Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Erik Suppiger - Signal Hill.
Erik Suppiger - Signal Hill
The ARX was weak in the financial sector, but it sounds like your BIG-IP did very well in the financial sector. Why the difference between those two?
John McAdam
Yes, we’re pretty sure we understand the difference. In fact, if you look at a number of the surveys that have been done on the financial sector in general spending with CIO, they come back loud and clear, but the financial sector is still spending what is absolutely key to their business and the internet, the projects that have already started, it’s growing because the internet traffic is growing, etc. etc.. Where it’s a new project of any kind, whether it’s technology or otherwise, they’re being very, very cautious in their spending. So our pipeline in ARX still remains quite good, but we definitely are seeing significant caution when it comes to a new project and, of course, ARX is a very niche market.
Operator
Your next question comes from Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets.
Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets
Maybe just deal sizes, and also, John, if you could comment on sales cycles if that’s changing. And within deal sizes if you could normalize it, understanding VIPRION is a big part of that, and just your thoughts if the environment is improving, deteriorating or if it’s still status quo on the macro.
Andrew Reinland
In terms of deal sizes, we saw them right around $200,000 for the quarter, which is not up much from last quarter. Overall, we’re seeing a lot more million dollar deal sizes broadly in our business. We’ve seen that grow over the year, and compared to a year ago it’s increased significantly. So, that, combined with VIPRION. VIPRION didn’t really pull it up dramatically, so - $200,000.
John McAdam
And then in terms of the macro environment it’s pretty interesting, especially in our core ABC business, we had a solid quarter, rate run quarter. It really was pretty linear in nature and quite encouraging. The other thing is, we’ve mentioned in the past couple of quarters about the pipeline and how it had reduced. It actually went back to normal levels last quarter, which is interesting. I’m not going to make any call on that, in terms of what that really means. It could mean a number of things, obviously. We’re probably being more conservative in the way we factor the pipeline, just by definition. I think we’re also gaining now from the sales productivity, where we see the aging of our sales force improve. So, overall, we’re pretty happy with the way things went.
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