Crandell:
I didn't expect that asking some fundamental questions about a company's prospects would instill a siege mentality. If the best you can do is throw stones over the wall, fine. I will not waste the reader's time indulging in your game of personal assaults. It is unproductive. How many shares I still own (and I am still a shareholder) is truly irrelevant. What does matter is that two fundamental questions were placed on the table and the issues raised will either stand or fall own their own merit. It is on this basis that I post some of my findings and questions.
Now, ... calm down. I agree with you that legacy upgrading will be big business. However, the conclusion that this all points toward code migration may not be as true now as it was thought a year ago.
Historically, data systems were used mainly to automate routine procedures, like airline bookings, etc. But business soon realized that they were sitting on a gold mine: the data in their systems cold be exploited to increase competitiveness. Demands on increased database functionality drove the development of newer architectures, such as object-oriented DBs, new ways to process data, such as data mining, and new ways to store it, such as in data warehouses, and more recently, data marts.
With all this new capability available, business is rethinking how to upgrade. Demand for full-service, total systems solutions continues to grow across all vertical markets, as firms focus on core business opportunities for new ways to increase profitability. Government and commercial off-the-shelf software applications are growing in number. This gives CEOs and CIOs a choice: they can elect to migrate their existing legacy code to keep it maintainable, or they can chuck it and acquire all that modern technology has to offer. In the latter case, one concern will be how to translate their existing data to the new systems. That's *data* translation, not code translation.
There's lots of potential in this alternative path and currently there are over 100 vendors contributing technology to this market. Why? Because they figure that's where the *real* money is.
This leads to my motive for posting, although irrelevant to the issues at hand. As V.FRX price slowly fell, I questioned my initial assumptions about its potential, did some additional due diligence, and from that I sold shares. Now I'm contemplating on what to do with the rest. Any shareholder would simply call the IR department and ask for relevant info. I don't know why, but Pat Jones does not return my calls. So I am posting my concerns and questions here instead. Plain and simple.
We agree that investor emotion plays a large role in affecting stock price. I suppose, then, that's why emotions flare up on this forum as well. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward (with hope) to a pleasant rebuttal.
Regards,
Mark Jurik
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