[Reply to Rainier: Re PERLF technical questions clarification] The technical questions centered around the ability to support multiple market niches, and therefore a broader base of potential customers. If your product is not compatible with your existing network, or it's development/configuration tools require use of an application development tool your staff does not expertise in, it's much harder sale, unless it's a product they need and none of your competitors have compatible products either.
Specifically, can PERLF's RAS product operate in a Novell or Win NT LAN/WAN environment? DecNet? What operating systems can their software used for development/tailoring configuring/systems administration run on?
Not only Win NT/Win95 but AIX, Sun/Solaris, Dec, SCO UNIX, etc.
Again, you want their products to be compatible with several operating environments other just OS/400.
If user's can write their own device drivers to customize/integrate the product, what development languages can be used. Anything that can create DLL's (such as C, C++, Visual Basic), Java? Or are users stuck with having to use time consuming tools like assembler, or off the wall stuff that nobody on staff is likely to know, such as TCL.
Again, the principle is that you want to make sure they are compatible
with several operating environments, that at least some of those represent emerging rather than receeding technologies, both to make sure they can sell to more than a couple niches, and as a sort of "market reality check" on their management.
Even a serious development program may be OK. For example, before version 4, Win NT was not really ready for prime time (sorry Bill G)
So if they are now porting to Win NT version 4, it shows they are less likely to be closed out of the market.
Not that I'm that enamored with MSFT products (I actually hate a lot of them), but an increasing segment of the market is being swayed by the Windows monster. For example, using Windows (3.1, 95, 97, NT, whatever) really does not add much to a pharmacy system. But over the last several years, several vendors have had to do extensive re-writes of their systems, not to add needed features such as supporting pharmacist interventions, integrating lab values, etc. but so they could say "MSFT Windows". Lots of IS departments are standardizing along those lines - for better or worse.
Hope all this helps. And actually, having put it in general terms, this should help in evaluating other Information Systems related companies, such as SOCR. Scott |
