communication that will make it possible to interact with Members on a more personal level and provide a better user experience. In alignment with their other digital efforts, the goal is to deliver continuous and sustained optimisation of their IT cost environment.

South Africa and our South African customers remain an important market for Huawei and the company is committed to strengthening relationships with partners across the region, says Zhou. Last year, Huawei Cloud unveiled plans to increase its market share in South Africa and Africa via strategic investments and collaboration with the right partners. As part of this commitment to South Africa and the African continent, Huawei seeks to support and enable our local customers to achieve their best results by equipping them with the best technological advancements the industry has to offer.

For the AA, one of the main benefits of the partnership is that it has allowed them to optimise their costs by significantly reducing their capital expenses (Capex).

With this approach, were not just seeing a once-off benefit based on the changes weve made. This partnership is delivering sustained improvement across our environment. And as we enhance and continue to build using the Huawei platform, we become more and more efficient, which means that our IT costs will either remain the same over time or they could even decline in the future.

According to Groenewald, the AA is in the process of an important turnaround from where it was just two years ago, and this process is a work in progress, ultimately all to the benefit of Members and corporate customers.

Perhaps Im old fashioned but when I pick a partner, I want to stick with them for the long haul so that we can learn and build together, and this is where I think were headed with the team from Huawei.

Working so closely with the AASA team, we really do admire their commitment to digital transformation and appreciate all the work they have put in to turn their business around and become a digital success story, concludes Zhou.

But theres still a lot of work to be done. In 2022, Groenewald hopes to gain on the traction he has already created by optimising the business. He says: Anyone can cut costs, but our focus in 2022 is to provide customer service that people start talking about and that makes people feel delighted and excited to work with the AA.

Layton Beard, Spokesperson for the AASA, says the organisation wants to be a voice for ordinary South Africans on all things affecting traffic/transport legislation and road safety. This includes pushing for the scrapping of the e-toll system and the repayment of monies to those who have already paid, and educating and informing the public on matters relating to vehicle safety and maintenance. The AA is very actively engaging with government and other key stakeholders on important legislation such as the new National Road Traffic Amendment Act, which prohibits alcohol consumption by all motor vehicle operators on South African public roads by setting the legal blood-alcohol limit for drivers at 0%. The AAs efforts also extend to championing important initiatives like the 3 500 Lives campaign and the #ISeeYou campaign, which seek to educate the public about their role in road safety, be it those driving vehicles or pedestrians.

Excerpt from:
Automobile Association looks to the future with help from Huawei Cloud - Mail and Guardian

February 18: Twelve years ago, a developer from Haryana wanted to provide the solution to the mass population of India. In the process, he would tackle a much bigger opportunity by starting a web hosting business. Today, his company owns the most modern cloud computing services in different locations all over the world and serves more than 9000 clients across the globe. Most of their clients are from southeast Asia.

MicroHost Cloud became the first cloud platform in India and the fastest-growing cloud computing platform worldwide in 2018. The company focused on simplifying the complexities of infrastructure for software developers. The simple and fast SSD/NVMe servers can be deployed with just one click to provide your applications with scalable performance without any worries about scalability or hardware maintenance costs!

In this special interview with the founder and CTO of MicroHost Cloud Manoj Dhanda, we discover a special blend of his long-term vision, discuss the hosting business landscape, and Manojs journey in the web hosting business.

Our mission is to help developers all around the world create amazing products, and our robust, cost-effective, and easy architecture is making cloud computing more accessible than ever.

Outside of the core developer market, start-ups are driving our growth. Even if its for personal use cases, developers familiarity with our platform enables them to bring MicroHost Cloud to their business or enterprise environments as well.

Developers and startups care about the same things regardless of their location they want a cloud platform thats simple, fast, feature-rich, and inexpensive. MicroHost Cloud meets these criteria because we take care of the infrastructure side while allowing developers to focus on creating applications that address real client issues.

You can select the type of operating system you want to use on our platform and have a server up and running in less than 30 seconds. Other cloud platforms, on the other hand, have a significant learning curve.

Weve always prioritized making our products easy to use. While other cloud providers have focused their efforts on large enterprises and legacy businesses, weve continued to develop better development tools for cloud developers wanting to deploy and manage apps.

Simplicity is our trademark, which can be found in all of our items. This characteristic may be seen in every item we release. We make sure that the idea of simplicity is kept across our services such as Block storage and object storage, firewall, and load balancer.

We want to provide a simple yet efficient cloud platform, as well as pay-as-you-go pricing that is simple and transparent. Weve also concentrated on developing a genuine community of developers to assist in the growth of the market and support them as they create tomorrows technology.

We provide phone, email, and ticket support to all of our clients at any time.

Our Cloud Servers are virtual machines with a pre-determined compute, storage, and networking capacity that may be expanded as needed, and theyre currently available. It specializes in offering software developers high-performance servers at market-leading prices while maintaining simplicity and user experience as top priorities. Outside of Cloud Servers, we also have a Block storage offering that provides additional flexibility in increasing storage for an existing virtual machine.

Our platform appealed to individual developers and hobbyists who wanted to use our platform for their freelance or hosting needs. Teams of developers started using MicroHost Cloud for commercial purposes as our platform developed. Our objective is to enable businesses and engineering teams to better address their large-scale production environment requirements with new features such as Kubernetes, Block Storage, Load Balancers, Firewall, Monitoring, Object Storage and a host of new offerings (across the 3 pillars of Compute, Storage & Networking) in our upcoming roadmap; our goal is to enable businesses and engineering teams to better address their large-scale production environment needs.

We will add more products to our portfolio to make the experience of our customers seamless.

I would like to recommend signing up for a trial account at https://microhost.com and testing our products.

Read the rest here:
Who's Behind India's First Cloud Platform MicroHost Cloud, A conversation with Founder - APN Live

Akamai said the deal will be transformational for the company, with plans to acquire the AWS competitor within the first quarter of 2022.

Akamai Technologies has confirmed plans to acquire cloud hosting company Linode in a $900m deal, in order to become the worlds most distributed compute platform.

Akamai said Linode is one of the most trusted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform providers. Founded in 2003, Linode has grown to 256 staff operating in 11 markets, with customers around the world.

It has advertised itself as an alternative to other cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). On its site, Linode says it helped pioneer cloud computing three years before AWS entered the market.

Theres no question AWS is the big kahuna in the cloud, the website says. If you are a large enterprise and need the ability to customise your infrastructure, AWS is a good fit. But if youre a small business owner or independent developer, having access to all of that advanced cloud technology comes at a cost: unnecessary complexity, risk of lock-in to Amazons ecosystem and frequent billing surprises.

Linode CEO Christopher Aker said todays customers face new challenges as cloud services become all-encompassing. He added that Linode and Akamai have a natural synergy and their combination of strengths will help clients meet these challenges.

Linode will soon be able to call on the power of Akamai to offer entirely new products, services, expertise, locations and scale, while Akamai will be able to tap into Linodes deep expertise in compute, storage and on-demand infrastructure-as-a-service, Aker said.

Akamai shared its 2021 earnings yesterday (15 February), reporting revenue of $3.5bn last year, an 8pc increase. Its content delivery network comprises more than 325,000 servers worldwide and the company also offers cybersecurity and cloud services.

Akamai CEO Dr Tom Leighton described the acquisition as transformational for the company, as it will combine Linodes developer-friendly cloud computing capabilities with Akamais edge platform and security services.

Akamai has been a pioneer in the edge computing business for over 20 years, and today we are excited to begin a new chapter in our evolution by creating a unique cloud platform to build, run and secure applications from the cloud to the edge, Leighton said.

This is a big win for developers who will now be able to build applications on a platform that delivers unprecedented scale, reach, performance, reliability and security.

The Massachusetts-headquartered company expects the deal to be completed in the first quarter of this year.

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Original post:
Akamai to acquire cloud hosting company Linode for $900m - Siliconrepublic.com