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SOURCE: The Wall Street Transcript
The Wall Street Transcript publishes Outlook for eBusiness Report in Robertson Stephens Tech 2000 Conference Issue
NEW YORK, March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- 21 leading analysts and 33 Technology Services CEOs examine the Technology sector in the latest issue of The Wall Street Transcript (212/952-7433) or twst.com
In a vital review of this sector for investors and industry professionals, this valuable 174-page Special Robertson Stephens Tech 2000 Conference Issue features:
1) Outlook for eBusiness - In an in-depth Analyst Interview (3,400 words) Marshall Senk, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst sector, examines emerging business in the .com world, the major companies in these sectors, niche sectors and shares his stock recommendations
Senk states: ``We view the space as the companies that provide software and services to help companies deploy, manage, build and roll out new Web-based or Internet-based applications. The sector has just been very, very strong for the past 12 months. The returns have been very solid and the primary driver behind it has been just a rush to the Web on the part of businesses on a global basis. We're seeing huge demand, not only from new emerging businesses in the .com world, but more importantly, we're starting to see very strong demand now out of the traditional old economy companies as well.'
Senk covers, ``Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL - news), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) and i2 (Nasdaq: ITWO - news). Oracle and Microsoft act as the foundation companies, where every one of these applications requires a database behind it and that, I think, has been driving the strength of Oracle's results and the stock price.' As for i2, they ``have a very strong presence in the business-to-business market and are leveraging that to launch new applications as well.'
Senk states, ``A generation of new companies is emerging that have had a major impact very early on in the cycle. So we are seeing companies like BroadVision (Nasdaq: BVSN - news) in the business-to-consumer space with their electronic commerce applications.' He continues: ``Primus Knowledge Solutions (Nasdaq: PKSI - news) is focused on customer service over the Internet. SilverStream Software (Nasdaq: SSSW - news) is in the application server space. Vitria (Nasdaq: VITR - news) is in integration, and also Mercator Software (Nasdaq: MCTR - news). So really, a whole new generation of companies have emerged to help solve these problems.'
Senk remarks ``Which ones do I think have the best intersection of huge market opportunity and great management? Certainly folks like E.piphany (Nasdaq: EPNY - news); I think investors have anointed BroadVision clearly with that kind of a role. I think Interwoven and Keynote are two more. I think there are others as well, but those are some pretty obvious ones. I think Ondisplay (Nasdaq: ONDS - news) also would fit into that bucket.'
Senk offers an overview of Ondisplay, ``I sort of think of it as platform or application software that helps businesses launch electronic marketplaces.'
Keynote has a very interesting service,`` states Senk, 'which basically monitors performance of various Web sites all around the world. Companies then subscribe to that service and Keynote (Nasdaq: KEYN - news) gives them, depending on the level of service they get, real time and very up-to-date detailed analysis of how their Web site is performing.``
Senk declares, ``Businesses rushed very quickly to slap things up to get on the Internet and now are very quickly trying to build out the infrastructure behind it to make it really work and make it a viable new channel for sales and marketing. And Interwoven (Nasdaq: IWOV - news) is the kind of infrastructure that lets that happen.'
Senk remarks, ``E.piphany is really all about how to leverage the Internet to do more effective marketing, and there are two problems that exist. One is information about customers contained in multiple systems, and they help you aggregate that information out of all these different systems so you can have a single view of the customer.
A lot of companies went out very quickly and said, we put up a Web site, we have an e-mail address on it, and now we're getting 50,000 e-mails a day,`` observes Senk. 'How do we process those? And that's why you saw a huge acceleration from a company like Kana (Nasdaq: KANA - news) in the business of doing e-mail handling and routing.`` Then 'they went out and spent a lot of money to acquire Silknet (Nasdaq: SILK - news) so they could begin to build out a much broader solution in the service space.``
Senk states, ``Siebel (Nasdaq: SEBL - news) likewise is very, very strong in the sales force automation space and in the customer service space. They are doing several Web initiatives going on right now to really become more of a force in that area.'
We like all the ones I mentioned,`` Senk says of his recommended stocks. 'Buy is the highest rating we're using right now. E.piphany we really do like a lot. Interwoven we like a lot. Keynote we like a lot. I think Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT - news), in the management space, which we haven't talked about, has a lot of potential, and we like Siebel a lot also.``
For investors the want to get into the business to business sector, Senk states, ``You can do it with Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA - news). You can do it with Commerce One (Nasdaq: CMRC - news). You can do it with Chemdex (Nasdaq: CMDX - news), VerticalNet (Nasdaq: VERT - news), and a few others, but the cleanest and easiest way to do it is to buy the infrastructure companies -- what I think of as the arms dealers for this market.'
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