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To: Bill Harmond who wrote (122683)	4/3/2001 2:13:02 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

I will tell you what Bill, since I already devoted time to this topic in detail some weeks back while you made no contribution (as usual) why not entertain us and explain why it IS mission critical. And then explain why the announced plummeting sales today.

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (122683)	4/3/2001 2:22:54 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

"This is an unmitigated disaster," says Mark Verbeck, an analyst at Epoch Partners in San Francisco. "The economy hasn't fallen off the tracks to this degree. This seems to indicate that there are big problems at Ariba." (His firm hasn't done underwriting for Ariba.) Some of those problems, analysts are now saying, may stem from the lightning-fast spread of the kind of software that Ariba makes. In 2000, procurement software, which helps companies buy every day supplies such as office products over the Internet, was the candy that every corporate IT department wanted. Now, it seems, demand for that kind of software just isn't there. "It's not the economy, it's the sector they were playing in," says Jon Ekoniak, an analyst at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. "This was a sector that was so robust in 2000, I think they saturated the market for the near term. Procurement is still the critical first step for an e-commerce strategy, and companies will continue to buy this kind of software, but not at the pace they were six months ago." Bob Calderoni, Ariba's CFO, said demand for software that lets companies run electronic exchanges or marketplaces over the Internet, basically disappeared in 2001, after accounting for nearly half of Ariba's revenue during early and mid-2000. "That [exchange] business now has completely reversed," Calderoni said during a conference call with financial analysts. "It's not down to zero, but we're near zero." At another point during the call, he said, "We don't think that will show a recovery." In other words, Ariba, the erstwhile king of B2B software and one of the leading proponents of electronic Internet exchanges, now says that business is dead. Add to that the demise of Ariba's plans to buy Agile Software, and you've got serious questions about Ariba's viability over the long run. Ditto for its main competitor, Commerce One (CMRC:Nasdaq - news). "I think the company's in deep trouble," says Melissa Eisenstat, an analyst with CIBC World Markets who rates the company a buy. "I don't think procurement in and of itself is a stand-alone application. I would say that the likelihood that both Commerce One and Ariba being stand-alone companies for the long-term is in question." thestreet.com