RHT
#Yes, I'll start off.
We rarely, given the type of middleware we sell and what we're doing, we rarely directly run into Force.com, which is much more tied around kind of the Salesforce portfolio.
Regarding Oracle, we love when anybody raises up, hey, why don't you think about PaaS because when change happens we win a pretty nice share of that, so the fact that there's more discussion and consideration around PaaS it is a really good thing for us.
We still remain, in terms of dollar terms, a small-share player in middleware so anybody, including incumbents, who look to make a shift and therefore get people considering alternatives, that's good for us.
The more focus on talk about PaaS broadly ultimately is good for us because it just increases the number of at bats we have to win.
We feel really, really good about where we are.
Again, as people think about modern whether it's PaaS or just more modern types of middleware micro services, all of that is a net positive for us.
Well, let me take our most mature product, Linux.
The vast majority of our engineering expense around Linux is the downstream sustaining engineering around our releases.
It's not necessarily upstream feature development for the exact reason that you mentioned, which is the upstream community does a lot of upstream feature development.
We're obviously involved in a number of those components but the majority of our expense is sustaining engineering.
We certainly would expect that as we think about the products across the board.
Again, coming back to profitability, sales and marketing is a larger share of the expense and that's one where whenever you have a new product there's higher expense associated with that.
When we looked and thought structurally against any of our products, at maturity I don't ---+ we don't have any reason to believe that any of our products would be less profitable than Linux.
If we look at renewal rates, those are typically similar over time across product lines.
I think we look at the relative engineering against sustaining engineering just looks similar.
I think at similar levels of maturity so far we think the portfolio will look similar.
It's obviously we're at different stages of maturity across the portfolio.
Operator, I know we have a few more questions out there but I'm afraid we only have time for one more.
Good question, <UNK>.
Just reaffirming, yes, because at the Analyst Day I talked about the three different options.
One to go more heavily toward, as <UNK> was just talking, about operating system or RHEL, and that clearly would have a better leverage model in the short term.
The other extreme would go more heavily toward emerging markets.
I think that would accelerate the growth but cause a margin deterioration in the short term.
We are going with a balanced approach.
This year, as I just mentioned, it's to invest in the first half of the year.
Clearly, if you look at the margin profile, first half of this year versus the second half of this year, you'll start to see an improvement in the margin in the back half of the year.
I think that's pretty much dynamics of how we're making the investment.
As we continue to continue to get momentum on the, let's say, the app dev and emerging technology products as we go into 2018, I think that will allow us a better view of where we think to what extent we really think we can get potentially some slight margin improvement.
I would say we want to close out the back half of the year with the guidance that we just gave.
We're in the midst right now of already starting our planning for re-uping the next couple years and I think as we get into the beginning of next year, I think we'll have a better view of what that model may look like over a period of years.
We'll be more than happy to share that.
That's pretty much the takeaway coming off a lot of conversation that many of you and I and <UNK> had following the Analyst Day.
We're working on that as far as our planning and we will bring that forward when we think about the start of the new year.
Operator, I'm afraid this ends our call.
I want to thank everybody for joining us today.
We look forward to catching up with you over the next several weeks.
We'll be on the road and we'll be at several conferences later in the quarter.
Thank you very much, everybody.
