Brittlerock,
I concur with you. There was a misperception on a few things, but the primary misperception (at least to date) is the synergies with VMWare. Perhaps that will work its way out as we go, but at present there is not much in regard to VMWare relationship leading to accelerating customer retention. I do know, as an example, Southwest went with Pivotal mostly because of the VMWare relationship, and I am sure there are others, but I do not know any of the others.
Management was exactly everything you described.
As for those holding Pivotal, perhaps they will right the ship. My opinion in circumstances like this is sometimes time to move on. Nutanix, as an example, that was a clear FUD event (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) that one could perceive through the veil of fog and get to the truth of the matter with great certainty despite the market panic. Therefore I loaded up on Nutanix with a very large truck backing up.
Pivotal, however, is that really a FUD event? No. It is a fundamental business issue event. I do not think we are misperceiving the fundamentals. This is a business model, and a brilliant product, that performs miracles for its customers, but the sales practice this company uses needs a heck of a lot of work, and it appears management cares little about this at this time.
I know that some say the $50k arbitrary definition of a customer. However, two things on that (1) $50k spend is nothing. I am a small law firm, I spend more than $50k on my website alone in past years (fortunately I have cut that expense by more than half with a lot more productivity now), but if a little guy like me can have multiple expenses in this range, for these large corporations this is a pittance, so it is not really that conservative of a measure, (2) Pivotal knows its pipeline, and yet as others have laid out their guidance shows a dramatic slow down in subscription revenue over the next two quarters. If they are honestly assessing their pipeline then this shows that there is no hidden pipeline of customers excluded based upon the definition.
It may still happen, I cannot say, but to me these are fundamental issues and there are so many other places to put our money in hungry and aggressive and clearly (not hypothetically) dominating companies. Gave Pivotal a shot because that business model is Arista like if they can just get say 25, 30, 35 new customers a quarter.
15! Pivotal proclaimed loud and clear at their first earnings call, and interviews around that, that the number 1 priority of Pivotal (other than maintaining great product) is to bring in new customers. And yet the rate of customer growth appears to be slowing from prior years when that was not the priority.
I am subject sometimes to jumping the gun and becoming overly cynical sometimes, so I say that because perhaps that is what I am doing now. However, since there are so many other investments, as specified above, I, personally, can see no reason to HOPE that the fundamentals that Pivotal has expressed are really conservative and omitting a lot of new customers who just did not make the definition this quarter.
Obviously others disagree. BUT BRITTLEROCK AND I AGREE ON SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN!
Tinker