Merrill Lynch could not cut commissions. Their whole business was based on charging for all of that research that they did. If they offered lower rates without that service they’d risk their entire customer base switching over to this low cost no frills commission rate and they’d lose a significant amount of revenue and that research cost would be spread across fewer and fewer accounts.
This is exactly the dilemma panw, Fortinet and all the other security appliance manufacturers face with cloud based security firms such as zs and net.
It’s why I have given zs extra leeway during these short term issues I may not have given many other companies that didn’t have such a powerful business model.
If ZS pulls a DOCU and says billings are way up next quarter because some of those big deals that were in the works closed, I want to be on board.