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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LLCF who wrote (4865)	8/14/1999 1:04:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

David, I had planned to hold off on discussing the IBM/Siebel news for my month-end front office report. But since you asked ... So what's the feeling on SEBL's IBM deal... does that bridge the chasm for them??? Front office product is well past the chasm. It's been very, very difficult to determine whether or not the tornado is in progress, but Geoff Moore (the same guy who at one time said the CDMA market is not a gorilla game), says that all of Silicon Valley has proclaimed Siebel the gorilla. Since all gorillas come from tornados, and noting that software is Moore's strength, it might be true that the tornado is in progress. Now some specific comments about the IBM news. For those who haven't seen the news, IBM Global Systems is a major integrator with a division dedicated to integrating customer relationship management (CRM) software. IBM also has their own CRM software built around their acquisition a couple years ago of Software Artistry. The news this week is that IBM has enterred into an agreement to promote Siebel Systems product. This follows the news of about two months ago that Siebel has out-of-the-box integration with IBM's DB2 database. The agreement says a lot about Siebel's growing value chain, now that their value chain includes a competitor who apparently isn't satisfied with being limited to integrating their own product line. In my book, the news is another great though not definitive step for Siebel in their continued qwest for being crowned the ultimate gorilla. For the record, the reason you don't find me declaring Siebel being the gorilla is because I don't think the coronation should take place until the encroaching ERP players shakes out. In Moore's book he talks about not eliminating a chimp until it no longer has any possibility of becoming a gorilla. I think it's difficult to assume that none of the ERP players with their huge base of customers have no possibility of becoming a front office gorilla. Aren't ya sorry you asked?!!!!!!!!! --Mike Buckley