Artifact Software, Inc., today announced that 2008 was a record year for sales of its Lighthouse product. For the year ending December 2008, product subscription revenues exceeded expectations, growing 156% over the preceding calendar year. Total new customers also grew higher than expected, up 174% year over year. Topping off a strong year, Artifact's 4th quarter was the best in the Company's history.
We're very humbled by our 2008 results, especially given the challenging economy that is having such a dramatic impact on the lives of families across the nation," said Mark Wesker, Artifact's President and CEO. Wesker added, "these are difficult times for all Americans, so I'm especially proud of how hard our team has worked to achieve these strong results. When you see your friends and families losing their jobs, companies failing, and nest eggs being depleted, it takes a special team to stare that kind of adversity in the face, and stay focused on delivering value to our customers."
John Burris, CEO of Sourcefire (NASDAQ: FIRE), and fomerly SVP, Sales & Services of Citrix Systems (NASDAQ:CTXS) remarked, "having served on Artifact's Board of Directors since the Company's inception, it is gratifying to see a team work so well together to successfully achieve a vision that started on a white board just a few years ago." Burris added, "so often we are so focused on results, that we forget about the importance of teamwork and commitment to bringing new ideas and products to market, much less produce the kind of momentum Artifact is now experiencing."
Artifact's Lighthouse product is a software as a service (SaaS) solution for Information Technology (IT) projects. Lighthouse is an IT Project Workspace that brings together in a single system all of the capabilities teams need to effectively collaborate, coordinate activities, measure objectives, and otherwise ensure that IT projects meet their targeted goals. The Company has an impressive list of small, mid-size and large customers including such notable organizations as Thomson-Reuters, AT&T, Bridgestone-Firestone, Aegon Insurance, Booz Allen Hamilton, Amtrak, NCR, and University of California.
Virtual teams using Lighthouse for IT projects span the globe, and include teams in IT services firms; enterprise IT departments; government agencies; software firms; and product companies. These firms use Lighthouse on a variety of IT projects such as custom application development; packaged application deployments for products from SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and others; commercial product development; embedded software development; software; network and hardware deployments and upgrades; managing the efforts of outside vendors, web and commerce site projects; and bridging the gap between the operation of deployed systems, and the IT team.
Customers use Lighthouse because IT projects are growing exceedingly complex as traditional organizational structures are disrupting. Teams of co-workers are no longer segregated into physical spaces. Instead, driven to reduce costs, hire and retain the best people regardless of location, and establish 24x7 workforces, organizations rely on dispersed, virtual teams of employees, contractors and vendors. These virtual teams, however, face complex communication, coordination and management challenges that often cause IT projects to fail.
Lighthouse squarely addresses these IT project challenges. By bringing together IT project tools and data into a single, affordable workspace, virtual teams using Lighthouse realize a number of key benefits. Benefits include increased productivity through improved collaboration; early risk detection from real-time traceability, project metrics and alerts; and better overall visibility and coordination of team assignments and activities. Real-time project data, effective collaboration amongst team members and well synchronized project deliverables, enable teams to reduce overall project costs by proactively identifying and correcting potential risk factors before they adversely impact costs, schedules and quality.
For 2009, Artifact expects continued growth. Derek Vansant, VP, Finance & Operations commented that "with our new Reseller Program already driving revenue, and our Private Label OEM Program coming online, we expect to see even further acceleration of sales in 2009." Vansant added, "our new customer acquisition model is very cost efficient, our product requires minimal support, and we are seeing healthy renewals, add-ons and upgrades from our existing customer base. These factors, coupled with our pure subscription revenue model that isn't dependent on services, are producing the kind of strong margins you expect from software companies."
Lighthouse is available on-demand both in free and subscription editions, and as a virtual appliance exclusively as a subscription. Pricing starts at $25 per user/month. Read more about Lighthouse or start using it now for free, by visiting the company's web site at www.artifactsoftware.com.
About Artifact Software
Artifact provides software products and services that transform IT projects into a manageable and predictable business process. Artifact's Lighthouse is an IT Project Workspace for virtual teams. It brings together IT project data into a single, affordable and customizable solution so teams benefit with real-time traceability and project metrics, effectively collaborate, and identify and correct risk factors before they have a severe impact on project budgets, schedules, and quality. With a single, integrated project workspace, organizations are predictably achieving deadlines and budgets, reliably tapping into less expensive outsourced and offshore resources and timely measuring performance objectives and team productivity. Lighthouse is offered in free, standard, and enterprise editions as a monthly per user subscription service. It is available both as a hosted SaaS solution, or on-premise as a Virtual Appliance. Artifact is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland.
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