Absent any fiscal discipline by the government (and I have never seen this from either political party), it’s clear that the government needs more money or else it will run deficit spending until we’re all bankrupt. Therefore, tax policy should be nothing more than a pricing strategy to maximize government revenues. Taxes are essentially the government’s pricing structure for their offerings of goods and services (roads, law enforcement, subsidized student loans, etc.)

The problem is, if cutting a particular tax or tax rate will actually bring more revenue to the government, it will be criticized for whatever group “benefits” from the lower rates, regardless of how much better off the government treasury will be.

Yes, it is possible to bring in more revenue and profit by reducing prices. It is a very, very common practice in the business world and we employ this practice at SoftLayer. Consider this scenario:

You sell a product that cost you $50 to build.

At $100, you can sell 1 unit per month. Here is your revenue and profit calculation:

$100 x 1 sale = $100 revenue – $50 costs = $50 profit

Now, if you cut the price 20% to $80, you can sell 2 units per month. In this case, here is your revenue and profit calculation:

$80 x 2 sales = $160 – $100 total costs for 2 units = $60 profit

So, most people would think that $60 in your pocket is better than $50. By cutting the price, you have made more money.

What if you could sell 3 units if you drop the price to $60? Let’s take a look:

$60 x 3 sales = $180 – $150 total costs for 3 units = $30 profit

Because you only keep $30 profit, in this case the BEST price for your product is $80 because at that price you maximize the profit that you keep.

Likewise there are ways to increase government revenue by cutting tax rates. Let’s say we want to tax more dollars from the rich and give to the poor – fine. The paradox is that the way to get more tax dollars from the rich is to cut their tax rates. Really, I’m not crazy – Congress itself has reported this fact.

Business people know that if you raise your prices, people’s behavior will change and they will buy lower volume of what you sell. Even with must have items like gasoline, as the price rises, people find ways to use less of it, even if using less is inconvenient because you have to get up earlier to carpool.

By the same token, if taxes go up, those who are exposed to those taxes will change their behavior and reduce their exposure to those taxes. As a result, the government can actually collect less money by raising taxes.

Every time we set a price or run a special deal here at SoftLayer, we are well aware of this fundamental law of supply and demand. When we need to move units on a particular item, we will reduce the price.

I only wish our government would apply the same principle when pricing its products and services with tax policy – not because I want to pay less in tax but because I want the government to maximize its profit and avoid burdening our children and grandchildren with unmanageable government debt.

-Gary

I could probably squeeze everyone left reading at this point in a Dodge Viper and we could discuss this over lunch. But SL doesn’t provide Vipers to executives so I guess I’ll post it here for you. A balance sheet by definition is a snapshot of the current financial condition of a company. Here’s a formal definition. A GAAP balance sheet simply doesn’t portray an accurate picture of the financial condition of a hosting company.

Probably the most important value that a GAAP balance sheet completely misses is the value produced by monthly recurring revenue. By implementing some sort of fair value accounting as I mentioned before this value gets captured. But on that part of the balance sheet, it still doesn’t help someone looking at the dreaded current ratio. So here’s a way to get a measure of this value that matches up to current liabilities on the balance sheet and get a current ratio that better reflects the company’s true financial position.

Since current liabilities include debt that must be paid at any time over the next 12 months, I would propose using statistics to walk forward 12 months and add “Future EBITDA from Existing Customers” as a current asset on the balance sheet. I can sense the shudders of all accountants who are reading this because you’re thinking that this completely abandons the revered principle of conservatism. In hosting, however, this can be done with conservatism in mind by employing statistics. Public accounting auditors employ statistics every day in their work, so the use of statistics is not a foreign concept to accountants.

Here’s how I’d propose hosting companies do this. First, look at the behavior of the current customer base at the beginning of each month regarding customer churn and the purchase of incremental business by remaining customers. Ignore all new customers acquired during the month and add them to the customer base for next month’s analysis. For each month over the past 12 months, analyze how much revenue is lost from customers who leave and net that from how much revenue is recognized from the existing customers who remain. The results of this analysis can be statistically boiled down to give you an idea of how much revenue will come in over the next 12 months even if you do not gain a single new customer during the next 12 months. That’s the principle of conservatism coming into play here. Let’s call this “statistically stable anticipated revenue.” By the way, at SoftLayer, the incremental business from customers who stay is greater than the business lost from customers who leave us.

Second, take a look at EBITDA margins over the past 12 months and work the statistical mojo to get an idea of EBITDA margins going forward. Multiply this margin against the statistically stable anticipated revenue to arrive at “Future EBITDA from Existing Customers.”

Third, add this category as a new line in the Current Assets portion of the balance sheet as well as adding it as a new line in the Stockholder’s Equity portion of the balance sheet. The resulting balance sheet is much closer to the true financial condition of a hosting company than a traditional GAAP balance sheet.

Why is this view more accurate? 1) A hosting company isn’t like a retail store. Like a hosting company, retail stores have repeat customers but the repeat behavior is more sporadic. The customer may decide that the weather is too bad and they’ll run out and get that new pair of shoes another day. Or the weekend may have been too hectic for a grocery store run so they’ll eat out for the next week. With hosting customers, mission-critical things live on their servers and they are usually set up on automatic monthly billings. Repeat sales are much more predictable than for customers of retail stores. This consistent cash flow has real value, and to not capture it on the balance sheet negatively distorts the financial condition of the company. 2) Putting this statistically solid future EBITDA as a current asset allows a better picture of the current ratio because it is from this EBITDA that the current portion of the company’s debt will be paid. This gives a banker, etc., a clear view of whether the company will struggle over the next year to pay them back.

Here’s how a sample summary balance sheet would look before and after this adjustment.

                                                  GAAP            "GAHAP"
Cash, A/R, Other Current Assets                $33,218,805     $33,218,805
Future EBITDA from Existing Customers                   $0     $26,575,044
Total Current Assets                           $33,218,805     $59,793,849 

Fixed Assets                                   $90,355,150     $90,355,150
Other Assets                                    $9,301,265      $9,301,265
                                             =============================
Total Assets                                  $132,875,221    $159,450,265 

Current Liabilities                            $55,807,593     $55,807,593
Long Term Liabilities                          $67,766,363     $67,766,363 
 
Stock, Paid in Capital, Retained Earnings       $9,301,265      $9,301,265
Future EBITDA from Existing Customers                   $0     $26,575,044
Total Stockholder's Equity                      $9,301,265     $35,876,310
                                             =============================                                                                                   
Total Liabilities and Stockholder's Equity    $132,875,221    $159,450,265 

Current Ratio                                         0.60            1.07

-Gary

Admit it: when you and your neighbor are running to Electronics in hope of getting the last Wii from the shelf, sometimes the only thing stopping you from dumping a bag of Skittles in front of him or knocking over a Lego display is the constant barrage of Rudolph and Frosty and other Christmas cheer over the PA.

Unfortunately, unless you are content to give everyone a copy of Dryping for Dummies (By Steve Kinman, SoftLayer Press), you will have to wade into the shopping rush to eek out your Santa sized bag ‘o goodies.

Never fear, however! The Retail Industry is there to help! For those who don’t want to dive head first into the excitement of Christmas Shopping (which can make even a foray to pick up some toilet paper from Wal*Mart into an exciting 2 hour adventure), nearly every retail outlet is willing to give you a 2″ x 3″ credit card like piece of plastic stamped with their brand. Yes, the Gift Card.

It’s been said that over 60% of American adults have either bought or received a Gift Card, this year. It’s a very convenient device. For example, if I figure out that Lance really likes Outback Steakhouse, I can buy a $10 gift card from Outback Steakhouse, wrap it in a $1 Hallmark card (although, sometimes the retail outlets already have such cards (stamped with their logo) available), and give it to Lance. “Merry Christmas!” Sometimes you can even get the card gift wrapped.A gift-wrapped credit card!

We’re to the point, now, that simply handing somebody a plastic card is actually considered a thoughtful gift. On the way to work, I heard that any fishing lover would prefer to receive a Bass Pro Shop Gift Card over, say, that Bassomatic ’76 they’ve been talking about.

But, lets be honest… it doesn’t take much to choose a gift card. I overhear Lance say he likes steak, I see a Outback Steakhouse card, and bam! Before you can say “Impulse Purchase” I now have an instant gift! Sure, it’s not as fulfilling as, say, a box of prime steaks… but this way you can give him more gift cards! And more is better, right?

But the comedy doesn’t end there. Have you ever seen a gift card in a usable denomination? Usually I find cards with a value between $10-50. Can you even get a steak meal for $10 at Outback Steakhouse? (Don’t forget to include the State and Federal Wallet Excise Tax.) And I’m not talking about that free bread, either. No, what happens is you end up either leaving a trifling amount of money on the card (Your balance is … twenty five cents), or you end up wrapping your card in a sizable amount of cash. See how neat this is? I bought a $10 card, and Lance will pay the balance of the meal… AND STILL THANK ME FOR IT!

Retailers make MILLIONS of dollars off the trifling amounts that just sit, unused, on gift cards. And gift cards aren’t usable at another store, so if I want to buy a $20 book, but I only have a $10 Half Priced Books gift card (and a $10 Outback Card Lance gave me as a Thank You), I’ll use the card + $10. You can almost never just spend what’s on the card.

Here’s some friendly holiday advice: If you know what your friend wants, buy it for him. If you don’t, ask people close to him. Even Aunt Myrtle’s sweater contains more holiday cheer value than the sweater’s monetary value in McDonalds Gift Cards.

Is there a way out of this trap of value-locked slivers of plastic? Indeed there is! If you wish to transfer value to another person without locking them into one choice, give them… CASH! Yes, greenbacks, bucks, dead presidential portraits, green… whatever you call it, United States Federal Notes are accepted by all retailers, in any denomination. Value not used by one retailer can then be spent at another. This value can also be stored up where it may earn interest and combine with more legal tender until a large item can be bought. The best solution for any gift giving problem where “Gift Cards” are suggested as a solution is CASH, such as when you absolutely can’t think up something to buy. And it makes a great stocking stuffer. In Bulk. Hint, hint.

Yes, you in the back? What does this mean for SoftLayer? Just because this is a SoftLayer Blog doesn’t mean it has to have a SoftLayer moral! But lucky you… I’ve got one right here: (this weekend only, special holiday financing available!)

Like Gift Cards, each SoftLayer server comes with a bloc of value attached: bandwidth. This valuable commodity makes the servers work. You can have all the processing power in the world, a RAID 75 array with 100 petabytes of space, 40 terabytes of onboard memory, and if you don’t have any bandwidth… it’s all moot.

Unlike gift cards, however, SoftLayer attaches some real value you can actually use. For many users, even touching the top of the 2 Terabyte bandwidth pipe is a real exercise.

However, sometimes, like gift cards, a customer buys a server with value attached… but simply cannot use it all. Or they put the server 100% on the private network and never use the bandwidth at all (Like that $20 gift card from Sludge Emporium your Granddad gave you last year). Is there any way to salvage this value?

Indeed! The SoftLayer Secret Labs rolled out a new feature a while back: Virtual Dedicated Racks. These VDR’s (as we cool SoftLayer Secret Lab Technicians like to call them, because TLAs are cool) allow you to virtually rack a group of servers behind a virtual bandwidth meter. All the attached bandwidth value of those servers are lumped together, like a good ‘ol pile o’ cash, and the aggregate amount attached to the rack. An example:

Each server comes with 2T bandwidth (generally).

Without VDRs, if server bassomatic.76.example.com only uses 1T of bandwidth, and server auntmyrtle.sweaters.example.com uses up 3T, you end up with a full 1T overage on Aunt Myrtle’s site, even though you have a full 1T worth of value on the other server not being used!

With VDRs, the two servers pile their value together, making a 4T rack. Bassomatic.76.example.com uses 3T this month, while Aunt Myrtle’s site only uses 1T. Combined, their “rack” uses 4T of 4T, so 4-4 = 0!

Like cash, but unlike gift cards, with VDRs you are able to pool your value to allow the usage of more value at one time. Now how awesome is that?

If you would like to experience the excitement of pooling your bandwidth, talk to your SPS (as we cool SoftLayer Secret Lab Technicians like to call our SoftLayer Professional SLalespersons, because an acronym is still a cool TLA as long as only three letters are capitalized), and get yourself a Virtual Dedicated Rack (make sure to call it a “VDR” when you order it to sound cool).

And let ‘em know this post by Shawn got you interested. If I get enough referrals, I’ll get the December SoftLayer Referral Outback Steakhouse Gift Card!

-Shawn

So, how do you place a value on a customer? Customers and servers are not a one-to-one connection because many customers have more than one server. They also buy more than just servers, such as additional software and/or backup services.

Like most of us in the industry, I spend a few minutes each day scrolling through the customer forums, both ours and 3rd party sites – you probably know which ones . I look at the customer comments and sometimes I wonder if the folks in our industry understand the value of these customers judging from the way some customers are treated.

Granted, some customers are abusive and need to be fired, so to speak. Others appear to be high value customers with multiple servers and solid business models where someone has dropped the ball and caused them to seek greener hosting pastures. If companies understood the dollar figure valuation of each customer, they might think twice about their next course of action with a particular customer.

To value a customer, I look at the statistical expectation of how long that customer will stay with the company, how much the customer currently buys with us, the statistical expectation of how much additional business they will place with us, the gross profit generated by the customer, and that old stand-by — the minimum acceptable rate of return for an investor in the company. From these data points, I do a simple Present Value calculation and arrive at the value of the customer, which is the amount of cash that would have to be invested to yield the economic equivalent of the expected gross profit that the customer will produce. I’d give you a sample calculation, but a) it would make this post even more boring, and 2) some things we like to keep secret .

This is important because it can make the growth of a hosting company less “slippery” — sort of like when Eric takes off from a red light in this:

For example, if you sell 100 new servers but customers release 90 back to you during the same period, your growth doesn’t have the traction it would have if only 10 servers were released back to you. By retaining valuable customers, you don’t spin your wheels as much. Spinning the tires at a hosting company is not nearly as much fun as watching Eric drive.

-Gary

Let’s consider a mythical server that costs the company $10,000 to buy and the company depreciates it evenly over 3 years. After year one, the value on the financials is $6,667. After year two, its book value is $3,333 and finally $0 after three years. Suppose that the company deploys the server for five years. In reality, after three years, the server’s true value is certainly above $0, and the hosting company is shortchanged by not being able to reflect this value on its financial statements. Multiply this effect by thousands of deployed servers and you can see that there is significant value in hosting companies that just isn’t found on the financial statements.

So how should we reflect the value of a server? I would propose the use of a “capitalization rate” or “cap rate“. This is a common method of appraising real estate and the formula is simple: take the projected net cash flow over the next 12 months and divide by the cap rate, and that’s the value. So, what would happen if we applied this to a server?

Looking at our mythical $10,000 server above, for simplicity’s sake, let’s ignore any allocations of the switches, routers, generators, HVAC, etc., needed to operate it. Let’s also assume it produces net cash flow of $100 per month and will do so for 60 months. Its 12 month projected net cash flow is $1,200. We would divide this by the cap rate to find its value.

Naturally, the next question is “what do we use for the cap rate?” For a given investment, the cap rate is the lowest return that an investor will accept for the given risk of that investment. In our server’s case, the $10,000 investment produces a return of $1,200 per year. How much would an investor need to invest in lower risk alternatives to get the same return? For a risk-free investment of the same 5 year duration such as a 5 year Treasury Note at 4.25%, you would have to invest $28,235.29 to get $1,200 per year in return. If we use 4.25% as the cap rate in our scenario, the value of the server becomes $28,235.29. However, investors in hosting companies generally look for returns far above 4.25% and these returns are not without risk, so this is not the appropriate cap rate. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that the hosting company investor’s minimum acceptable rate for the investment is 10%. In other words, if his investment in the hosting company was expected to return less than 10%, the investor has other lower risk options to invest and get a 10% return and he would not invest in the hosting company.

So if we use 10% for the cap rate in our mythical server scenario, the true value of the server is $12,000 ($1,200 / 10% = $12,000). As long as the 12 month projected net cash flow stays above $1,200 then that value holds constant. Check out the graph below to compare the value of this server from both the cap rate perspective and the accounting rules perspective over the five year life.

From month 36 to month 49, there’s a $12,000 difference in value between the two methods. If a hosting company has a thousand servers like this, that’s $12 million in value that isn’t reflected in the company’s financial statements. That’s huge.

-Gary

We have achieved some success to date with the provisioning of nearly 10,000 servers; however, the end game is far greater as the ultimate goal is to become a multi-national corporation serving markets all around the world. In the hosting space, you don’t really have a choice, you either innovate and get bigger or you get out. The complexities are just too great to have the luxury of maintaining the status quo. The technology landscape is littered with companies that started reading their own press clippings and got fat, dumb and lazy. And keep in mind that copying your competitors only delays the inevitable; the “me-too” companies eventually go away. In the technology world, you must innovate and push the envelope to survive.

While we are constantly looking for new and better ways to serve the customer, a great deal of time is spent improving internal reporting systems. I work with a management team that understands the importance of budgeting and tracking various financial and operational metrics. To that end, we have made a substantial commitment in systems and people to gather data to help make the best decisions for us and most importantly, for our customers.

I would love to reveal all the data we have at our fingertips but for competitive reasons, I don’t want to give away too much but let me leave you with this tidbit: I wonder how many of our competitors’ CEOs can, from his/her desktop, drill down to any one of 10,000 servers in multiple data centers and know exactly how profitable each individual server is with the click of a mouse.

The best companies in the world are all supported by world-class accounting and finance departments providing pertinent financial and operational data to all its stakeholders. The right information gives you a tremendous advantage over your competition.

Find someone good to count and analyze your beans. Wal-Mart did and turned the world of retail on its head. With a little luck, we might be able to do the same to hosting.

-Mike

My son, a budding numbers-geek, said “Wow Dad, he makes pretty good money. I’ll bet it’s $50 an hour.” Being a full-fledged numbers geek, I said “By my calculations, it’s more like $70 per hour”.

This got me to thinking. What do we provide our customers for $1 of hosting fees? So I figured it out for our most popularly sold hosting offering. This is not $1 per line item below; it’s $1 for the whole package below.

• 272,232,402,234,637 operations performed by the CPU at 50% utilization
• 12 megabytes of RAM
• 1.4 gigabytes of hard drive space
• An Operating System to make it all happen
• 45 seconds of technical support
• 5,538,770,949,720,670,000,000,000 electrons (in the form of electricity)
• 10,909 average sized packets of public transfer
• Up to 37,973,200 average sized packets of private network transfer

All numbers are approximate. Nonetheless, be sure to make use of your hosting dollars here at SoftLayer!

-Gary

]]> http://blog.softlayer.com/2007/your-hosting-dollar/feed/ 1 http://blog.softlayer.com/2007/profit-a-win-win-arrangement/ http://blog.softlayer.com/2007/profit-a-win-win-arrangement/#comments Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:43:19 +0000 Gary Kinman http://theinnerlayer.softlayer.com/2007/profit-a-win-win-arrangement/ Remember the “low-carb” diet craze a few years back? Some members of my family jumped on the bandwagon and I can remember seeing a lot of low-carb items in stores; low-carb milk, pasta, bread, chocolate, etc. Today you just don’t see as many of these products anymore. Look at the dates of the articles above and try finding some of the products in the links above – they’re long gone.

Why? Assuming these products really worked as advertised, when the low-carb craze was over, the cost of producing these products became higher than the revenue that the market was willing to pay for them. Maybe the market rejected them because they didn’t work. Whatever the case, mathematically, when costs are higher than revenue, there is no profit. Consequently, companies stopped offering these money-losing products. No profit is a “lose-lose” situation. Neither the companies nor the consumers who want the discontinued products benefit when there’s no profit.

The same goes for the hosting industry. If the cost of providing hardware, software, power, cooling, and bandwidth ever rises higher than what the market demand will pay, this offering will exit the marketplace. Personally I don’t think that will ever happen. Because there is an opportunity for profit in the hosting business, we and other providers will continue to inject our offerings into the marketplace. And due to the cost of these offerings, we won’t be offering dozens of processing cores, unlimited RAM, unlimited bandwidth and multiple terabytes of storage capacity for ten bucks a month.

Thankfully, SoftLayer doesn’t have to deliver all of that to achieve a top notch customer experience (as of yet anyway). But simply providing the list above is only part of the equation. As I mentioned in my last post, treating your customers “right” and building long-term relationships is critical to maximizing profit. Therefore, we do our best to price our offerings at value points that make both our customers and our investors happy. The resulting profit ensures that we continue in business and that we keep our server fleet refreshed. Profit keeps us around and motivates us to provide our customers with an excellent customer experience.

Thus, for SoftLayer and our customers, profit is a “win-win” situation.

-Gary

]]> http://blog.softlayer.com/2007/profit-a-win-win-arrangement/feed/ 1 http://blog.softlayer.com/2007/business-ethics-simplified/ http://blog.softlayer.com/2007/business-ethics-simplified/#comments Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:00:43 +0000 Gary Kinman http://theinnerlayer.softlayer.com/2007/business-ethics-simplified/ In this day and age of Sarbanes-Oxley internal controls, SAS 70 certifications, and myriad other regulatory, compliance, and audit issues that I won’t get into , business ethics might seem to be a lengthy and complex topic.

In reality, it isn’t. Back in the dark ages when I strolled the halls of SMU, a crusty Econ 101 professor named Jack Stieber proclaimed that there is only one ethical mandate in business: “Within the bounds of the law, maximize profit.” There are no more ethical rules necessary to follow in business.

I have heard others phrase a similar thought as “maximizing shareholder value”. I disagree with that approach because there are things that management can do to influence the stock price that aren’t necessarily tied to maximizing profit. Basically, if you can maximize profit, the stock price will take care of itself.

In response to Prof Strieber’s proclamation, there were a few students who responded, “But sir, what about ?” and Prof. Stieber shot them all down. Here is one of the more interesting objections:

“But sir, what about a business owner who hikes the price of bottled water to a ridiculous level in a disaster-stricken area that has lost its water supply? Are you saying he’s being ethical by maximizing his profit from price gouging?” Prof. Stieber responded something like this:

Assuming that his pricing policy is legal, he’s still being unethical because he’s actually not maximizing his profit. Sure, he may reap a short-term gain but when the water supply is back on, those forced to buy his extortion-priced water will take their business elsewhere. So in the long term, he hasn’t maximized his profit and thus has behaved unethically. An ethical decision during that time might have been to keep selling water at the pre-disaster price or maybe even donating some to build goodwill among his customer base. This could have cemented a long term relationship with the customers who would provide repeat business again and again and thus maximize his profit over time.

That being said, when a business maximizes it’s profit within the bounds of the law, it’s a “win-win” for the customers, stakeholders, and shareholders. In my next post, I’ll explain how SoftLayer earning profit is a win-win for both the customers and the company.

-Gary

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