Michael, my optimism comes from integrating all the thing s I have read recently with past personal experiences. If you have read the data mining review that came out of Data Management Review you may recall that Mike Manicozzi made an interesting comment that appears to have been overlooked by some. In the section titled deliverables, he commented on the product's ease of use and it's impact to user-initiated exploration of the call data base, and then added, "..and subsequently will aid in process improvements for all of our functional areas." How many sites and functional areas would you guess IBM has? There's an IBM PM that contributes to this thread...I'll bet he could tell us. Moreover, IBM also provides services to its customers. Do you think they might have customers with similar needs.
On another front, Softworks releases have told us three things:
1) They've improved their SSTproducts, 2) They're now going after
service contracts in that field, and 3) they've now made $750k inroad into that field. These contracts are with two major "communications" firms. If you're dealing with major entities, the first thing you're do is a needs assessment, propose a solution, and build the prototype. $750k should cover approximately 3 heads (fully burdened, plus material] for approximately 10 months, just about time enough to do all of the above. If done properly, and these are the same companies we've heard the rumours about, the production phase that would follow would run well into $M's. Speculation.....perhaps, but I believe that plays well with what we've been seeing. Besides, if I'm only half
right, I'm not greedy I could live 4.50 - 5.00 price.
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