Some interesting information about Magor and its creation that I had bookmarked in my early DD when i first took a positon a couple of years back and have loaded up in the penny range per share this Decembe 2015 and doubled down.
For the newbie and uninformed-Magor was initially funded by Sir Terry Matthews through his Wesley Clover Investment fund in 2007. Sir Terry for those unaware was the creator and CEO of NewBridge Networks...a TSE Heavyweight and Bellweather for Index linked funds right up there in coverage and investors with Nortel Networks at the time of its rise...only Terry sold Newbridge for a few billion cool ones at Newbridge's optimal time to do vs the executives at Nortel that took the company under...he carries the Sir infront of his name cuz he was knighted by the Queen of England...he is one of thee founders of Magor and put up alot of hiws own money as a seed investor/creator and has continued to support the company financally thru its earlier growing pains and when need in a ongoing current fashion.
He is one of the who's who in Canadian Equity History and ROI for early investors.
And he brought in Magors management with a seasoned and successfull TSE publicly traded company history.
Magors commercial software started to ship in 2010.
The intent was to create a better way to use video in the enterprise and government markets by advancing the technologies involved.
Enter Aerus Cloud and the low cost bridge of interoperability and scalability.
Terry Mathews in particular saw the reductions in HD video cameras and monitors and realized it had the potential to dramatically improve the way people used video in the enterprise.
Since that early start, the direction MCC took resulted in some very important architectural advantages that allowed the company to become a Visual Collaboration company, where HD video provides the interaction means for today's more intensive need for collaboration.
Magor Technology: (as it was explained to me by a friend in the sector also a Magor Investor-and taken from my bookmarked notes-don't ask me to break the tech down into specifics as this was how it was explained to me from someone in the sector professionally-and on their input I stuck to my guns thru the early days of valuation decline due to market and indecie downturns)
Key technology was developed (and if applicable patents filed) in the following areas:
- Dynamically Adaptive Scalable Video Coding (SVC). This software codec determines the capability of the network connection between each node and encodes in real-time the best possible HD video performance. As the network conditions change, often as a result of congestion, the algorithm adapts to ensure this video performance is optimized. Standard video codecs then and now are based on H.264 coding (typically a separate hardware component) which requires a minimum network performance to ensure good video, which for full 1080p resolution translates to guaranteed levels of network bandwidth - at a cost that restricts usage.
- Native Interoperability with existing codecs. As a connection is made to another device, Magor's software codec 'handshakes' with the device and spawns the correct codec for this connection. The alternative is to route each call through a separate gateway function to perform this connection. This routing becomes both a network bottleneck, and a single point of failure as well as adding additional delay in the transmission and of course extra costs.QUE THE VALUE PROPOSITION OF MAGOR CORP"S AERUS.
- Perhaps the most significant technical achievement was they developed a connection model based on peer-to-peer topology. This can also be called video switching as that is how each sites is connected in the model. This eliminates the need for an external bridge (called a Multipoint Control Unit or MCU). This was not an easy development for them, but the benefits are enormous including:
- elimination of the costs of the MCU (often $100's of thousands and up for large implementations)
- eliminates the delay, network bottleneck (another one), and single point of failure associated with this device.
- perhaps the most important benefit of video switching is each node connected, whether it is a large boardroom or down at the desktop can now select which site they look at and how they look at it (ie full screen, split screen, etc). The result is an experience most like that of being in the room together, where everyone can decide who to look at whatever (eg collaboration) or whomever they want to. This compares very favourably to an MCU multi-site call where the typical display mode is active speaker. In that mode, the active speaker is displayed, which works ok when only one person is presenting, but quickly becomes untenable in an interactive discussion.
- There is one additional and fundamental difference between an MCU based call and a Switched Video connection. In the former, the collaboration is treated as a simple screen share, with one PC at a time connected. The screen is captured and sent to all other sites as a secondary lower bandwidth channel. This limits collaboration to simple one-way sharing of one PC at a time. Today's worker needs to not only share data, they need to work jointly with others on this material and they may need to share several pieces of relevant data at the same time. Finally from what I can see that shared data may be a separate video stream (perhaps from an IPhone) or a high resolution image for medical purposes. In other words, the Magor switched video architecture supports a much more intensive collaborative environment in real time. AGAIN QUE THE MAGOR CORP VALUE PROPOSITION.
- Aerus cloud service. This provides a robust connection and IMO administrative service for public, private and hybrid services will like this. The cloud allows for network optimization over multiple connections by relaying video signals as needed as opposed to sending multiple videos from each site. The cloud also can support a virtual meeting room environment where multiple callers from different sites (including mobile) can connect to a person's private virtual meeting room (VMR).
Historical early customers I learned in initial Due Diligence was with companies that valued strong video performance without the cost of expensive infrastructure as well as expensive bandwidth guarantees. Christie Digital, a larger HD Projection company was an early adopter for their global offices. Sony Pictures and then other Sony divisions provide a larger example of this.
Followup customer/clients were Ivey Business School and Discovery Air as two Canadian examples of robbust interest following inital Aerus Cloud based rollout.
Going forward....right now its obvious that Magors largest customers are Government Departments. Safe-Secure-Predictable and Collectible Revenue.
Most recently we see the RCMP being announced...but the entire gamut of the GOC can be considered their customer base and a new GOC paid trial was just announced and i expect we see some pop on that front early in 2016- and outside of Canada they have announced in the past a unnamed large Middle East Country as important customers and I am assuming it has to do with that countries Ministry of the Interior.
I know personally that Magor was developing Distribution Decision Networks I think it was called tho I can't remember the exact terminology as it was a while back but it also was the early days so perhaps this is seeing traction now IMO... (think 911 calls or surveillance control software) where the tecnology gives the ability to take a feed from specialized software and share it in real-time-think IMO decision makers. In effect it becomes a specialized control room and its easy to see to my way of thinking where the national security angle kicks in...shoot even front line military survellance applications like with Drones.
The actual applications here are so much more ubiquitous than what investors understand or the market has been able to wake up to including ISP's.
Personally guys I think the highest promise and ROI lies in Magors continued RandD efforts in their mobile app push-something yet IMO hardly touched upon cuz I don't think Sir Terry Mathews or Mike Pascoe would have taken on this challenge in bringing Aerus to market if not for the unmet need first of all and then secondly because of that unmet need-the reward that comes with success best of breed technology and execution.
The transition in the last year and a bit to the recurring revenue model-lends itself well to the ROI going forward and I think in this friggin nutso geo political climate of fear and greater fear-of the need to cover distance time and space and link it all together seamlessly in real time and warp speed-as to what Aerus provides as a service and developed their Windows based app to service and cater to specific larger corporate and Government Agencies who wanted a Windows vs Cloud based Aerus application-and given the recent RCMP announcments and que looking more and more robbust ...that 2016 should yield some very interesting developments for the astute and vigiilant investors.
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