Regarding revenues, I think we are all scratching our heads trying to figure this out. I am sure the company would be willing to explain their cost structure if you asked...but I wish an analyst would get on this.
Surely this deal has to be very significant revenue wise. My question would be the timing of it. They have 'concluded' their agreement so presumably it wouldn't be hard to find out how extensive the deal is, and whether revenues will be starting soon (or whether they already have). I would have to say that this must be their most exciting announcement yet. The old bowling pin strategy, get the headpin and the others will follow. The wording was very nice...HP evaluated the situation and 'determined' that Livelink etc. would do what they needed to integrate their documents and workflow, working well with legacy platforms and documents as well as newer ones. That should impress a lot of companies who have a jumble of computers, projects, and documents both old and new. HP is very conservative...the opposite of 'flashy'!!
With HP, Siemens, Ford, Bell Canada, Sony, Qualcomm, and large oil, pharmaceutical, & publishing companies all opting for Open Text solutions, does it not seem possible that other companies both large and small will go with Livelink as well? Any medium to large sized company with projects, engineers, etc. will be looking at this product now & as I said before it is nice that it does not compete with Netscape entirely, but can complement it.
Jesse Berst of ZDNet Anchor Desk said the intranet explosion was just hype, that no companies would make that much from it in 1997. Fine, whatever, so the real earnings will start to ramp up in 1998. But it seems to me that Jesse has missed the boat. Little OTEXF should have some pretty nice sales numbers by mid-1997... |
