MIME 2017 Annual Report

23 We have acquired, and may acquire in the future, other businesses, products or technologies, which could require significant management attention, disrupt our business, dilute shareholder value and adversely affect our results of operations. As part of our business growth strategy and in order to remain competitive, we may acquire, or make investments in, complementary companies, products or technologies. For example, in fiscal 2017, we acquired substantially all of the business of iSheriff, Inc., a cloud security provider, and in fiscal 2018, we acquired machine learning-based malware detection technology. Nevertheless, our acquisition experience to date remains limited, and as a result, our ability as an organization to acquire and integrate other companies, products or technologies in a successful manner is unproven. We may not be able to find suitable acquisition targets, and we may not be able to complete such acquisitions on favorable terms, if at all. If we do complete acquisitions, we may not ultimately strengthen our competitive position or achieve our goals, and any acquisitions we complete could be viewed negatively by our customers, analysts and investors. In addition, if we are unsuccessful at integrating such acquisitions or the technologies associated with such acquisitions, our revenue and results of operations could be adversely affected. In addition, while we will make significant efforts to address any information technology security issues with respect to any acquisitions, we may still inherit such risks when we integrate the acquired products and systems. Any integration process may require significant time and resources, and we may not be able to manage the process successfully. We may not successfully evaluate or utilize the acquired technology or personnel, or accurately forecast the financial impact of an acquired business, including accounting charges. We may have to pay cash, incur debt or issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisitions, each of which could adversely affect our financial condition or the value of our ordinary shares. The sale of equity or issuance of debt to finance any such acquisitions could result in dilution to our shareholders. The incurrence of indebtedness would result in increased fixed obligations and could also include covenants or other restrictions that would impede our ability to manage our operations. We employ third-party licensed software for use in or with our services, and the inability to maintain these licenses or errors in the software we license could result in increased costs, or reduced service levels, which would adversely affect our business. Our services incorporate and rely on certain third-party software obtained under licenses from other companies. We anticipate that we will continue to rely on such third-party software and development tools in the future. Although we believe that there are commercially reasonable alternatives to the third-party software we currently license, this may not always be the case, or it may be difficult or costly to replace. In addition, integration of the software used in our services with new third-party software may require significant work and require substantial investment of our time and resources and delays in the release of our services until equivalent technology is either developed by us, or, if available, is identified, obtained and integrated, which could harm our business. A licensor may have difficulties keeping up with technological changes or may stop supporting the software or other intellectual property that it licensed to us. Also, to the extent that our services depend upon the successful operation of third-party software in conjunction with our software, any undetected errors or defects in this third-party software could prevent the deployment or impair the functionality of our services, delay new services introductions, result in a failure of our services, and injure our reputation. Our use of additional or alternative third-party software would require us to enter into additional license agreements with third parties on terms that may not be favorable to us. If the market for SaaS business software applications develops more slowly than we expect or declines, our business would be adversely affected. The expansion of the SaaS business applications market depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance and perceived value associated with SaaS, as well as the ability of SaaS providers to address data security and privacy concerns. Additionally, government agencies have adopted, or may adopt, laws and regulations regarding the collection and use of personal information obtained from consumers and other individuals, or seek to access information on our platform, either of which may reduce the overall demand for our platform. If we or other SaaS providers experience data security incidents, loss of customer data, disruptions in delivery, or other problems, the market for SaaS business applications, including our services, may be negatively affected. Natural disasters, power loss, telecommunications failures and similar events could cause interruptions or performance problems associated with our information and technology infrastructure that could impair the delivery of our services and harm our business. We currently store our customers’ information within twelve third-party data center hosting facilities located in twelve locations around the world. As part of our current disaster recovery arrangements, our production environment and all of our customers’ data is currently replicated in near real-time in a facility located in a different location. We cannot provide assurance that the measures we have taken to eliminate single points of failure will be effective to prevent or minimize interruptions to our operations. Our facilities are vulnerable to interruption or damage from a number of sources, many of which are beyond our control, including floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures and similar events. They may also be subject to break-ins, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism and similar misconduct. Any damage to, or failure of, our systems generally could result in interruptions in our service. Interruptions in our service may reduce our revenue, cause customers to terminate their subscriptions and adversely affect our renewal