Despite the statements in the revised manual that baskets should be avoided re Godzillas, I am personally not convinced that it would be a mistake to buy ITWO, ARBA and CMRC.
I haven't studied the companies closely, but I would be very surprised to learn that all three aren't gorilla candidates. My impression is none of them are in Godzilla games.
Exactly. We have mixed games going on here and I don't think we can say they are all in competition with each other. In fact, it appears to be a lot of 'niche' games going on. I have taken the approach of buying a small basket of some of the niche players that seem to make 'sense' to me on paper. i2, Ariba and ICGE make 'sense' on paper to me at this point, but there are a few others I am studying at the moment that make 'sense' as well. Hard for me to say they are all in direct competition with each other for the same exact business. Ariba and Commerce One certainly are. Of course, as I am studying them, their prices have doubled or tripled. That doesn't bother me yet because we're on the front edge of this wave.
i2, Siebel, Oracle, IBM, SAP, PSFT, etc..., have all entered the B2B space as well, but it is not their 'main' business. i2 has made the most telegraphed transition of working into this space, yet it is only a portion of their business. It's early in the game. We have to start to look at them now as double edged, or triple edged or whatever swords. You all know that I have been struggling with where to discuss them. I don't want to interrupt the flow of Qualcomm, Gemstar, JDSU, Cisco or others on the G&K thread with discussion of the B2B portion of Oracle or i2 or IBM - so I think it fits here. Reality is, I think a lot of B2B will be done by many companies. Look at Cisco and Intel - experts in B2B dealings over the Internet. What about Qualcomm?
Being that mail delivery takes a little longer on this side of the pond, I just received my December issue of Red Herring on Friday and have 404 pages to wade through today.
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