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Technology Stocks : Network Associates (NET) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Conan who wrote (5647)	8/10/1999 1:36:00 PM
From: MoonFather	Respond to of 6021

Conan: If you look closely at the netmanagement market, there are loads of new developements that require performance monitoring and tuning: ISP Service level agreements, QoS, Application response time, WBEM, DEN. IMHO this is a big new opportunity for NETA's Sniffer range of products, and if I remember correctly they put out a Sniffer press release a while ago stressing exactly those things. So Sniffer could be one of the growing areas - relatively short term.

To: Conan who wrote (5647)	8/10/1999 7:02:00 PM
From: Elephant	Respond to of 6021

Re: NETA at a crossroads The big question is where will growth in 2000 come from? Not in AV if your analysis is correct. Not in firewall if your analysis is correct. Not in helpdesk or Sniffer tools either. Conclusion: The CyberCop line must perform in order to keep the company going and to pump the stock price back up. Given the right product direction, this mgmt team knows how to go from being the underdog to being top dog. People are not going to stop buying firewalls, especially as performance demands grow and bandwidth increases. Each time they do, NETA has an opportunity to win the sale, and simultaneously to upsell to the entire NetTools package. If the company sells the way they used to sell, the sales force will be very empowered to discount, to promise new features, etc., in order to undercut or otherwise beat the competition. In firewalls, the company is in a position it knows well and understands how to win. Execution is the key now. I like the previous comments about the sniffer line being more and more valuable as more and more issues like QOS become important. If the product team has its head screwed on right, this line is also correctly poised. CyberCop has great potential, but there need to be a rash of new break-ins before it can be the lead seller in a sales transaction. For now it is probably there only to ensure that the company's offerings are complete. In summary, I have no problem finding out where the growth is coming from, although I don't think it's coming from antivirus any more. I just wish that management would share its thoughts with the outside world a bit more often. It seems to me that they are in a bit of a funk and are licking their wounds after the R&D write-down thing and the bloated channel thing. To NETA management: come on guys, get over it will ya! Don't you know that the rest of the world looks upon you as the best possible source of information about how the company's prospects are? They got used to you describing how the company was being positioned to lead the industry in integrated security and network management offerings. They still believe it, but when you yourselves won't tell the story any more, they have trouble buying in. Please come out of your holes and start sharing the story! -E