Interview: Mandrakesoft CEO

In this interview, Francois Bancilhon, CEO of Mandrakesoft, talks about the success they've had over the past year...and how they plan to build upon it.

LW: Tell us a little bit about Mandrakesoft and how you got involved with them.

Francois Bancilhon: I've been with Mandrakesoft for about a year. I joined at a time when the company was in deep financial trouble, and I joined to help fix it. That's what we've done over the year. We announced today our first positive financial result over a quarter in the last five years. It's a result of very hard work from the entire team; moreover, it's a signal that we've fixed the company and brought it back from where it was. The company's generating more cash than it's spending.

LW: Congratulations. You're a Paris-based company, correct?

Bancilhon: We're Paris based; we have people all over the place in the U.S. and Canada. We're a truly international company in the sense that we do less than 15% of our revenues in France. We do about 45% in North America, 35% all over Europe, and the remainder in the rest of the world. We pride ourselves on being a truly international, global distribution, with more than 63 languages, and we sell online in about 150 countries worldwide.

LW: That's quite a broad reach.

Bancilhon: In terms of distribution you have to understand two things: there are the people who use the system and people who pay for the system. In terms of usage, today we average roughly 10,000 downloads a day, which means it's somewhere between 3 and 4 million a year. This goes up to more than 50,000 when a new version comes out and goes down to 7,000 at the end of a cycle. That's a really broad reach, and it's roughly distributed as I mentioned in terms of country and geography. Out of these 4 million people who use Mandrakelinux, 1.5% actually pay something - which is an interesting ratio. It shows that the model works and makes sense. We need to keep improving on that. We're truly 100% committed to this open source approach; we'll keep providing a free download version to all our users, and we'll keep maintaining it and providing the security updates. That's part of what we believe the open source model is, and that's part of what we'll do. On top of that, we'll keep providing services and products that are complementary to that distribution. That's what we've been doing over the past year, and that's what has brought us to where we are - we're a profitable, healthy company now.

LW: In addition to selling the product, you actually have an online subscription service. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Bancilhon: We have a club; the Mandrakelinux Club is what helps Mandrakesoft in difficult times. We have about 20,000 members right now. These people get free products or discounts on products, online services - essentially anything else we do. The Mandrakelinux Club is growing at a fast pace. Our goal is to try to double the number this year, and it seems that we're on target to do that. More and more we treat the club as the forefront of our users and supporters; they help us with their advice, suggestions, and so on. When we do something wrong, they make sure they yell at us very quickly, and we listen and fix it. I think that's the right way of doing things. The beauty of the system is that we can be in tune with the people, who react very quickly if we do something wrong. In addition, when they tell us we're doing things the right way, we try to continue in that direction.

LW: I'm a Mandrakelinux user myself. I've heard that Mandrakelinux's strengths are the ease of installation and maintenance. What do you see as the strengths of your product?

Bancilhon: First of all, our mission is to try to bring Linux technology to the masses, and we do that in two ways. The first is to give away a free downloadable version of the system to everybody who needs it. Second, we make the technology as easy as we can - to use, to administer, and to install. That's where the focus of the company is in terms of technology, and that's where we'll keep working very hard. For instance, 9.2 came out with a product named Discovery, where the main emphasis is to make Linux for beginners - make a system incredibly simple by choosing very simple and well-integrated applications. And that's working very well in retail stores and the online store.

LW: So you're finding that most of your customers are people who come to Mandrakelinux because of your reputation for ease of use and simplicity?

Bancilhon: Today 50% of our people doing downloads are new Mandrakelinux users. That shows the growth of the system, and it shows we're on the right track. Out of all these people, I would say that less than 50% are in businesses, and a little more than 50% are individual users. These are our users; they are the ones who got us to where we are. We're grateful to them and we'll keep providing good services. We think the company should also make progress in providing better services to the enterprise world, which is why we've created this new line of products, the corporate server product, the MNF [Multi Network Firewall], and the clustering mechanism. We'll keep adding products to that with a release cycle that is longer and more adapted to the corporate world.

LW: I know the traditional Mandrakelinux user was an individual who was looking for an easy-to-use, easy-to-install distribution. Do you see that continuing to be your focus?

Bancilhon: I think it's going to continue - you don't want to abandon your installed base. These are the people who helped us, who appreciate us, so we'll keep serving them. We want to develop a new set of customers in the enterprise world by addressing what the corporate world needs. That's what we're working on now, and 10.0 will have a new set of features and functionality more targeted at the enterprise world.

LW: What kind of new features are you looking at for the business world?

Bancilhon: We've chosen specific software for our groupware, which will be very nicely integrated with our mailing system. We strongly believe that in the Linux world, less is more. A huge distribution with 3,000 applications is very nice for some people, but other people will want something more focused, where they know exactly the service it's going to provide for them. We'll be providing more focused and targeted distributions for different roles, for example, a mail server.

LW: So for the business world you're going to be providing more tightly focused desktops that are more targeted toward the specific needs of business users?

Bancilhon: Absolutely. The other piece, which is very interesting right now, is the extremely positive feedback we're receiving on Mandrakemove - it's a live CD, so the system boots directly from the CD reader. It comes with a USB key in which you can store your preferences and data. You can travel around with your CD and your USB key, in which you have your preferences and your key data, and on the CD you have the system. It's the ultimate way to travel. We put that on the market in early December. It's getting a very warm response from everybody who's reviewed it, and it's selling like hotcakes on our Web site. We're very happy with it.

LW: I can take my desktop with me?

Bancilhon: Absolutely. When I go home in the evening, instead of carrying my laptop I just carry my CD and USB key, and I use my wife's computer to do whatever I need to do. We've added a nice, fun touch - the CD from which you boot can be ejected, so you can listen to your favorite CD while you run your computer. We think it's fun; we're getting very strong feedback on that product; and we're already starting to think about the next version and how to improve it.

LW: What do you see in the future for Mandrakesoft?

Bancilhon: We'll be coming out with a corporate desktop that will be the companion product to our corporate server, targeted toward the corporate world. We'll have a few very focused distributions on some vertical markets, and some specific functionality and so on. We believe Mandrakesoft will be successful by heavily investing in technology. We're doing a lot of joint R&D projects with a number of U.S. organizations, and that's how we think we'll be successful. In terms of developing the company, we have great opportunities to expand our business on the service side. Right now, we're doing less than 10% of our business in services, while most of our competitors do business on the service side. There's a good opportunity there and we've taken a few steps; we're getting extremely good feedback on expanding our business to the corporate world by providing a comprehensive set of services. We've accomplished the first step, which was to fix the company, to bring it to a normal stage. Now we're ready to take it to a higher level.