Michelle -
Take a look at Message 5847353
This is an interesting and important topic for Dell investors. I am not speaking in a vacuum here, I know several senior Dell executives very well although I can not always share everything we discuss. Much of the important information is in the article in my post to Drew, much of it from MSD himself.
As far as who is doing what with MSFT on SQL, be very cautious. The lead players at MSFT (Vaskovitch, Flessner, Ewell) are and have been VERY close to CPQ from a technology standpoint for a long time. Dell is not on the inside track there, although I agree they will be a beneficiary as will the other lead players.
And check out who has the overwhelming share of Peoplesoft, Oracle, Siebel, SAP, Baan installations on NT - CPQ, not Dell. This area is a good growth opportunity for Dell but they are in an uphill battle against an established competitor who built those relationships with investment, joint engineering, and joint marketing. That's why CPQ has 40, 50 and 60% shares of the NT business with those folks.
Dell management is the best in the business. They will not carry a sack of rocks uphill when they can go downhill. I am not bashing Dell, I'm trying to give those on this thread some idea of the market forces that Dell management evaluates in making investment and business direction decisions. |
