Economic Uncertainties Delaying Siemens Enterprise RelaunchEconomic Uncertainties Delaying Siemens Enterprise Relaunch

Chief Commercial Officer Chris Hummel says SEN's business is growing, but the overall economic situation makes the timing wrong for the much-anticipated relaunch.

The shaky world economy, particularly in its home base of Europe, has caused Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN) to delay its planned rebranding and public stock offering, the company's Chief Commercial Officer, Chris Hummel, told me today.

Ironically, at the same time that Europe is experiencing its economic troubles, SEN is boasting some improved numbers for its own global business, Hummel said. For the quarter ending June 30, SEN saw 5.6% Y/Y revenue growth, and the company's book-to-bill ratio has risen above 1--meaning new orders exceeded orders filled--for the past four quarters, suggesting growing demand.

Hummel also touted SEN's inclusion, for the second year in a row, in the prime upper-right-hand section of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications. Gartner praised SEN's flagship Openscape platform as "a mature, fully functional, all-software, all-SIP UC solution."

"As an early entrant into the all-software UC suite market, the OpenScape product has been proved effective as a complete and scalable software-based solution for several years," Gartner wrote. "The vendor continues to expand its offering with innovative and differentiating functionality."

In its summary of SEN's challenges, Gartner cited the company's still-small North American market share.

And as mentioned, the continued overall economic uncertainties in Europe and elsewhere have prompted SEN to delay a rebranding/relaunch and public offering that it had projected for this year.

The way Chris described it to me, the rebranding plan is locked and loaded, ready to go, but SEN is waiting to pull the trigger: “We have built out the full plan; we have our [new] name, our identity, our creative," he said. But Europe's ongoing uncertainty is causing the company to hold off on the rebranding, which Hummel described as a "high and heavy cash strain on the business."

"We've decided to wait out the market conditions a little bit, see where things are going with the economy," he said. "I have that plan sitting, and we're just thinking about when the right time is to set that off."

The company is basically in the same wait-and-see mode when it comes to its announced intention to file for an initial public stock offering, Hummel said--plans are on hold until economic conditions improve and stabilize.