Multiple Element Arrangements
We enter into multiple element revenue arrangements in which a customer may purchase a combination of hardware, software, software upgrades, hardware and software maintenance and support, training and consulting services. We account for multiple agreements with a single customer as one arrangement if the contractual terms and/or substance of those agreements indicate that they may be so closely related that they are, in effect, parts of a single arrangement.
Most of our products are hardware appliances containing software components that operate together to provide the essential functionality of the product. Therefore, the software sold with our hardware appliances are considered non-software deliverables and are not accounted for under the industry-specific software revenue recognition guidance.
Our non-software products and services qualify as separate units of accounting because they have value to the customer on a standalone basis and our revenue arrangements do not include a general right of return for delivered products. Our products and licenses revenue also includes stand-alone software products. Stand-alone software may operate on our hardware appliances, but is not considered essential to the functionality of the hardware and continues to be subject to the industry-specific software revenue recognition guidance. The industry-specific software revenue recognition guidance includes the use of the residual method.
We provide unspecified software upgrades for most of our products, on a when-and-if available basis, through maintenance and support contracts. To the extent that the software being supported is not considered essential to the functionality of the hardware, these support arrangements would continue to be subject to the industry-specific software revenue recognition guidance.
We allocate the arrangement fee to each element based upon the relative selling price of that element and, if software and software-related (e.g., maintenance for the software element) elements are also included in the arrangement, we allocate the arrangement fee to each of those software and software-related elements as a group based on the relative selling price for those elements. After such allocations are made, the amount of the arrangement fee allocated to the software and software-related elements is accounted for using the residual method. When applying the relative selling price method, we determine the selling price for each element using vendor-specific objective evidence, or VSOE, of selling price, if it exists, or if not, third-party evidence, or TPE, of selling price, if it exists. If neither VSOE nor TPE of selling price exist for an element, we use our best estimate of selling price, or BESP, for that element. The revenue allocated to each element is then recognized when the basic revenue recognition criteria are met for that element. We limit the amount of revenue recognized for delivered elements to an amount that is not contingent upon future delivery of additional products or services or meeting of any specified performance conditions.
We determine VSOE for each element based on historical stand-alone sales to third parties. For maintenance and support, training and consulting services, we determine the VSOE of fair value based on our history of stand-alone sales demonstrating that a substantial majority of transactions fall within a narrow range for each service offering.
We historically have not been able to determine TPE for our products, maintenance and support, training or consulting services. TPE is determined based on competitor prices for similar elements when sold separately. Generally, our offerings contain a significant level of differentiation such that the comparable pricing of products with similar functionality cannot be obtained. Furthermore, our go-to-market strategy differs from that of our peers and we are unable to reliably determine what similar competitor products' selling prices are on a stand-alone basis.
When we are unable to establish the selling price of an element using VSOE or TPE, we use BESP in our allocation of consideration to various elements under the arrangement. The objective of BESP is to determine the price at which we would transact a sale if the product or service were sold on a stand-alone basis. The BESP is established based on internal and external factors, including pricing practices such as discounting, cost of products, the geographies in which we offer our products and services, and customer classes and distribution channels (e.g. distributor, value-added reseller and direct end-user). The determination of BESP is made through consultation with and approval by our management, taking into consideration our pricing model and go-to-market strategy.
For our non-software deliverables, we generally use BESP as our selling price. However, for our maintenance and support, training and consulting services, we generally use VSOE as our selling price. When we are unable to establish selling price using VSOE for our maintenance and support, training and consulting services, we use BESP in our allocation of arrangement consideration.
We regularly review VSOE and BESP data provided by actual transactions to update these estimates and the relative selling prices allocated to each element.
