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Strategies & Market Trends : Bowling Alleys and Tornadoes: G&K Hunting Grounds -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (11)	7/13/1999 8:10:00 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 153

John, Thanks for the out-of-the-box thinking about implications of the tornado. I think there is a tendency to think all tornados are wonderful in that they produce long-term gorillas, when that's really not the case. You and I, at the least, are aware of that. Does Seibel face competition not from the likes Vantive or Clarify, but from an invader from outside its niche? Yes. The known invaders from the outside are IBM, Microsoft and all the ERP players. To a lesser extent, even Lucent recently became a competitor of sorts. They bought a front office company to leverage the potential call center business with existing customers. But I don't think increased competition will result in commoditization such as happened with hard drives and happens more easily with hardware than software. The increased competition is expected to happen because the size of the market and profits are expected to be so huge that competition is inevitable. In fact, the increased competition from the big boys helps validate the market opportunity. Don't forget that the front office space is expected to be much larger than the ERP space. --Mike Buckley

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (11)	7/14/1999 12:56:00 AM
From: HeyRainier	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 153

My experience from this whole QCOM/ERICY "standards battle" teaches me that it's important to focus on markets where such battles even exist, at least to the point where there are only two viable alternatives. Based on the Gorilla Game framework, it's just the beginning for long term investment profits when the victor is named. Since the settlement of the dispute on 3/25, had one bought QCOM at $49.22, you still would have come out ahead by nearly tripling your money, based on today's close. So is anyone monitoring a current battle to establish a dominant and fundamental standard, and one with only 2 or 3 viable competitive offerings? Those are the ones I would like to keep my eye on. --Rainier