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

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (44949)	7/26/2001 2:31:46 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

To this day, I don't have the slightest idea about how Siebel's competitors' products compare to Siebel's products. And I don't care. Really. Truly. Feature to feature, perhaps, but that doesn't mean that one can look at Siebel in isolation and decide whether or not it is a gorilla. And, even at that isn't one betting in the dark to some extent unless one has some understanding of the product? Could any of us invest in QCOM based on "growth, marketshare, resources, financial health and stock valuation" without understanding the difference their intellectual property makes and what its role will be in future markets?

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (44949)	7/26/2001 2:39:06 PM
From: EnricoPalazzo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

BEA the King? I'll openly admit that I don't know a whole lot about BEA's market, although I've tried to follow the recent discussion on the two threads. But from what I can tell, BEA seems like a textbook King. They have, by many accounts (not all) a 2X market share advantage over their closest rival (websphere). I don't see any proprietary control over an open architecture. I do see an important place in an open architecture, the open architecture being J2EE. And I think that it's plausible that BEA would be able to leverage their major position in the J2EE appserver market into a Gorilla role in the e-business architecture. I do not, however, think that they've already become the Gorilla. It is not even a foregone conclusion that the "e-business architecture" (whatever that ends up meaning) will have a Gorilla. If Sun's anti-lock-in jihad wins out, there will be, IMO, either no Gorilla or Sun as a Gorilla--either of which would be fine by Sun, because both eventualities involve a neutered "Beast of Redmond". I do see switching costs in the appserver market, but there are switching costs in almost every high-tech market. It's expensive to move your system from Sun's to HP's, but I don't think that anyone would call Sun or HP a Gorilla. I would also note, BTW, that iPlanet will likely gain steam in the future. Sun is one of the most successful, intelligent and tenacious high-tech businesses ever. And not for nothing, but they put the J, the 2, and both E's in J2EE. If they've learned anything from their rival to the north, it's how to leverage their position as the driver (if not, technically, the owner) of the standard to help out their product. I'm very curious as to how the Sun/BEAS relationship turns out. Especially what with this INTC announcement, it's possible that Sun/BEAS will deteriorate in the same way that IBM/MSFT did. Of course, BEAS has closer ties to Sun that MSFT ever did to IBM. It's possible that BEAS will be the Zeus to Sun's Cronus, but it's also possible that Sun will simply crush BEA. Had IBM not been hamstrung by an anti-trust suit, they would have been far more likely to destroy Microsoft, and Sun has no such constraint as of now. I do believe, however, that BEA is an impressive business, and it's very possible that their performance will match that of other Kings of old (Sun, EMC, ORCL). From what little I know about Coleman, he seems solid. I also think that the INTC announcement was more important than some are making it out to be (the INTC's spokesman said that IA64/BEA would be "an absolute killer". Those are fairly strong words).

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (44949)	7/27/2001 9:44:05 PM
From: alanrs	Respond to of 54805

To this day, I don't have the slightest idea about how Siebel's competitors' products compare to Siebel's products. And I don't care. Really. Truly Amen. Well written post. ARS