Caymas Systems

When there is smoke, there is usually fire. A few weeks ago a few enterprising beat reporters questioned whether Caymas Systems was still a viable entity. Their web site was down and phone systems didn't work, but it was all chalked up to a bungled office consolidation.

Well, not so much.

Today in the mail I got a "NOTICE OF ASSIGNMENT FOR THE BENEFIT OF CREDITORS AND DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING CLAIMS" from Caymas (assignment for the benefit of creditors), LLC - which is the assignee of Caymas' assets.

Sounds like a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo to me, and I'm no lawyer but in effect - Caymas Systems is dead. Their creditors will need to deal with this newly formed LLC to get any of their money - which in these cases is pretty unlikely.

The good news for me is that Caymas doesn't owe me any money.

The bad news for their customers is that they have some pretty pricey doorstops and paperweights now. The best case is that someone acquires the technology assets and supports the product for some length of time. Moving the liabilities to another corporate entity facilitates that. The worst case is that the company goes away and customers are left holding the bag.

We all talk about the "great contraction" and try to figure out if/when some of the 800 security companies just go away. But these kinds of things are sad. Sad for the employees and sad for the customers. It's Darwin at his evolutionary best.

And it's part of the game. I hope all the good folks at Caymas land on their feet, and I'm sure there are a bunch of increasingly desperate NAC vendors circling Caymas' customers with offers of swap-out credits and other incentives. Have fun with that.