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Technology Stocks : FirstWave Technologies (FSTW) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter V who wrote (1431)	7/21/1999 3:34:00 PM
From: Bob Trocchi	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9677

Peter V... Why I think FSTW is a good long term hold: First my disclosure, I am long FSTW so I, like many others, try and look to the bright side. My reasoning goes as follows. First my assumption is that NetGain is a good product, needs exposure and distribution. The MSFT deal begins to give some higher level exposure. Clearly it needs a lot more but it is a start. Distribution is however changing. The Internet is beginning to change the way SW is distributed. I firmly believe that many companies will not purchase a lot of applications and install them in-house. Rather as bandwidth become a commodity, applications will be housed at ASP?s and used by companies over the NET. In today?s WSJ, on the front page and for those who have the Interactive edition, there is a good story (IMO) about the future direction of the SW industry. Software Becomes An Online Service, Rattling Industry interactive.wsj.com In a short summary, the article talks about the rapidly rising ASP?s ( Application Service Providers) and how their role is changing the rules of the game for the SW industry. If anyone wants a copy of the article, PM me and I will send it to you in a week or so as I am going away for about a week and will not have access to the Internet. I believe it to be an excellent article however I know I am biased as I have been thinking this way for quite some time. FSTW?s NetGain application, can be ?housed? in a server and rented or leased to users. The benefits are that the user does not have to ?learn? about the installation and then continue to update the SW as changes come in. For FSTW, there are much fewer copies of the SW in the field ( some number of ASP?s) and all should be ?current? making the task of maintenance much less difficult, saving them money. I believe that FSTW?s biggest task will be to get this SW into the hands of ASP?s and not spend a lot of time selling individual copies to individual companies unless it is a major sale and one which give significant exposure. Sell to the ASP?s and let them sell to the countless small end users or some of the really big accounts they serve. I also think it will be a long term deal. I also believe that if the deal with MSFT caused such a big spike, who knows when the next one will take place. I want to be in the market when it happens and not on the sidelines. When the stock was at 1 5/8 or whatever it was, I did not panic so why panic now. I am away from the Internet to much to watch real time events or many times even daily. I thus will just hold and wait and watch for this next trend to establish itself and be content to let my long term core holdings keep me afloat. Just my two cents. Bob T.