Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Thomas Curlin - RBC Capital Markets.
Thomas Curlin – RBC Capital Markets
I know you don’t do quarterly’s you just do fiscal but given the incremental OpEx investments is there any way you can help us with the linearity assumptions on the bottom line through the year on a quarterly basis? Is there an operating margin metric to think about in the first half versus the second? Or should we think about operating margin maybe being flat year-over-year for the first half of the year and then maybe accelerating in the second? What can you give us?
Robert Hammer
In general if you look at our historicals the last two years we have had slightly up quarters on revenue and I indicated in my remarks that the near-term outlook looks quite promising. So, given our guidance we are not going to provide quarterly guidance. Historically the last is slightly up and until we see it and we do it I indicated Tom we might see some upside to our guess here but we have to execute and we will talk about that in July.
Louis Miceli
No, I think Q1 has historically been flat to slightly up and I would suggest that trend may continue but at this point.
Thomas Curlin – RBC Capital Markets
You are talking about year-over-year?
Robert Hammer
Yes. Quarter-over-quarter.
Louis Miceli
Historically Q1 has been flat to slightly up.
Robert Hammer
We have a good pipeline but we have to see if we can translate that into our numbers.
Thomas Curlin – RBC Capital Markets
On the competitive environment, any changes there? Last quarter Symantec made incrementally more aggressive. They have a product cycle out as well. But also it seems like maybe there is more emphasis on backup executive stays and maybe less investment on the net backup front going forward that you see any of that? How would you describe that competitor and any changes felt elsewhere?
Robert Hammer
I think what everybody should look for is let our numbers speak for themselves. Obviously we saw accelerated growth in enterprise and we’ve seen accelerated growth in our advanced data and information management products. I think where that is coming from, these comments are really important.
We’ve been saying this for a number of years but clearly this is what is going on in the market. There has been a move from tape to disk. There has been a move on the market from focusing on backup to focusing on recovery. Both of those areas you are seeing when people talk about putting data management solutions in versus backup they are talking about a comprehensive solution which includes not just backup but replication, management snapshots, continuous data protection, single instancing and management reporting tools.
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