https://www.thestreet.com/.amp/investing/alteryx-cfo-kevin-r…
On a future cloud version of Alteryx:
Where we have been pretty vocal, and [what] customers seem to be resonating with, is the notion of, ‘Can we deploy the Designer product in a browser to allow our largest customers a much easier way to deploy the software?’ Thick client on a desktop is much harder to manage than just simply entitling a user and having them go to a browser. We did show a prototype version of that at our conference last year. That’s kind of the direction we’re going.
At some point, I imagine, for some class of customer, we’ll introduce a cloud version. Frankly, in doing so, the concept of Designer and Server may end up blending together. Because we would essentially offer much of what Server offers through that service. But really, the focus is on, how do we help our largest clients massively deploy Designers through a browser rather than a thick client install.”
On APA platform:
Rubin: “Part of what you’re going to see from us under this new defined category of APA is significant innovation over the next 12 to 18 months. More so than you’ve probably seen from us previously at all.
“We also are going to continue heavy innovation around ease of use. That is a big pillar of our development efforts. [Our goal is] not just to make the platform more sophisticated, but [to] make it just drop-dead easy for data workers who may not have as much comfort and experience working with data…And then how do you take data analysts and move them up the curve to behave like data scientists? And so you’re just going to see us continue to press on sophistication of the platform along with ease of use.”
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In the past Alteryx has mostly been dismissive of the Cloud. “At some point, I imagine, for some class of customer, we’ll introduce a cloud version.” still seems luke warm. But Cloud is perfect for this new WFH world. Give customers what they want not what you think they should want. No software engineer, but I do not understand their reluctance.
Being a true SaaS might be quite helpful to ATX stock price. Institutions tend to buy baskets.
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In the past Alteryx has mostly been dismissive of the Cloud. “At some point, I imagine, for some class of customer, we’ll introduce a cloud version.” still seems luke warm. But Cloud is perfect for this new WFH world. Give customers what they want not what you think they should want. No software engineer, but I do not understand their reluctance.
Being a true SaaS might be quite helpful to ATX stock price. Institutions tend to buy baskets.
I was thinking the same thing. My understanding based on management’s past comments and also discussion here was that by the nature of the software, the cloud offering was not really desirable. So now Alteryx thinks that a cloud platform is going to add value for at least some customers? Well, they better get on the ball then!
The way they talk about cloud merging the server and designer offerings really highlights that their software was not designed to be cloud native. This leaves a nagging feeling that eventually they will be disrupted by the rise of a cloud native platform just like Zoom is disrupting Cisco and Crowdstrike is disrupting legacy security. Remains to be seen.
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What is a cloud native platform?
Once again we have this critique of Alteryx for not being in the cloud… The server can be in the cloud if that is where the data is. No development is required for that. I would guess that it was fairly rare because many companies, even if they have significant data in the cloud, will also have important data locally. If so, it makes sense for the server to run locally since the cloud data can be accessed from anywhere, but the local data is often something that one does not want to be made available remotely.
The designer, on the other hand, is something that one is inherently going to run on one’s own workstation. Even if they create a version which will run in a browser … which is bound to perform less well … it is still going to be run on the individual workstation of the analyst working with the tool.
There may be more argument for running the new product in the cloud, but I doubt there is significant additional effort required to do so.
What would make Alteryx like our other SaaS companies would be for them to run their own servers with their own software and make it available to their customers. This might make some sense for the designer in a browser simply because it could be used anywhere, but is a far cry from the kind of thing our other SaaS companies do.
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