They definitely need partnerships. I mean this is a great start for the production of the optical interface but they definitely need strong partners to ramp production and distribution. And when it comes to the more advanced parts of POET there is no question that they will need very big partnerships. The thing is if they can get an optical I/O chip into a server early on in the process with their own product then there will be big interest to see what else POET can do.
I don't know how many people had an opportunity to see the sensitivity report (royalty model) that provided some projections of what the potential value of a POET optical interface would be for the world’s largest supplier of optical components. It was really a model that showed how quickly the cost savings of building a POET optical I/O would impact the value of this company to the point where other companies in the same space simply could not compete. The savings achieved in adopting the POET optical interface and impact to the bottom line resulted in growth such that the value of this $2.3 billion dollar market cap company grew to 9X that valuation over 5 years.
I think that kind of growth and market domination for the earliest slice of POET has probably inspired this management team to potentially keep this part of POET under the company’s roof. The growth in data centers is such that it really can provide a large foundation for the company as they begin to develop the rest of POET with all the partnerships that will be required in those vertical markets.
