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

To: erickerickson who wrote (27985)	7/15/2000 9:43:38 AM
From: erickerickson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

EricksList tentative resolution: I'm writing to myself a lot here <G>. The piteous pleas for continuing my lists is heartwarming <G>. I've tentatively decided to send my lists up to my personal web site (I've reserved the domain name etc, but haven't actually put any pages up there yet). It'll be some time before I'm able to get it all together. It is summer after all, and I have this thing called a "life". In the meantime, I'll be happy to e-mail the two previous (quartly) lists do the guy who kindly volunteered handle it if he is still willing. We'll work out whether he is or not by PM and I'll let him post how he wants it done. What you would need to do is save the e-mail attachment to some file on your local disk, and use the "File>>open" feature of your browser to open the file from the disk. Your e-mail package may do this automatically for you. Then, if you're on-line, you can follow the links etc. As soon as we've worked out the mechanism for all this, I'll post updated instructions over on the lists thread. I'll get to my web-site real soon now <G>. Erick

To: erickerickson who wrote (27985)	7/15/2000 2:18:37 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Respond to of 54805

In the XML world, the fights will be over the DTDs. There will be/are DTDs for specific purposes that "industry groups" will bless as the standard for that industry or industry segment. And don't expect this to settle down easily. The latest ComputerWorld has an article about a newly created XML ISO 15022 committee which is seeking some unification in standards for financial applications since there are now at least 5 "standards" -- FixML, FpMl, FinXML, XBRL, and ebXML -- each with its backers. Each has been developed for a particular community, but they overlap, in non-compatible ways, with respect to content.

To: erickerickson who wrote (27985)	7/15/2000 3:14:39 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

Thanks erick, for this well thought out post. First of all, I should say that I don't ordinarily read this thread - I actually started last week or so. The title of the thread is G&K portfolio candidates and I took this literally, since I also am interested in any emerging G or K. I am not interested in current G&K's like I2, just because I am looking for a more extreme risk vs. reward scenario. Suffice it to say that I don't think DTD's represent the value proposition in b2bi, at least in their purest form. They just aren't that tough to do. I would be more interested in WebMethods if you could demonstrate that they have an application that "the herd" wants. One of the defining characteristics for a true Gorilla is that there is a perceived penalty for customers adopting a different solution. That penalty may be expense, incompatibility with other organizations that you must deal with, etc. What you've described is more a company that looks to be executing very well, but without the "lock" a Gorilla needs. Thus, at most, a King. They may be the only game in town, or the biggest player etc, but without a true lock, they aren't a Gorilla (IMO). I do think webmethods is the b2bi app that the herd wants - I think their mktg is exceptional and they have created a perception that webm needs to be on both sides of the chain in order to ensure these transactions get through. Since their customer base is already Ariba, C1, i2i, Fedex and literally everybody else, thats my rationale. But can I demonstrate this perception that I have - no, not really. I already posted that I am entrenched in the webm competition, primarily startup companies and these guys have declared webm the winner. I guess the only way to know for sure is to look at the stock price in December or January (not next month, when the lockup expires). Someone posted to me last week that they didn't know of any oem deals in the industry - here is one, netfish and jd edwards, netfish.com Anyway I've said about all I can on webm, thats the good thing about the mkts vs engineering (which is my line of work) - the mkt will tell me if I'm right or wrong. There are plenty of other software plays I like and have liked for a while, sebl, beas etc. I am cooling to I2 a little because I think their proprietary architecture is in jeopardy.