Taxman, the article about Microsoft earnings to be released Tues.:
While most analysts expect Microsoft to meet or slightly exceed those estimates, many say the Redmond, Washington-based software maker is facing the same challenge as rivals Computer Associates International Inc. and BMC Software Inc.: Trying to boost sales though businesses are slowing software purchases.
Boy, I think that's apples and oranges. CA and BMCS, it came out in the stories, are 50% dependent on the mainframe, or IBM's S390. That's a really different market from Microsoft's, just as Intel or Sun based servers' markets are different from the 390 hardware market. 390 was affected by Y2K, the others weren't, for example. Another major factor that came to light re CA and BMCS is that IBM is releasing their newest S390 product, the G7 this fall. When one of these is upcoming (they happen about every 2 years) they freeze the market, as people know they can get perhaps 30 - 40% more processing power for about the same price as the current product. So they wait on purchases of all mainframe and related products' sales. Finally, a post was made to SI by a senior sounding guy that knows the mainframe market. His opinion was that the 3rd party SW vendors were price gouging, and that IBM was going to do something about it by restructuring the HW and SW with the new G7. That would probably also slow the 3rd party companies' businesses.
Murph and the others are really stretching, IMO, trying to compare these companies to Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft could have another whole list of reasons to disappoint, but I hope not.
Tony |
