????2005年11月的董事會演示鏈接在此，你能看到我們的分析非常透徹。執(zhí)行總結(jié)如下：

????I've linked our board presentation from November 2005 here. As you can see, it's a pretty thorough analysis. Here's the executive summary:

????換言之，繼續(xù)高歌猛進(jìn)吧！

????戰(zhàn)略評估：2007年2月

????2007年初，馬克?安德森、本?霍洛維茨和我再度拜訪了潛在的收購者，準(zhǔn)備與董事會進(jìn)行新一輪戰(zhàn)略評估。自從上次拜訪后，公司業(yè)務(wù)取得了重大進(jìn)展：年度營收超過1億美元，與思科（Cisco）合作的分銷計劃開花結(jié)果，增加了儲存自動化業(yè)務(wù)，拓展國際市場。像往常一樣，我們展示了一疊美妙的幻燈片，描繪了一個占據(jù)戰(zhàn)略位置的盈利公司，并在最后一張幻燈片里含糊地提到合作關(guān)系。在某些會議結(jié)束的時候，我們居然被晾在那里，但我們能感覺到當(dāng)時某個大公司CEO頭腦里只有一個念頭：“我們應(yīng)該搶占其他人前面買下這家公司嗎？”然后其中幾位提出了后續(xù)會面的要求。

????我們也有這樣的想法，出售公司現(xiàn)在已不僅僅是理論上的可能了。達(dá)到華爾街的期望仍然是每個季度的挑戰(zhàn)。我們的主要競爭對手BladeLogic即將上市。盡管經(jīng)過五年的強(qiáng)勁業(yè)務(wù)發(fā)展，由于在研發(fā)和銷售拓展方面的持續(xù)重大投資，公司的股價仍保持在每股8美元附近浮動?，F(xiàn)在我們處在一個關(guān)鍵的戰(zhàn)略節(jié)點：是在諸如監(jiān)視及對虛擬化的強(qiáng)化支持這類新領(lǐng)域做更大投資，還是利用我們現(xiàn)有的市場地位和強(qiáng)烈的收購興趣兌現(xiàn)退出。這個出路很誘人。

????In other words, let's keep marching!

????Stepping back from the fray: February 2007

????In early 2007, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and I made another set of visits to the usual suspects in preparation for a new strategic review with the board. We had made major progress since we had seen them last: exceeded $100M in annual revenue, fired up a productive distribution deal with Cisco, added storage automation, expanded internationally. As before, we went through a pretty slide deck that showed a winning company in a strategic category, with a final slide that mused vaguely about partnership. Left hanging in the air at the end of some of the meetings, we could sense the "overwhelming question" in the mind of the big company CEO:"Should we buy these guys before someone else does?" Several of them requested follow-up meetings.

????For us, too, the possibility of actually selling the company was of more than theoretical interest this time around. Meeting Wall Street's expectations was still a challenge every quarter. Our one serious competitor, BladeLogic, was about to go public. Despite five years of strong execution, our own stock price seemed stuck in a narrow band around $8/share due to continued heavy investment in R&D and sales expansion. Strategically, we were now at a critical juncture: Invest even more heavily in new capabilities like monitoring and enhanced support for virtualization—or capitalize on our current position and the strong interest from acquirers. That exit looked pretty tempting.