I was wrong!
I was wrong!
by Ephraim Gadsby
I once wrote a blog about Thermo clearly gaining the lead in the LIMS market with their acquisition of Innaphase. There were some good points made by the president of Labware to counter my opinion at that time.
Time has now passed since I wrote that blog and time appears to reveal the truth, “I was wrong“. This is the luxury of hind site. In my blog I had commented on how much Thermo paid for Innaphase. I do think that time has revealed that, YES, “They did pay to much for that muffler”. However, I now think that Labware is clearly the leader in the pharma market over Thermo based upon employment. The logic goes something like this… Companies that are growing the fastest are hiring the most.
If LIMS employment is any indication, then Labware is clearly outstripping Thermo in sales growth if not total sales period. Just look at the figures from a search of the job board on LIMSfinder. I did a search of the number of job postings for employees for implementation of Labware and then did the same for Thermo.
The number of Labware jobs: 77
The number of Thermo jobs: 25
There have been other comments on the web about this fact.
At this point I would invite both Thermo & Labware to post the following information in response to my blog. They can do this by creating a login on LIMSfinder and then simply posting a comment to my blog.
Also, I would like to solicit user feedback from users of Labware and Thermo LIMS products:
I would like to invite Labware and Thermo to please tell us:
- How many employees do you have currently (both contractors and direct) that are working on LIMS implementations
- What are your gross revenues for LIMS sales for 2005 and projected for 2006.
- What was your net income from LIMS sales and services for 2005 and what is projected for 2006.
- How many total active customers do you have?
- How many individual licenses of your software have you sold to date?
Getting the answers to these questions really says nothing about the quality of the company or its product. I know that there are smaller companies on the market that are far better value than either of these companies in terms of quality, customer satisfaction, price, features and functions and the list goes on and on. It is a fact that big does not mean better, even in an overweight country like the US. Thermo and Labware appear to cater to the huge. You will generally find that the “big” man will buy his clothes at the big and tall store. The same appears to be true for LIMS as well.
What does this mean to the LIMS consumer?
Nothing, unless you have a huge LIMS project with potentially hundreds of users world wide. What does it mean to Thermo?…. Well they had better get on the ball because if they don’t watch out they won’t be doing any more acquisitions, they may be lucky to be acquired. I suspect that the parent organization has a healthy appetite for money and if the informatics division does not compete better against Labware, the profits they generate will not be enough to satisfy the hungry parent and we all know the fate of poor performers in this world of Wall Street driven companies; something that Labware does not have to worry about.
Here is my prediction
Thermo will not have an informatics division within 5 years. It will be divested because of poor performance and because it paid too much for its acquisitions. If I am wrong, I will be happy to come back and write another blog saying so.
Labware will become the undisputed leader in the big and tall LIMS store sector. However, Labware will have stiff competition from other aspiring “would be” LIMS companies.
The LIMS market is great. It is not boring and it is full of risk. The larger the company the larger the risks. Those at the top have to love the excitement.
