MIME 2017 Annual Report

13 We have a dedicated training team and resources designed to enable customers to get the full benefit from their Mimecast investment. Our comprehensive education and consultancy offerings include administrator training and certification, end user training, and e-discovery training for compliance teams, all of which are available in-person and online. Beyond customer support and training, we also provide a range of services that are designed to provide additional enablement to customers who require it, especially larger enterprises with more complex email infrastructure and legacy data. Our Success Planning and Professional Services teams work directly with the customer or partner to assist them in planning, migration and service activation. We offer a service level agreement as part of our standard contract that contains commitments regarding the delivery of email messages to and from our servers, the speed at which our archive can produce search results, and our ability to correctly identify and isolate spam and viruses. If we do not achieve these levels, the customer can request a credit. Payment of the credit will be made subject to verification of the problem. These credits are tiered according to the extent of the service issued. The amount of credits provided to customers to date has been immaterial in all historical periods. Customers As of March 31, 2018, we had approximately 30,400 customers and protected millions of their employees in over 130 countries. Our diverse global footprint is evidenced by the fact that in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2018, we generated 49% of our revenue from the United States, 31% from the United Kingdom, 15% from South Africa and 5% from the rest of the world. Our customers range from large enterprises with over 75,000 employees to small organizations with less than 50 employees and represent a diverse set of industries. For example, in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2018, we generated 12% of our revenue from customers in the legal services industry, 14% from customers in the professional, scientific and technical services industry, 10% from customers in the manufacturing industry and 13% from customers in the finance and insurance industry. Our business is not dependent on any particular customer. No single customer represented more than 1% of our annual revenues in the fiscal years ended March 31, 2018, 2017 or 2016. Research and Development Our engineering, operations, product and development teams work together to enhance our existing products, technology infrastructure and underlying Mime | OS™ cloud architecture, as well as develop our new product pipeline. Our research and development team interacts with our customers and partners to address emerging market needs, counter developing threats and drive innovation in risk management and data protection. We operate a continuous delivery model for improvements to our infrastructure and products to ensure customers benefit from regular updates in protection and functionality without the need for significant intervention on their part. Our research and development efforts give prominence to services that enhance our unification commitment and allow customers to displace point solutions or on-premises products. Our research and development expenses were $38.4 million, $22.6 million and $17.7 million for the fiscal years ended March 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. Intellectual Property Our success is dependent, in part, on our ability to protect our proprietary technologies and other intellectual property rights. We primarily rely on a combination of trade secrets, copyrights and trademarks, as well as contractual protections to establish and protect our intellectual property rights. As of March 31, 2018, we have 12 patents issued and 12 patent applications pending in the United States. We also have 4 patents issued and 5 patent applications pending for examination in non-U.S. jurisdictions. We intend to pursue additional patent protection to the extent that we believe it would be beneficial and cost effective. We have registered “Mimecast” and certain other marks as trademarks in the United States and several other jurisdictions. We also have a number of registered and unregistered trademarks in the United States and certain other jurisdictions, and will pursue additional trademark registrations to the extent we believe it would be beneficial and cost effective. We are the registered holder of a variety of domestic and international domain names that include “ mimecast.com ,” “mimecast.co.uk ,” “mimecast.co.za ,” and similar variations. In addition to the protection provided by our intellectual property rights, as part of our confidentiality procedures, all of our employees and independent contractors are required to sign agreements acknowledging that all inventions, trade secrets, works of authorship, developments and other processes generated by them on our behalf are our property, and they assign to us any ownership that they may claim in those works. We also generally enter into confidentiality agreements with our employees, consultants, partners, vendors and customers, and generally limit access to and distribution of our proprietary information.