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Technology Stocks : Exodus Communications, Inc. (EXDS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Apollo who wrote (1620)	12/8/1999 2:33:00 PM
From: William F. Wager, Jr.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3664

Snasraway--do you work for Barron's? Just kidding. Have you visited the Exodus website for answers to your questions? --Bill

To: Apollo who wrote (1620)	12/8/1999 4:15:00 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3664

Stan, I pointed out EXDS to the G & K thread last summer as a potential "king" more than a gorilla. I don't recall getting much interest, now that the stock has doubled since then, maybe that will change<g> But to your questions, my general understanding is that there would not be any "intellectual property rights" or enabling software or hardware issues involved (if there are hopefully someone can correct me on this). There is certainly nothing to stop Intel, ATT or even local RBOC's from trying to emulate EXDS' web hosting business. So my own opinion is that it would conform more to a "king" in the sector. First to market, experience in execution, etc. I keep a keen eye on the competitive landscape for that reason. I think EXDS has some acquisitions up their sleeve for future development of "value added" services, so it will be interesting to see how that evolves... bp

To: Apollo who wrote (1620)	12/8/1999 4:18:00 PM
From: Rupert	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3664

RE: "Does Exds have any proprietary intellectual property rights in the way of enabling hardware or software, for its IDCs or for its managed services? In other words, what prevents some competitor from simply duplicating everything EXDS does. EXDS is apparently the leader in its segment because of hustle and vision, and first mover gains. But without some special property or enabling software/hardware, it would seem susceptible to being outdone by someone bigger and equally committed." This is a commonly held belief among some tech investors that, IMHO, is highly misguided. In fact if you had followed this notion strictly over the last five years and avoided service-oriented companies with no or few proprietary intellectual property rights you would have missed out on some absolutely spectacular gains in US equities. YHOO comes to mind. So does AMZN. Not to mention AOL. And so on. Look at all the second tier web portals that have failed to come anywhere close to matching YHOO's service and traffic count despite spending millions of dollars in the process. What's worse, you may have mistakenly invested in some companies, such as PCLN, in the hope that their patent(s) would guarantee their market share. Or even worse, you may have got involved in the intellectual-property-and-patent-laiden small cap bio-tech sector in which individual investors like us frequently lose their shirts (i.e. VISX yesterday) taking unacceptable risks on proprietary tech the benefits of which can disappear with one clunk of the judge's gavel. There are a number of well-heeled competitors interested in the web hosting and traffic co-lo space busy building data centers (GBLX "global centers", QWST "cybercenters", INTC, etc) and a raft of second tier players being successful in specialty market niches (ISLD, MFNX, USIX, etc). But EXDS is still, to use the technical term, kicking butt. With the growth of the Net still _the_ key trend driving the technology sector, I simply wouldn't sweat the competition in this case. Now if I were talking about the new networking equipment stocks, ATON, EXTR, FDRY, SCMR, etc, (many of which are heavily reliant on proprietary technology) I'd be much more paranoid about the competitive threats...