What are your expectations for this year or next year in terms of your business growth? What do you think the economy is going to look like? Are you optimistic?
Trapanese: The Europeans are making me nervous, but I'm optimistic. We've been growing by 20 to 30 percent in the U.S., as well as in Europe and Asia. So the market has turned around and most of our customers have buckets of money that they've been sitting on for two years, and they are starting to buy other companies and they're starting to invest. We see that from our real estate perspective as well. We're just going to go as fast as we can go for the next three or four years. I see Europe has slowed down a bit. We'll see some growth this year, but in Europe we'll probably hit the numbers we expected to.
And specifically, the markets that we think are the most robust right now would be what?
Trapanese: Asia. A lot of people are investing very heavily in Asia.
I mean in terms of the type of customer.
Trapanese: We do high-tech, the Silicon Valley-type companies. Energy would be another one, but definitely high-tech.
Yunag: I would certainly agree with the European comment outlook. Europe makes everybody nervous. You see swelling growth, economist views on what's going forward. I think there is some consensus growing there. It's the new normal, to use another buzzword. It flushes out opportunity vertical-wise like health care, education - the traditional verticals. I don't think there is a lot of difference there, but I think there are some emerging things like data centers. A data center is obviously a major part of what people do. But as far as opportunity goes, again the economic quest is to flesh out opportunities, or maybe forcing a little bit of the managed services kind of thing. A lot of us have to reinvent ourselves in a different way because our customers are coming out of the downturn saying, 'Yes, we want to get back to our projects, but is there a way we can do this more efficiently? Is there a way we can still accomplish our security objectives and not spend this type of money?'
Trapanese: We do have customers sitting on multibillions of dollars, but they're spending it extremely wisely. They've been sitting on it for so long that now they are starting to spend it. So they're looking for some incremental values to spend the same amount as they were spending before.
Levine: My market is certainly a lot different from yours. We're not in Silicon Valley. We're in the Southwest, which is certainly a different economic condition. We are so dependent on government, and with tax basis being whittled down and jobs and job loss reducing that tax base, forcing municipal governments to reassign their capitol dollars to just revenue, growth has slowed in those markets. We project the growth slowing to continue. Is that a positive way to say it's flat or going dead? In other markets, however, certainly with government oversight, that forces them, actually twisting their arms, to maintain standards. Just to come back to that concept, standards in our industry may not be aligning as much as the standards in what security requirements are and that's an important thing for us. We see that as a growth area. Education and some of the other government standard code compliance is driving business to us there at well. Fire, NFPA requirements that are stipulating mass notification is a growth area that we see and will be very strong. It's driven from fear, but it's also supportive of government dollars. Other than that, we see that it's flat.
Ladd: I'm optimistic as well. I've noticed the activity level is picking up. We all complain about the margins and we can all go on and whine all day, but the reality is we are coming out of tough times. The phone is a lot more active than it was last year. The amount of proposals going out is far up over where they were last year, so I'm positive in that manner. We're worrying about it as a country; this is not an industry issue. We're going to come out as a country I think stronger, wiser, more conservative with how things are spent. We'll watch over things a little bit tighter, but we're the United States. We always seem to land on our feet. It's not going to happen overnight. We're obviously not going to go back and see those great profits we used to see. We're going to have to do more business to make the same amount, but I don't have the same grim look that I had if you had asked me this last year about this time. I would have had a completely different attitude. We've all learned and adapted. A lot of my peers that I've talked with have all learned to run their businesses better. They've gotten smarter; they've cut that waste out; they've stopped living high on the hog. They're coming out with better companies. I know my company is a better company today than it was a year or year-and-a-half ago because we changed the way we do business and we've adapted. I'm optimistic. But I don't think Europe will bounce back the same way.
Trapanese: It always takes longer overseas, and that was predictable a year ago, but for them to be having the problems they're having right now, I wouldn't have predicted that a year ago. I always knew about America because Americans can change on a dime, but the problems they are having now is making the dollar so much stronger and there is a double whammy going on there as well. And we're involved in Europe, so we actually see it.
We're out of time. Thank you so much to all of you for sharing your insight and thoughts.
All: Thank you.