This is a repost of something over on the GMGC board.. thought everyone might find it interesting...
JC
Mark,
This is one heck of a long message (combination of 5 messages), but I think you will find the reading very interesting. I will admit I stole this, from all places, the Qwest Yahoo board. The author, Momentumguy seems to be knowledgeable and attempts to tie in Qwest, Sun, GMGC, etc.
Take care,
Kurt
QWST validated big-time Part I
by: Momentumguy (26/M/Cody, WY)
7004 of 7123
Regardless of whether Clinton stays or goes, Joe has pulled a major coup with this deal. This is the perfect kind of deal to
make. It tells everyone, that QWST is "the" telco of the future. Not Worldcom. Not AT&T. Not Sprint. Not IXC. Not Level 3. Little 'ol QWST. Actually, this helps QWST far more than MSFT, IMO.
Quotes and analysis of the press release:"The Qwest service, built on the Microsoft® Windows NT® Server operating system
and Qwest's Internet Protocol(IP)-based fiber optic network, is designed for businesses of all sizes"
Great for businesses big and small. They're going for 100% of the market, not just 80%. They want to be synonomous with providing communications the way Cisco is with routers. The NT server angle is
important for Part II.
"To accelerate Qwest's time-to-market with business services, Microsoft will license a
broad range of its software to
Qwest. In addition, Microsoft will become a shareholder in Qwest by purchasing $200
million of Qwest's common stock
at $45 per share."
Let's see that's about 4.44 million shares out of 335 million for about a 1.4% ownership
stake. That's not enough to give
MSFT a vote on the BOD. Not significant enough to bother the anti-MSFT forces out
there. It won't matter whether
Windows or Java wins, QWST will be supplying the bullets for them to fight their war.
Brilliant.
"Beginning in the second quarter of 1999, Qwest will offer businesses a complete,
single-source high-speed service that is
scalable and secure."
Ding-ding-ding. Joe is making QWST a veritable Wal-mart of Internt/communications
services.
''By working with Microsoft and its distribution channels, we believe that we will be able
to accelerate by as much as 12
months our own plans for the delivery of Web-enabled applications.'' says Joe.
Let's see. LCI put QWST two years ahead of schedule. MSFT acceleartes the business
plan by another year. Translation.
The buzzer just sounded. Sorry, we no longer need any telco big brothers. We're almost
open for business and NOT FOR
SALE.
The nuts and bolts of this are MSFT gives $200 million to QWST. QWST gives MSFT
stock. QWST buys $200 million
in MSFT services. QWST makes millions(or billions) attracting new customers. MSFT
saves money on their
communications on a monthly basis.
Wow!! They leverage MSFT name into so much more. QWST just took MSFT to the
cleaners, IMO.
QWST Part II (GMGC)
by: Momentumguy (26/M/Cody, WY)
7009 of 7123
This is where things get really interesting. The next step of the QWST plan is in place.
Recall that MSFT made a $6 million dollar investment in General Magic earlier this year.
MSFT licensed "certain General
Magic technologies." In Part I, I talked about how the NT server was important for Part
II.
GMGC has a network operations center(NOC) that is 100% redundant, TCP/IP,
HTML, & HTTP compatible. Guess what
servers they're running. That's right. NT servers. That NOC can handle 100,000
simulataneous commands. Before the
QWST deal, they were targeting the 60,000,000 folks who use cell phones to sell them
Portico, the natural-language virtual
assistant.
The appropriate link is: generalmagic.com
Gee, wouldn't it be nice if they had another network operations center that was running
on NT servers that could serve
literally millions, perhaps billions, of voice commands?? What did MSFT contribute to
the deal today??
Steve Ballmer of MSFT says, "We believe this(QWST) strategic relationship
demonstrates that Windows NT Server meets
communications companies' needs for a stable, secure and scalable solution to deliver a
wide range of new network
services."
What could those "new" network services be??
More analysis in part III.
Mo'
P.S. BTW, this is totally cool.
Look at the language in the recent press release of GMGC/QWST: It goes like:
"General Magic Enters into Market Trial with Qwest
SUNNYVALE, Calif. (December 1, 1998) -- General Magic, Inc. (Nasdaq: GMGC)
a leading developer of integrated
telephony and Internet applications, today announced that Qwest Communications
International Inc. (Nasdaq: QWST) will
participate in a market trial for a future service offering based on General Magic's
Portico virtual assistant using the magicTalk
voice platform. Further service details will be announced in the future.
In June of this year, General Magic announced a three-year partnership with Qwest to
use its fiber optic network as a key part
of the telecommunications infrastructure of the Portico service. Qwest's planned
domestic network will serve more than 130
cities, which represent approximately 80 percent of the data and voice traffic originating
in the U.S. The 18,500-mile network
is schedule to be completed in the second quarter of 1999."
The key words are a "future service offering" and "QWST...fiber optic network as a
*key* part of the telecommunications
infrastructure for Portico." What is that future offering? I don't know. In a the past, I
speculated that it could be the
development of a Magic Phone. Now, I think it is much, much more.
QWST is already providing long distance to GMGC for their Portico service. Now in a
very vague and mysterious press
release, they're going to demo a new service "based" on Portico.
Portico is built on a Java program they call MagicTalk. It can be tuned and adjusted to
execute just about any order with a
verbal command.
Where's this going? I'm getting there, bear with me.
General Magic has a lot of goodies under it's umbrella.
First, it's MagicTalk which Portico was written in. For those of you who haven't demo'd
the product, you should go
listen to the Real Audio clips of the service. Portico will go get stock quotes, find news
articles (and read them to you), call
people for you, download your email (and read them to you), send faxes, send *.wav
emails, receive faxes(and read them
to you), do call forwarding, screen calls for you, and run your appointment book. It can
be programmed verbally or
through the web page.
Second, GMGC bought Web-on-Call earlier this year. It allows you to browse the
Internet with your voice from a
telephone. You don't have to know internet addresses, all you have to do is tell the
browser what you're looking for and it
finds it.
Third, and very important, is GMGC's agent technology. Agents are going to be a huge
part of the future of the internet
(in addition to voice). As it sounds, an agent will search automatically all over the web
for whatever you want. You tell
your agent, "Find me the lowest price for John Grisham's new book?" Your agent will
come back with "Amazon is
charging $11. Barnes and Noble is charging $10. Books-a-Million is charging $9." Then
you can tell your agent
(programmed with your address, credit card number, and shipping instructions) to buy
the book from BAMM. Or you tell
the agent to find the book and buy it automatically.
Appropriate link: generalmagic.com
Is it just me, or do GMGC's technology's sound awfully useful for QWST?
To tie it all up, look at some of the words of the MSFT agreement.
"Beginning in the second quarter of 1999, Qwest will offer businesses a complete,
single-source high-speed service that is
scalable and secure. Qwest's high-speed network will also support the development,
integration and maintenance of advanced
hosting services, including dedicated electronic commerce, Web application hosting,
streaming media, managed software
services and virtual private networking built on Microsoft platforms. Qwest will create a
new business unit focused on the
new markets starting in January 1999."
The only one GMGC hasn't talked about is VPN. These networks originate in very
large organizations. Companies that
would have lots of telecommunications needs. Recently, GMGC has been working on
breaching the VPN barrier.
Read the interview at: wwwiz.com
Do these new QWST/MSFT services sound incredibly interwound with GMGC's
existing relationships and technology? It's
too obvious. When MSFT allows their Hotmail users access to their accounts verbally,
what service will they choose? When
Intuit wants to switch their telecommunications company for bundled services, who will
they choose? When Dell wants to put
its VPN on a manageable and efficient network, who will they choose? When Cisco
wants to simplify its salemen's lives,
what service and network will they choose to handle all the business contacts and
appointments?
Bottom line. I think the rumors are true, QWST will buy out GMGC because it will be a
massive enabling technology for
QWST to attract and keep small and large customers alike. It would be a
technologically advanced service from the OC-192
fiber in the ground to the voice-user interface for E-commerce (or would that be
V-commerce?) where agents can buy and sell
for your customers & between your customers.
If my deductions and facts are straight, then this would be one helluva integration in
technology. QWST would become a
massive community of businesses and customers providing value-added services that no
other telecommunciations company
could touch or dream of. QWST would become more important than MSFT or DELL
or CSCO.
I tip my hat to Joe Nacchio because this is an incredible plan to *nuke* the industry,
IMO. |
