What changed in this filing

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Item 1. Business

2021-12-08 compared with 2020-12-28 · 83 added, 146 removed, 106 unchanged (68% of the section changed)

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The TS segment generates product revenues by reselling third-party computer hardware and software as a value added reseller ("VAR").

The TS segment generates service revenues by the delivery of integration services for complex IT environments, including advanced security;

The TS segment generates service revenues by the delivery of professional services for complex IT solutions, including advanced security;

unified communications and collaboration;

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and maritime.

● The HPP segment revenue comes from four distinct product lines:

● CSPi sold all stock of Modcomp GmbH to Reply AG on July 31, 2018 for $14.4 million cash and a gain of $18.1 million.

This sale was recorded in fiscal year 2018.

An additional €400 thousand was included in escrow as part of the Share Purchase and Assignment Agreement to potentially be received later as a purchase price adjustment in fiscal year 2021.

This amount was received in July 2021 and recorded as a gain from discontinued operations in the Consolidated Statements of Operations.

No income taxes were provided as the transaction was a tax-free exchange in the U.K.

There are no other amounts that will be received as part of the agreement.

● The HPP segment revenue comes from three distinct product lines:

(i) a cybersecurity solution marketed as ARIA™ Software-Defined Security (“SDS”), which is offered to commercial, original equipment manufacturers ("OEM") and government customers;

(ii) the Myricom ® network adapters for commercial, government and OEM customers;

(iii) the nVoy Series of appliances for Managed Security Service Providers (“MSSPs”) and end-user customers;

and (iv) the legacy Multicomputer product portfolio for digital signal processing ("DSP") applications within the defense markets.

● The ARIA SDS solution is a software portfolio starting with an underlying platform, comprised of an orchestrator (“SDSo”) and light-weight instances (“SDSi”), and hosted applications that reside on top, as well as supporting hardware, such as turn-key security appliances.

and (iii) the legacy Multicomputer product portfolio for digital signal processing ("DSP") applications within the defense markets.

● The ARIA SDS solution is a software portfolio starting with an underlying platform, and hosted applications that reside on top, as well as supporting hardware then deployed in turn-key security deployments.

All are developed to secure an organization’s network, enterprise-wide, to better protect critical devices, applications and high-value data, such as personally identifiable information ("PII"), from breaches.

Revenue is derived from:

(i) license sales of our software platform components, (ii) hosted applications, (iii) supporting hardware and (iv) the required support packages.

The software licenses, as well as the support packages, are renewable on an annual basis.

(i) license sales of our software platform components, (ii) supporting hardware and (iii) any required support packages.

The software licenses, as well as the support packages, are renewable on a recurring basis.

The ARIA SDS platform and applications can also be deployed on our Myricom SmartNIC adapters which can be directly inserted into our customers servers or integrated as part of our turn-key appliances.

Either of these approaches can be deployed into a customer’s data center environments or on-premise servers to provide network security services.

● We anticipate that the ARIA SDS portfolio will be of value to regulated industries, such as financial services or healthcare, due to the rise of data-privacy regulations enforced at the federal, U.S.

● The ARIA portfolio is of value to regulated industries, such as financial services or healthcare, due to the rise of data-privacy regulations enforced at the federal, U.S.

state, and international level, as well as industry entities.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the dramatic increase in remote workforce ARIA SDS will provide additional protection against exploits entering in from home-based computers and

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the dramatic increase in remote workforce, we believe ARIA SDS will provide additional protection against exploits entering in from home-based computers and networks.

In addition, due to the complexities and high-costs associated with enterprise-wide security, particularly in the creation and operation of Security Operation Centers (“SOCs”), we believe that ARIA will be attractive to organizations that desire SOC level protections without incurring the procurement of disparate tools and the need to hire and retain highly-trained security analysts.

We also believe the unique, patent-pending approach will be attractive to MSSPs and OEMs that pursue differentiated security services for their customers.

While our initial offerings of the ARIA SDS portfolio are available now, the number of offerings will continue to expand over time.

● There was limited revenue for ARIA in fiscal year 2020.

We also believe the unique, patent-pending approach will be attractive to Managed Security Service Providers (“MSSPs”) and OEMs that pursue differentiated security services for their customers.

While our initial offerings of the ARIA SDS portfolio are available now, we expect the number of offerings will continue to expand over time.

● There was limited revenue for ARIA SDS in fiscal 2021.

This was primarily due to COVID-19 limiting our ability to access prospect’s data centers for trials and deployments;

however, our pipeline continues to build for FY 2021.

As such, we expect to have additional revenue from ARIA starting in fiscal year 2021.

● The Myricom SmartNIC adapters (“ARC Series” and Myricom Secure Intelligent Adapters or “SIA”) are optimized for and sold into markets that require high-bandwidth and low-latency including (i) packet capture, (ii) financial transactions, (iii) machine vision and (iv) network security monitoring.

Our SIA allow organizations to add advanced cybersecurity features to their production server deployments.

however, our customer pipeline recovered in the second half of FY 2021.

As such, we saw an increase in recorded revenue from ARIA SDS during the second half of FY 2021.

Our primary customers for packet capture include government agencies that need to capture, inject, and analyze network traffic at line rate, and OEMs selling into vendors of computer security appliances.

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Organizations across all verticals can benefit from the network monitoring software that allows threats to be found within network data at wire rate on our SmartNICs.

● The ARIA SDS software applications run on our SIA adapters and on Intel X86 based servers, as well as cloud instances.

These applications are primarily focused on helping security tools, such as security information and event management (“SIEM”), which are heavily used by today's SOC deployments, to find missed network-borne threats.

We have integrated our ARIA Packet Intelligence (“PI”) with SIEM solutions from Splunk and Sumo Logic SIEM, and it assists our own advanced threat detection application ARIA Advanced Detection and Response (“ADR”).

● The nVoy Series of appliances (“Packet Recorder” and “Packet Broker”) can be deployed as part of an organization’s data security structure as a new component to complement existing systems and provides data breach verification and notification, as well as compliance reporting.

The primary customers will be OEMs or MSSPs that are looking to expand their product and services offerings of industry regulation compliance and breach response solutions.

● Multicomputer products for DSP applications are no longer actively developed but will continue to be sold into established programs and supported for several years.

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Integration Solutions

In the TS segment, we focus on value-added reseller ("VAR") integrated solutions including third-party hardware, software and technical computer-related consulting services and managed services.

Our value proposition is our ability to integrate diverse third-party components together into a complete solution to install the system at the customer site and to offer high value IT consulting services to deliver solutions.

The TS segment, is a value-added reseller ("VAR") of third-party hardware and software technology solutions along with our, advanced technology consulting, professional IT, managed IT and Cloud services.

Our value proposition

is our ability to support the complete IT life cycle of planning, designing, implementing and optimizing a comprehensive solution into our customer’s IT environments, to help achieve their expected business outcomes.

Third-Party Hardware and Software

We sell third-party hardware and software products in the information technology market, with a strategic focus on industry standard servers and data center infrastructure solutions, midrange data storage infrastructure products, network products, unified communications, and IT security hardware and software solutions.

Our key offerings include products from Hewlett Packard (HPE)/Aruba, Cisco Systems, Palo Alto Networks, DellEMC, Juniper Networks, Citrix, Intel, VMWare, Fortinet, Microsoft and Checkpoint.

Through our business relationships with these vendors, we are able to offer competitively priced robust products to meet our customers’ diverse technology needs, providing procurement and engineering expertise in server infrastructure, storage, security, unified communications and networking, to the small-to-medium sized businesses ("SMBs") and large enterprise businesses ("LEBs") with complex IT environments.

We offer our customers a single point of contact for complex multi-vendor technology purchases.

We sell third-party hardware, software, and information technology products, with a strategic focus on industry standard servers and data center infrastructure solutions, midrange data storage infrastructure products, networking and mobility products, unified communications, and advanced IT security hardware and software solutions.

Our key offerings include products from Hewlett Packard (HPE)/Aruba, Cisco Systems, Palo Alto Networks, Nutanix, DellEMC, Juniper Networks, Citrix, Intel, VMWare, Fortinet, Microsoft and Barracuda.

Through our business relationships with these vendors, we are able to offer competitively priced robust products to meet our diverse customers’ technology needs, providing procurement and engineering expertise in server infrastructure, storage, security, unified communications, mobility and networking, to the small-to-medium sized businesses ("SMBs") and large enterprise businesses ("LEBs") with unique and/or complex IT environments.

Many of our SMB customers have unique technology needs and may lack technical purchasing expertise or have very limited IT engineering resources on staff.

We offer our customers a single point of contact for complicated multi-vendor technology purchases.

We also provide installation, integration, logistical assistance and other value-added services that customers may require.

Our current customers are in web and infrastructure hosting, education, telecommunications, healthcare services, distribution, financial services, professional services and manufacturing.

We target SMB and LEB customers across all industries.

Our current customers are in web and infrastructure hosting, education, telecommunications, healthcare services, distribution, financial services, professional services and manufacturing.

Professional Services

We provide professional IT consulting services in the following areas:

● Implementation, integration, migration, configuration, installation services and project management.

● Hyper-Converged Infrastructure ("HCI") - We assist our clients with designing and implementing HCI solutions from multiple vendors including DellEMC, Nutanix, HPE and Cisco.

● Assessments, planning, designing, implementation, migration, optimization services and project management.

● Hyper-Converged Infrastructure ("HCI").

We assist our clients with designing and implementing HCI solutions from multiple vendors including DellEMC, Nutanix, HPE and Cisco.

HCI is a software-centric architecture that tightly integrates compute, storage and virtualization resources in a single system.

The benefits of an HCI solution are improved performance, scalability and flexibility all in a reduced footprint.

● Virtualization - We help our customers implement virtualization solutions using products from companies such as VMWare and Citrix that allow one computer to do the job of multiple computers by sharing resources of a single computer across multiple environments.

● Virtualization.

We help our customers implement virtualization solutions using products from companies such as VMWare, Nutanix and Citrix that allow one computer to do the job of multiple computers by sharing resources of a single computer across multiple environments.

Virtualization eliminates physical and geographical limitations and enables users to host multiple operating systems and applications on fewer servers.

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● Enterprise security intrusion prevention, network access control and unified threat management.

Using third-party products from companies like Palo Alto, Aruba Networks, Juniper Networks, Fortinet, Checkpoint and Cisco Systems, our services are designed to ensure data security and integrity through the establishment of virtual private networks, firewalls and other technologies.

Using third-party products from companies like Palo Alto, Aruba Networks, Juniper Networks, Fortinet, Barracuda and Cisco Systems, our services are designed to ensure data security and integrity through the establishment of virtual private networks, firewalls and other technologies.

● IT security compliance services.

We provide services for IT security compliance with personal privacy laws such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard ("PCI DSS"), t he Health Insurance Portability and

Accountability Act of 1996 ("

We provide services for IT security compliance with personal privacy laws such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard ("PCI DSS"), t he Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("

HIPAA"), and internal control regulations under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act ("SOX").

● Unified communications, wireless and routing and switching solutions using Cisco Systems and Aruba Networks products and services.

● Unified communications, using Cisco Systems and Microsoft solutions.

We are Cisco Premier Partner approved for its Cloud and Managed Services Program for Managed Business Communications and a Microsoft Gold Partner with specialties in Cloud, and Collaboration solutions.

● Wireless, routing, and switching solutions using Juniper Networks and Aruba Networks products and services.

● Custom software applications and solutions development and support.

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● Managed IT services that include monitoring, reporting and management of alerts for the resolution and preventive general IT and IT security support tasks.

● Maintenance and technical support for third-party products including hardware and software, operating system and user support.

Managed and Cloud Services

As consumption models continue to evolve in our industry, we have developed a robust managed and cloud services offering to provide alternative solutions to traditional capital expenditure investments in IT solutions and IT operations for our clients.

● Optimization, maintenance and technical support for third-party products including hardware and software, operating system and user support.

Managed IT and Cloud Services

As consumption models continue to evolve in our industry, we have developed a robust managed and cloud services portfolio to provide alternative solutions to traditional capital expenditure investments in IT solutions and IT operations for our clients.

Our value is to provide an elastic offering that will allow the client to scale and consume these offerings with monthly billing options that help control costs and provide economies of scale.

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● Proactive monitoring and remote management of IT Infrastructure that includes network (both wired and wireless), data center (which includes compute, storage and virtualization), desktops, unified communications platforms and security.

● Managed and Hosted Unified Communication as a Service via a Cisco Collaboration offering under an annuity program.

● Managed Security (firewall, endpoint protection, malware, anti-virus and SIEM).

● Managed and Hosted Unified Communication as a Service via a Cisco Communication and Collaboration solution under an annuity program.

● Managed Security (firewall, endpoint protection, malware, anti-virus Managed Detection & Response).

● Managed BackUp and Replication.

● Cloud services that include Microsoft Office 365, Azure, Greencloud and Amazon Web Services.

Markets, Marketing and Dependence on Certain Customers

● Cloud services that include Microsoft 365, Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop, Greencloud, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

Markets and Marketing

We are an IT systems integrator and computer hardware and software VAR.

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We operate within the VAR sales channels of major computer hardware and software OEMs, primarily within the geographic areas of our sales offices and across the U.S.

We provide innovative IT solutions, including a myriad of infrastructure products with customized integration consulting services and managed services to meet the unique requirements of our customers.

We provide innovative IT solutions, including a myriad of infrastructure products with customized professional IT consulting services and managed services to meet the unique requirements of our customers.

We market the products and services we sell through sales offices in the U.S.

using our direct sales force.

Our primary competition in the TS segment is other VARs ranging from small companies that number in the thousands, to large enterprises such as CDW, PC Connection, Insight, Presidio, Dimension Data, and Computacenter Limited.

Our primary competition in the TS segment are other VARs ranging from small companies that number in the thousands, to large enterprises such as CDW, PC Connection, Insight, Presidio, Dimension Data, and Computacenter Limited.

In addition, we compete directly with many of the companies that manufacture the third-party products we sell, including Cisco Systems, IBM, HPE, EMC (now part of Dell) and others.

In the network management, security and

storage systems integration services business, our competitors are extensive and vary to a certain degree in each of the geographical markets, but they also include such national competitors as HP/EDS, IBM and Cap Gemini.

In the network management, security and storage systems integration services business, our competitors are extensive and vary to a certain degree in each of the geographical markets, but they also include such national competitors as HP/EDS, IBM and Cap Gemini.

Nearly all of our product offerings are available through other channels.

Favorable competitive factors for the TS segment include procurement capability, product diversity which enables the delivery of complete and custom solutions to our customers and the strength of our key business relationships with the major IT OEMs.

Favorable competitive factors for the TS segment include procurement capability, product diversity which enables the delivery of complete and custom

solutions to our customers and the strength of our key business relationships with the major IT OEMs.

We also consider our ability to meet the unique and/or specialized needs of the SMB and LEB markets and our strong knowledge of the IT products that we sell to be a key competitive advantage.

Our ability to provide managed services through our network operations center and the professional IT services required to design and install custom IT solutions to address our customers' IT needs are distinct competitive advantages.

Our ability to provide managed services through our network operations center and the professional IT services required to design and implement custom IT solutions to address our customers' IT needs are distinct competitive advantages.

Unfavorable competitive factors include low name recognition, limited geographic coverage and pricing.

The backlog of customer orders and contracts for the TS segment was approximately $4.3 million at September 30, 2020, as compared to $4.0 million at September 30, 2019.

Sources and Availability of Product

COVID-19 has adversely affected the distribution channel leading to significantly longer lead times when the TS segment orders product.

Manufacturers are not producing as much product as prior to the pandemic due to disruptions, resulting in supply shortages.

Additionally, recent global shipping delays have exacerbated this problem.

The TS segment has many vendors it transacts with, and supply shortages are pervasive with many of them.

The gross backlog of customer orders and contracts for the TS segment was approximately $8.7 million at September 30, 2021, as compared to $4.3 million at September 30, 2020.

Our backlog can fluctuate greatly.

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The mission of the HPP team is to deliver a differentiated, smarter approach to cybersecurity.

Our software-defined platform makes it easier for organizations to achieve enterprise-wide network security and protection of critical assets, applications and devices by improving their network visibility capabilities and accelerating their incident response.

The ARIA SDS solution provides organizations an automated, central, and coordinated way to accelerate cyber threat detection and response, implement and enforce security policies, control which applications can access critical assets, and to protect applications and the associated data.

The ARIA SDSo and SDSi, provide the foundation of the ARIA platform, so that a series of lightweight advanced security applications can be deployed, provisioned and managed uniformly across any sized organization.

These instances can be deployed in a variety of scenarios including bare metal servers, virtual machines ("VMs"), and container-based computing environments, as well as on our own turn-key security appliances.

The ARIA SDSo will automatically detect any instances and programmatically execute the specified applications security feature set strengthening an organization's security posture.

For customers that desire a turnkey solution, a bundled offering can be created for deployment and opens the possibility for professional services and integration services offerings to our channel.

ARIA SDS APPLICATIONS

The deployment of hosted applications bring life to the ARIA SDS platform.

Application availability will expand over time as new products are released.

We believe our current offerings have significant market potential.

1) ARIA Advanced Detection and Response :

The newest ARIA SDS, ARIA ADR, offering was released in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020 and provides organizations with the ability to deploy SOC capabilities without the need for costly security tools or the skilled human resources.

ARIA ADR is a single-platform solution driven by artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning (“ML”) to enable automated, comprehensive threat detection and response.

ARIA ADR is an attractive option for mid-sized organizations that need a complete cybersecurity solution.

It can be deployed on customers’ premises as well as in the public cloud infrastructure.

The ARIA ADR solution is offered as a SaaS service with multi-year monthly or annual subscription contracts for both the software and hardware components.

The solution can be deployed through a turn-key security appliance in premises network, and data centers, and in virtual cloud instances.

2) ARIA Packet Intelligence:

The ARIA Packet Intelligence ("PI") application directs an organization’s network traffic to existing intrusion detection systems (“IDS”) security tools such as SIEMs, Intrusion Prevention Systems or (“IPS"), as well as our ARIA ADR solution to make these tools effective at detecting network-borne threats.

The ARIA PI application is available as a licensed functionality within a low-cost high-availability ("HA") security appliance, or probe, that taps into an organization’s network infrastructure, as well as on the Myricom SIA adapter.

The probe mines data at 10-25G line rates and performs remedial actions to stop threats on a per-traffic stream basis while minimizing impact on network traffic performance.

Built-in APIs allow compatible third party threat detection tools to take actions in order to stop detected threats.

The ARIA PI application will be able to improve IPS or IDS performance by preprocessing the data feeds, allowing such solutions to run effectively at higher line rates.

3) ARIA Packet Capture:

Our Sniffer10G ("SNF") software is used by intelligence agencies for packet capture, network surveillance applications, and to perform detailed cyber-threat analysis.

It’s a recommended solution to increase the Zeek IDS (formerly known as Bro) to support 10G line rates rather than the standard 1G.

4) ARIA Key Management Server:

The ARIA KMS application makes it easier to add encryption and decryption capabilities to those applications which leverage a standards-based key management interoperability protocol ("KMIP") client.

For example, each of VMware’s vSphere and vSAN instances leverage a KMIP client to encrypt their application data output.

As such, they need to be fed KMIP compatible keys to perform encryption.

Depending upon the size of the environment, this could require hundreds of keys per minute.

Our ARIA KMS application provides such KMIP keys securely and at rapid scale while ensuring that the key servers are highly available at all times.

Our application was designed to solve the deployment complexity challenges currently associated with key management.

MYRICOM SmartNIC ADAPTERS

Myricom ARC Series product line includes a portfolio of SmartNIC ethernet adapters, as well as specialized software, which is branded as DBL for financial institutions and SNF for network monitoring.

Both are compatible with Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and VMware ESX.

Our adapters act as stand-alone Network Interface Cards ("NIC”) and support purpose-built for applications that provide high bandwidth, low latency and line-rate packet capture, and processing off load for high-frequency financial trading and network traffic analysis applications.

Myricom Secure Intelligent Adapter ("SIA") is our next-generation adapter and provides additional compute capabilities and the specialized hardware necessary to optimally operate the ARIA SDS platform and applications.

These advanced features allow organizations to achieve lossless packet inspection and policy based actions on network traffic at wire rate, which is required for network surveillance use cases and tools, such as lawful intercept, deep packet inspection, forensic tools, and threat detection applications.

Customer verticals for the Myricom SIA include service providers, OEMs and MSSPs.

ARIA SECURITY APPLIANCES

ARIA Security Appliances provide a standalone solution that can be either deployed in-line to provide network security, or within a data center to provide security services.

These appliances are built with one or multiple integrated Myricom SIA adapters.

This allows for broader options to deploy our services in a turn-key fashion.

nVoy Series is comprised of a 100G Packet Broker and a 10G Packet Recorder appliance optimized to run our ARIA applications.

These tools assist customers in the deployment of our ARIA solution into higher speed networks, as

well as provide the compute and storage intensive functions needs to provide some of our services such as packet recording.

MULTICOMPUTER PRODUCTS

Multicomputer products portfolio includes the 2000 SERIES VME and the 3000 SERIES VXS systems.

The 2000 SERIES products, based on PowerPC RISC processors with AltiVec™ technology, high-speed memory, and Myrinet-2000™ cluster interconnect, are currently in use by customers in the aerospace, commercial, and defense markets.

The 3000 SERIES VXS product line, incorporating the Freescale QorIQ PowerPC processors with AltiVec technology, targets high-performance DSP, signal intelligence ("SIGINT"), and radar and sonar applications in airborne, shipboard, and unmanned aerial vehicle ("UAV") platforms where space, power, and cooling are at a premium.

The HPP segment will continue to ship and repair existing Multicomputer products to its customer base and support an installed base of DSP systems.

Royalties on Multicomputer products

We license the design of certain 2000 SERIES computer processor boards and switch interconnect technology to third parties.

In exchange for licensing this technology, we receive a royalty payment for each processor board that utilizes our design for these products.

Markets, Marketing and Dependence on Certain Customers

Markets and Marketing

Cyber Security Products Market

The ARIA SDS solution is targeted at organizations that need to get additional functionality out of their current cybersecurity solutions to find and stop attacks, while also reducing their operating costs.

At the present time, our ARIA SDS solutions are primarily offered through our direct sales channel, however, we have begun to add channel partners such as independent resellers and MSSPs.

These value added resellers will find the ARIA offerings an appealing way to expand their portfolio of security products and services while replacing less-effective tools and processes in their customer environments.

OEM vendors in the cybersecurity market can benefit from integrating the ARIA applications and leveraging them as internal solutions to allow their applications to scale, add critical functionality.

OEMs are interested in the Myricom Adapters including our SIA SmartNIC running our ARIA SDS applications.

As mentioned, MSSPs require simple, yet differentiated, solutions that can be deployed across their customer bases.

The detection, and automation capabilities found in ARIA SDS are valuable as they allow these security service providers to scale their offerings while increasing the productivity of their security operation center staff.

Aerospace & Defense Market

Our focus for fiscal 2021 and beyond is to continue our support of established Multicomputer and Myricom products allowing system deployments to be made by government entities.

These programs have support requirements that often extend beyond twenty years.

Our focus for fiscal 2022 and beyond is to continue our support of system deployments to be made by government entities.

Financial Transactions Market

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Packet Capture Market

Myricom Sniffer software, running on Myricom ARC adapters, provides enterprise and government customers and partners the ability to capture, inject, and analyze network traffic at line rate for all Ethernet packet sizes, with low-cost CPU overhead.

Sniffer10G serves the following market segments:

network surveillance, monitoring and analysis, testing, measurement, and packet generation, as well as a technology component within intrusion detection systems ("IDS"), forensic tools, and threat detection and response solutions.

Myricom Sniffer10G software, running on Myricom ARC adapters, provides enterprise and government customers and partners the ability to capture, inject, and analyze network traffic at line rate, with low CPU overhead.

Machine Vision Market

Myricom ARC network adapters are used in a wide range of network applications, including those that connect machine vision camera systems using Ethernet.

Many of these OEM customers require high-performance, low latency 10G networked video processing systems, which include our SmartNICs and software to assist with the video transmission.

Cyber Security Products Market

The ARIA SDS solution is targeted at organizations that need to get additional functionality out of their current cybersecurity solutions to find and stop intrusion threats, while also reducing their operating costs.

At the present time, our ARIA SDS solutions are primarily offered through our direct sales channel, however, it is likely that future sales will come through channel partners such as independent reseller and MSSPs.

OEM vendors in the cybersecurity market can benefit from integrating the ARIA applications and leveraging them as internal solutions to allow their applications to scale, add critical functionality, or solve particular problems, such as poor performance.

OEMs are interested in the Myricom Adapters including our SIA running our ARIA SDS applications, for use as Smart NICs within their appliances.

We believe this will be a large growing market we can participate in in the coming years.

As mentioned, MSSPs require simple, yet differentiated, solutions that can be deployed across their customer bases.

The detection, orchestration and automation capabilities found in ARIA SDS are valuable as they allow these security service providers to scale their offerings while increasing the productivity of their security operation center staff.

CSPi’s competition in the cybersecurity space comes primarily from the large, traditional security vendors like Dell, IBM, and McAfee.

Due to the ARIA’s approach to network and data security, we also face competition from traditional security tools and current approaches to finding network based attacks.

The competition includes common firewall manufacturers with broad portfolios such as Palo Alto or Cisco, and in the case of data packet brokers, Gigamon and Ixia.

Competitors for ARIA SDS encryption include applications and appliances provided by Thales, HPE’s Voltaic group, and other smaller market players.

In the crowded security products market, our history of supporting defense and government military programs, strong security application expertise, and the ability to develop optimized products for OEMs will set us apart.

We must continually develop new features and solutions to stay abreast of evolving customer requirements and leverage advances in technology.

One example is Intel’s chip-level roadmap that may provide additional functionality for our ARIA SDS solution, but our competitors could also attempt to leverage this.

Some of these competitors may also be potential go-to-market partners or OEM customers looking to integrate our capabilities within their products and solutions.

Myricom ARC network adapters are used by OEMs for machine vision camera systems network applications, These OEM customers require the high-performance, low latency 10G attributions our solutions support.

CSPi’s competition in the cybersecurity space comes primarily from the large, traditional security vendors like Splunk, IBM, and McAfee.

We also face competition from traditional network security solutions vendors such as Palo Alto and Cisco.

Manufacturing, Assembly and Testing

Currently, all Multicomputer products are shipped to our customers directly from our plant in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Currently, products are shipped to our customers directly from our plant in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Our manufacturing activities consist mainly of final assembly and testing of printed circuit boards and systems that are designed by us and fabricated by outside third-party vendors.

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We also use diagnostic programs to detect and isolate potential component failures.

A comprehensive log is maintained of past failures to monitor the ongoing reliability of our products and improve design standards.

Currently, Myricom products, including the nVoy appliances and Myricom network adapters, are shipped to our customers directly from our plant in Lowell, Massachusetts.

The packet recorder and packet broker appliances are sourced from third-party partners, integrated with CSPi software and resold under the CSPi brand.

Our network adapters are primarily designed and specified in-house and fabricated and sourced from outside third party vendors.

Material and components received from outside suppliers are inspected by our quality assurance technicians.

The ARIA SDS solution (platform and applications) is licensed from servers or content-delivery services directly controlled by CSPi.

The ARIA software can be sold in conjunction with the Myricom SIA, or our appliances, which may be preloaded with the appropriate images.

We provide a warranty covering defects arising from the sale of Multicomputer and Myricom products, which varies from 90 days to three years, depending upon the particular unit in question.

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Several components used in our HPP segment products are obtained from sole-source suppliers.

We are dependent on key vendors such as Xilinx, NXP, and BCRM for a variety of processors for certain products and Wind River Systems, Inc.

for VxWorks operating system software.

Despite our dependence on these sole-source suppliers, based on our current forecast and our projected sales obligations, we believe we have adequate inventory on hand and our current near-term requirements can be met in the existing supply chain.

We are dependent on key vendors such as Xilinx, NXP, NVIDIA and BCRM for a variety of processors for certain products.

While we face the same supply chain risks as the rest of our competitors, we continue to work closely with our long term suppliers to meet our projected sales obligations.

COVID-19 has adversely affected manufacturers, which has led to production disruptions, resulting in supply shortages.

Additionally, recent global shipping delays have exacerbated this problem.

Research and Development

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Expenditures for R&D are expensed as they are incurred.

Product development efforts in fiscal year 2020 involved development of the ARIA SDS product set, and enhancements to our Myricom products, in which we expect to continue to make investments related to the development of new hardware adapter products and the ARIA SDS software that enables the hardware to meet the needs of specific applications.

Our current R&D plan is intended to extend the usefulness and marketability of these products by adding features and capabilities to meet the needs of our markets.

Product development efforts in fiscal year 2021 and 2020 involved development of the ARIA SDS product set, and enhancements to our Myricom products.

We expect to continue to make investments related to the development of new hardware adapter products and new cybersecurity software applications.

Intellectual Property

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We have pending patents for the ARIA SDS software and will be pursuing additional patent rights over time.

The backlog of customer orders and contracts in the HPP segment was approximately $0.6 million at September 30, 2020 as compared to $0.5 million at September 30, 2019.

The gross backlog of customer orders and contracts in the HPP segment was $4.3 million at September 30, 2021 as compared to $0.6 million at September 30, 2020.

Our backlog can fluctuate greatly.

We can experience possible large fluctuations due to the timing of receipt of large orders often for purchases from prime contractors for sales to the government.

It is expected that all of the customer orders in backlog will ship and/or be provided during fiscal year 2021.

It is expected the customer orders in backlog will ship and/or be provided through fiscal year 2023.

Significant Customers

See Note 17 in the notes to the consolidated financial statements for detailed information regarding customers which comprised more than 10% of consolidated revenues for the years ended September 30, 2020 and 2019.

See Note 18 Segment Information in the notes to the consolidated financial statements for detailed information regarding customers which comprised more than 10% of consolidated revenues for the years ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

As of September 30, 2021, we had approximately 112 full time equivalent employees worldwide for our consolidated operations.

7 unchanged sentences

Financial Information about Geographic Areas

Information regarding our sales by geographic area and percentage of sales based on the location to which the products are shipped or services rendered are in Note 17 of the notes to the consolidated financial statements.

Information regarding our sales by geographic area and percentage of sales based on the location to which the products are shipped or services rendered are in Note 18 Segment Information of the notes to the consolidated financial statements.

Compared sentence by sentence after normalising whitespace, quotation marks, case and digits, so re-formatting and restated figures do not read as changed language. Wording changes appear as one removal and one addition. The current filing and the prior one are authoritative.

What changed 10-K

Item 1. Business