Howard, You might actually check on your "facts" and other problems that really paint a distorted picture.
>>1) Informix is about 1/2 the size of what it was two years ago in
>> number of employees.
Current 10-K (just posted this week) indicates that there are 3,984 employees on 12/31/98. You imply that there were nearly 8,000 employees 2 years ago, but Informix never had much over 5,000 employees. According to the 10-K, in 1997, the layoffs were 670 people in June and September (I do not know if this included April and May layoffs, which included me, but that would have only been about 350 more people). In other words, this point is absolutely false.
>>2) The "growth" over the past few quarters is over horrible, re-
>>stated numbers from previous years.
However, those numbers indicate the true state of IFMX at the time, a fact that Phil and staff tried to hide from the world. This is a "non-fact" because it tries to paint a bad picture instead of an accurate picture.
>>3) The executive turnover over the past two years is nearly 100%.
Considering the bulk of the executives are in sales, marketing or in areas where the new CEO will want his pick (CFO, HR), it would be surprising not to see that kind of turnover considering the failure (if not outright fraud) of the previous people in many of those positions. Again, a distortion of the true situation. This was what was needed and expected; allowing any of the previous staff in sales, finance and marketing to remain would have been the bad sign.
>>6) IFMX remains a good niche player in data warehousing and
>>multimedia data management. Neither of these markets seem to be
>>growing. It's hard to see the company growing again, unless
>>suddenly the RDBMS market heats up.
You imply that the areas (data warehousing and multimedia) are not growing--WHAT IS YOUR BASIS for such a implication??? The studies I have seen indicate that these areas (especially data warehousing) are growing much faster than the RDBMS category as a whole. Although IFMX should not neglect the bread-and-butter of OLTP, focusing on data warehousing and ORDBMS/e-commerce as areas of future growth make a lot of sense.
>>7) IFMX key ERP partners like SAP and BAAN are bleeding badly. ERP
>>systems are a big reason why the RDBMS vendors sell software.
So what does that have to do with IFMX. Royalties from these companies have been nice, but that never really made that much difference to the total sales. Bleeding on profits (for those companies) is a lot different from not selling anything at all; IFMX gets paid according to how much they sell on IFMX engines, not their profits. Talk about the contribution of royalties to IFMX instead--how much has that varied over the last few years. Yes, it has dropped, but not for the reasons that you imply. (NOTE:Oracle financials has also taken its lumps during the same period, and even worse, but you fail to mention that).
>>8) Linux and NT have re-defined the pricing strategy for software.
>>The days of $1000 per user for RDBMS are long gone. MSFT charges
>>about $100 per user.
The only place there were $1000 per user prices even two years ago were places where there was little competition yet (data warehousing and ORDBMS). Anywhere else was already well below $1000 per seat, even on Unix (more like $700 or less even then).
Sure MSFT charges about $100 per user (for their lightweight server), but I can get Access for less. Further, they do not give basic service for enterprise level, even on their high end engines, comparable to other competitors, and they charge a lot more for that engine. Further, there is not a real comparable case. NT and SQL Server scare people considering them for critical jobs, so they use them for lightweight situations. This in not the area that IFMX is trying to compete in. By the way, the $100 per user is a myth for NT, because MS gets you numerous other ways--you have to have several other parts just to get SQL Server going that are not included in the $100 per user license. Compare that to IFMX on Linux, where MS probably will never be.
If you look at IFMX, they are trying to show two strengths: low cost of support (this has always been a strength of the SE engines, now "workgroup"), and very suitable for embedding in applications by low-to-mid-level VAR's; and industrial strength applications--OLTP and data warehousing, well beyond the area that MS is able to address.
MS is still well behind in many areas. They cannot do MPP or even clusters properly (who remembers the spectacular failure of the "Wolfpack" project compared to its stated goals).
>>9) Over the past two years (since the April 1 1997 debacle), IFMX
>>stock price has done nothing. It bumps up into the low 10's when
>>there is a rumor of an acquisition. Then it promptly drops to the
>>mid-single digits. You can make some money timing the stock this
>>way, but as a long term investment, forget it.
Your choice of periods is poor. It took 7 months for the true picture of the Phil White disaster/fraud to emerge (not until November 97 was the information truly available). At that time, the stock dropped into the 4-5 range, and although it got up to the 8's momentarily, it was not sustailable then. Now, 7-8 seems to be the low end of the trading range, and a whole lot better than late 97.
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Howard, we are interested in discussions here, but please really consider real facts and arguments, not silly distortions. |
