Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Thomas Mercer-Hursh who wrote (43383)	6/11/2001 12:24:14 PM
From: Dennis Nicks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

<The real differentiation will come in development tools and bolt-ons.> Indeed... For some comparison, one can look at SQL as a standard and how Oracle managed to become the gorilla in that market. So, I think there is room for an app server (or whatever the technology morphs into) gorilla. I agree that development tools and "bolt-ons" will be an integral part in making the gorilla. As for BEA, their tool strategy seems to be embedded in Webgain (of which they own a sizable portion). IBM has their tools strategy wrapped up with their Visual Age products and Sun with their Forte products. IBM has been a little behind the ball on implementing J2EE compliance because they are arguing with Sun over them. Sun has done little to really integrate their patchwork tools solution from their acquisitions into iPlanet. The BEA/Webgain solution seems to be moving along nicely. I'm anxiously waiting to see how the Webgain IPO is received. My favorite app server/tools play is Borland (BORL) (full disclosure..I currently own BORL) who owns a large portion of the Java developer tools market and has an app server that is competitive, but has essentially no real market share. What I really like about Borland's strategy is that their JBuilder java tool has good support for deploying EJBs on both BEA's Weblogic and IBM's Websphere. The idea of writing your ejbs with one tool and easily deploying them on either Weblogic or Websphere (or Borland's application server) has been successful in selling JBuilder. Management hopes that with this capability, they may be able to win over app server customers through convenience and pricing. Borland has a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but it seems they may finally have the combination of resources, management and products to succeed in the next wave of the software development and deployment phase. Dennis