I think tonight should be viewed as a defining moment in the transition between the computing era and the evolution of the communications era. How stark could the comparisons be?
IBM, citing its AS400s, 390s and PCs, is and will feel Y2K pressures for the next two quarters. Its other lines are doing pretty good, but IBM still has a huge amount of business in legacy areas (which btw will continue to grow quite well, but is obviously exposed to discretionary dollar syndrome - unlike Ecommerce). Gee, lets see, two-tier, one-tier, large scale enterprise systems and apps are seeing a slowdown and are being affected by legacy COBOL installations and diversion of IT dollars to remediation. SAP reports results even below pre-warning announcements and two days ago, I spoke to a big 4 SI who stated SAP jobs are dead in the water. Nobody is buying anything. DUHHHH!
AOL and CNXT on the other hand, citing incredible subscriber and multi-channel demand (AOL), translating into incredible infrastructure demand (CNXT) report blowout numbers with nary a word of Y2K. Same with YHOO, PMCS, AMCC, etc.
IBM should get clocked and may take the rest of the Street with it. But to me, there is no clearer example of the difference between the 'old world' (with apologies to John Chambers) and the 'new world'.
Bulldozer |
