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To: 2MAR$ who wrote (11465)	8/19/2001 6:32:16 PM
From: Teri Garner	Respond to of 208838

A valley of gloom Tech sector recovery far off, experts say Tom St. Dennis is a hardened veteran of the technology wars, with an industry resume that goes back two decades. But even he has been stunned by the speed and force of the crash that has brought Silicon Valley to its knees. St. Dennis, the chief executive officer of Alameda's Wind River Systems, a maker of software used in such devices as cellular phones, said that twice in the space of a few months he's lost big orders that had been signed and sealed. It happened in April when a major semiconductor company shut down an entire division just two days after the unit had put in a $1 million order for Wind River software. Then, last month, St. Dennis watched a $400,000 sale to a big telecommunications company vaporize after the buyer fired half its procurement staff, including the officer who placed the order. That sort of business meltdown has pushed Wind River's sales down 20 percent from year-ago levels, prompting St. Dennis to fire around 20 percent of the company's workforce, about 400 people, in two rounds this year. "This is worse than the 1984-85 downturn," said St. Dennis, referring to the Silicon Valley crash that followed the big personal computer boom of the early 1980s. "And, it hasn't run its course yet." sfgate.com