Like many high-tech executives who lived through the Internet bubble, Bernard Liautaud knows that the good times can be awfully good, and the bad times can be awfully — well, just awful.
So awful, in fact, that the company Liautaud helms, Business Objects, saw its stock price plummet from $50 to $5 (£28 to £3) as sales dried up. To make matters worse, a tricky product transition had gone terribly wrong and customers voted with their wallets. All in all, it did not make for a pretty picture.
These days the naysayers are long gone and Wall Street has turned into Business Objects' amen corner. Recent financial results tell the story; in its last quarter, the company more than doubled earnings, and it increased guidance for the current quarter. The company is now on track to surpass the $1bn revenue mark.
Liautaud co-founded Business Objects in 1990. Four years later he took the company public on the Nasdaq, where it became the first French software maker listed in the United States.
The company's niche is business intelligence, a segment of the software market that receives relatively little notice compared with the attention lavished on the Microsofts, Googles and Oracles of the industry. But with IT budgets remaining under lock and key, analysts say this is one area that can still command serious attention from purchasing agents. Why? Because the pitch from companies like Business Objects is, here's a way to help your business make better decisions — with the applications you've already bought and installed.
On the eve of Business Objects' fifteenth anniversary, Liautaud spoke with ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com about changes in the software business and his status as one of the few French entrepreneurs to make it big in Silicon Valley.
Q: You're coming up on the 15-year anniversary of the company in a business that's had its share of ups and downs. Were there times along the way when you thought you weren't going to make it?
There were definitely those times. In 1996, we went through an architectural change and completely rewrote our entire product suite. It was a tough transition. We made the move to a new Windows platform and came up with a great product — but none of the customers were ready. Sales went down and the stock went from $50 to $5. A number of people then said...
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