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Taser Has Become A SaaS Company, And A Successful One At That

Not many may know that the company once made famous for a gun alternative, is now a SaaS company - and a successful one at that. Taser has an important mission to make the bullet obsolete, to reduce social conflict and enable a fair and effective justice system. How is that for building a company with meaning and significance for the world? Today, Taser is a publicly traded software company known as Axon that leverages its past to bring more technology and more solutions to the world of law enforcement.

While its Taser weapons still bring in the lion’s share of its revenue, the fastest growing is the Axon Cloud as well as its Sensors. The Company’s total revenues in 2018 was $420 million. Axon Cloud has grown from $30 million in 2016 to $92 million in 2018 while sensors grew from $36 million to $75 million.

The key to Axon has been its bundled offering, which in turn creates a competitive moat. Its sensors as well as digital evidence management are a strategic growth area. This is comprised of body cameras, headwear cameras, apps, fleet vehicle cameras as well as sidearm signals.

Perhaps the most effective tools has been the body camera which continuously captures officer activity. The activity data is then transferred; its managed and stored in the Axon cloud and can easily be retrieved, shared and redacted. Currently data is transferred from the camera to the cloud through a docking station, but in Q3 2019, LTE-live streaming will become available. Moreover, Axon hosts petabytes of public safety video data in its secure cloud and its customers have authorized Axon to use their data to train AI models.

Another key growth area for the business is in records management, which was first announced in 2016 and goes live in the second half of 2019. Computer-aided dispatch software, meanwhile, will be launched in mid-2020.

The bundled offering has played into the consistent rapid growth of Axon’s cloud business. SaaS revenues have grown rapidly and consistently with Q1 2019 annual recurring revenue coming in at $122 million, up from $83 million the same period a year prior. In terms of users, the Company reported 371,100 as compared to 226,900 a year prior.

Axon’s leadership has done an excellent job taking its original product, a gun alternative, and transforming the Company into a global leader in law enforcement technology. And given its continuous stream of new products, features and technology, Axon has lots of room to run.