{"id":3956,"date":"2014-12-04T10:55:20","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T15:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/?p=3956"},"modified":"2017-11-19T20:43:18","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T01:43:18","slug":"magor-corp-s-aerus-order-backlog-indicates-strong-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/?p=3956","title":{"rendered":"Magor Corp.\u2019s Aerus order backlog indicates strong 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a quiet Saturday afternoon in November when most Ottawans are enjoying the weekend. But not Magor Corporation. The local company\u2019s top brass is on the go.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWorking for a startup, there\u2019s no such thing as weekdays and weekends,\u201d says Paul Rusheleau, Magor\u2019s senior marketing manager.<\/span><\/p>\n

With fewer than 40 employees, the Kanata-based \u201cvideo-collaboration vendor,\u201d as Rusheleau refers to it, has entered the 2015 fiscal year hoping to take its flagship product to the next level. <\/span><\/p>\n

Less than two years ago, Magor unveiled the result of its four-year effort aimed at drastically improving videoconferencing. Its work culminated in what the company dubbed \u201cAerus,\u201d a software-based videoconferencing platform that breaks away from the traditional model\u2019s scheduled event, similar to a conference call. <\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike the hardware-based model offered by its major competitors, such as Cisco Systems, Inc. or Polycom, the Aerus cloud technology allows users to spontaneously enter or exit a call. They can also use video interactions for innovative sharing with one another, and an interface that allows users to simultaneously display information from their computer during a live call.<\/span><\/p>\n

The capabilities \u201cmade us a different animal than any other videoconferencing solution in the market,\u201d says Rusheleau. <\/span><\/p>\n

Magor\u2019s competitors haven\u2019t taken too kindly to the new software, he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take someone like Cisco or Polycom, they make tons of revenue off of hardware. They can\u2019t just say, \u2018Let\u2019s just make all our stuff software now,\u2019\u201d Rusheleau says. \u201cIf they did that, they would lose a significant amount of revenue. So the big vendors in our space are trying to slow the transition down as much they can to protect their revenue. We can just run really fast.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Magor\u2019s Aerus rollout in 2013 came a few months after the company\u2019s initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange at 59 cents per share.\u00a0<\/span>The company\u2019s stock price fell to 25 cents per share by early November 2013, but surged back to 49 cents following the Aerus rollout.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, the company\u2019s stock price has declined steadily, falling to approximately 19 cents per share. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more and more cloud solutions on the market today, so that\u2019s not as unique to them as it was at one time,\u201d says Zeus Kerravala, Massachusetts-based principal analyst at ZK Research and a longtime observer of the business video-communications market. \u201cThat\u2019s an area that\u2019s caught up to them. I would have liked to have seen them more aggressive with that earlier on because they did have somewhat of a lead.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Kerravala says Magor needs to be more aggressive on the sales and marketing front if it is to compete in crowded market. <\/span><\/p>\n

In late August, Magor reported its earnings for the 2014 fiscal year. While sales have improved from 2013 in large part thanks to Aerus\u2014revenues rose to $2 million from $1.9 million in 2013\u2014its net loss still totalled $6.4 million in 2014. <\/span><\/p>\n

Being headquartered in Ottawa hasn\u2019t helped, says Kerravala, pointing to the fact that so many tech companies manage to draw attention to themselves by virtue of their location in Silicon Valley.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re pretty quiet. Even if I go to a lot of the trade shows in this industry, you don\u2019t really see them have a presence there, but I think they need to,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of legacy vendors in the collaboration market and I think the industry\u2019s due for a change, but while (Magor) has a good solution, it\u2019s not going to be them that makes that change unless they\u2019re more vocal about what they do and the value that they bring.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Magor has seen some success both within Canada and across various international markets. Its major clients include law enforcement agencies in Canada and the U.S., as well as Middle Eastern governments. Operating on a pay-per-month-per-user basis, Rusheleau says that the company\u2019s major focus right now is on larger enterprises in the sectors of healthcare, public safety, oil and gas, and education.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of its clients, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, has been impressed with Aerus. Rick Martel, CUPW\u2019s director of information services, says Magor\u2019s software was the most viable solution for its need to connect nine calling points across Canada (and sometime elsewhere around the world) by videoconference.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a pretty good experience,\u201d Martel says. \u201cThe equipment has performed about as well as we expected it to. It\u2019s easy to learn, so there wasn\u2019t a huge learning curve for our users.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite a financial lag following Aerus\u2019 release, there is some optimism for Magor in 2015. In its first quarterly earnings report for the 2015 fiscal year, released in late September, its net loss reached $1.7 million, roughly the same as the previous year for the given quarter, with a cash position of $2.8 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

Its order backlog reached record numbers, rising 177 per cent to $657,000, compared to $237,000 at the end of 2014\u2019s fourth quarter. The company projects that this will translate to strong numbers in later quarters of 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a reason why we have the highest order backlog in history. We\u2019re really looking forward to our next few quarters to follow that up,\u201d says Rusheleau. \u201cBacklog is backlog. It means that it\u2019s going to be revenue at some point. We\u2019re a startup \u2014 our numbers reflect that \u2014 however, we\u2019re a five-year-old startup, which means we\u2019ve got investors that have strong confidence in us, looking at a market that is continually projected to explode, and hasn\u2019t yet.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rusheleau wouldn\u2019t reveal any specific research and development the company is currently looking into, but says it\u2019s likely Aerus will continue to evolve. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur user-client strategy is totally dependent on customer need, so we\u2019re working with all of our customers to prioritize what to develop first,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the coming years, we\u2019ll become much more successful financially, and we\u2019ll be able to ramp up the resources to accelerate that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He says the key for Magor\u2019s future could be in mobile platforms, where so many tech companies are currently focused. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that in 10 years, everyone\u2019s going to be using video all the time in the way that, in 1990, you wouldn\u2019t have imagined that in 2000 everyone would be walking down the road looking at their smartphones and not at buildings or people around them,\u201d Rusheleau says. \u201cWe really think we\u2019re going to be a be a big part of that and become a leader in specific industries to do that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a quiet Saturday afternoon in November when most Ottawans are enjoying the weekend. But not Magor Corporation. The local<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[315,1],"tags":[323],"class_list":["post-3956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corporate-profiles-2014","category-news","tag-corporate-profiles-2014-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3956"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4546,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions\/4546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}