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Data migration and orchestration specialists, Cirata (formerly known as WANdisco) has delivered another mixed bag with its trading update for Q2 and the first half of FY25 – strong year-over-year (YoY) bookings growth for the six months overall, tempered by patchy quarterly performance and ongoing execution challenges.
After kicking off the year with its strongest Q1 in six years (see Cirata posts strongest Q1 bookings for six years), Cirata has followed up with a subdued Q2. Bookings fell 53% YoY to $0.8m (though Q1’s 330% rise helped it close out the six-month period with bookings up 58% – to $3.8m – compared with H1 2024). Data Integration (DI) bookings were up 17% to $0.7m in Q2 – nothing like the increase seen in Q1, but still the core engine of growth for the company.
Cirata cited ongoing difficulties in North America, with execution issues first flagged in Q1 persisting into Q2. In response, company has appointed a new Chief Revenue Officer (Dominic Arcari, previously VP Sales & Marketing at Telefónica Tech), to sharpen sales execution globally and bolster pipeline conversion.
More positively, the company has made meaningful strides in cash control. Q2 cash burn was down 47% YoY to $2.2m, and overheads are being realigned towards a $12m–$13m run rate exiting Q3 (which would represent a dramatic drop from the $45m peak seen in early FY23). The announcement of an agreement to divest its DevOps assets to UK-based IT development insights platform provider BlueOptima for $3.5m will add further balance sheet resilience and also help Cirata focus more on its core DI business. A new partnership with Microsoft under the Azure Storage Migration Program will help broaden use cases for its Live Data Migrator product too.
Cirata’s FY25 outlook remains unchanged since March, with bookings expected to be weighted towards the early part of the year (and DI supplying the bulk of the growth throughout). Having declared FY24 the “recovery year” (see Cirata’s groundhog days continue), the business now needs to prove it can deliver sustained growth and build predictability into what remains a lumpy sales cycle.
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 10:03
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