I am still here. I have been in read-only mode for a while on this thread. Being the resident Octel basher as I am (hey, it's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it), I have certainly been interested in the recent movement of OCTL. It appears that the market has been kind to many of the VM providers. ACVC, BSN, and CGRM are all up over the last few weeks (CGRM up despite bad quarter, probably due to restructuring news).
I still am an Octel bear. Why?
1) After much fanfare 2 years ago, Octel has been mum on IMA. My guess is the product is in trouble.
2) Given item 1, Sierra is Octel's only play in the SP market (the fastest growing VM market segment). Sierra is 386 PC with proprietary HW and OS. It has very limited life and virtually no expansion possibilities. SP represents 50% of Octel's business. Unless they move fast with IMA, they will see major erosion in market share over the next 1-2 years. Sierra is not competetive in performance/features/capacity with the other large VM systems.
That being said, I have no position in Octel at this time. However, I am happy for all on this thread who do, and are making some money. Q3 and Q4 are generaly good to VM companies. Unless Octel slips, you should do OK.
With all of the empty press releases flowing form Octel lately, (i.e. toutiung the ability to send messages to a distribution list as state-of-the-art), I can't help but wonder what is going on over there. Also, the word is that they are having a tough time keeping employees these days. |
