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Pastimes : Home on the range where the buffalo roam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pbull who wrote (7986)	6/27/2002 10:43:46 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 13815

<<SEBL has lost more than half its value over the last few months and now trades at mkt cap of $7 bil, PE 30.>> pbull: Its getting tempting BUT I would love to scoop it up when its in the single digits <G>.

To: pbull who wrote (7986)	6/27/2002 10:50:39 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 13815

Here's a good article on SEBL... Siebel project mirrors software's shifting fortunes By Lisa Baertlein SAN FRANCISCO, June 27 (Reuters) - Tom Siebel once was dubbed "the man who sees around corners" by Forbes magazine. Now he's trying to avoid being pinned in the corner by competitors and a looming technology shift. Siebel, who has firmly ruled the once high-flying sales and customer service software niche since founding Siebel Systems Inc. (NasdaqNM:SEBL - News)in 1993, has embarked on a $100 million project aimed at staying ahead of those two threats. Also at stake is the 49-year-old Siebel's status among Silicon Valley visionaries. Like many of them, Siebel has seen his company's stock price and revenues tumble in the collapse of the technology sector. In an effort to buoy sales, Siebel is teaming up with other technology companies to more efficiently connect and maintain corporate software systems that automate such things as accounting, inventory, sales and customer service. If successful, the push would help Siebel customers address the monumental headache of trying to make disparate software systems work together, a complicated and costly task that Siebel describes simply as an "information problem." "We're addressing the biggest problem. This information problem is 2-1/2 times the size of the hardware industry .... Nobody has stepped up to address it," Siebel told Reuters at a recent tech conference in San Francisco. But software analysts pointed out that Siebel's project is aimed at defending his company against growing competition and the rising threat of Web services -- the latest industry buzzword for efforts to link computer systems. "In one sense, it's a defensive ploy," Gartner Inc. (NYSE:IT - News) analyst Michael Maoz said, noting that Siebel could be eclipsed by Web services down the road if it does not find a way to make its own software the backbone off which other applications hang. LONG-TERM VIEW Siebel has recruited help in building his so-called Universal Application Network (UAN). Partners include Tibco Software (NasdaqNM:TIBX - News), SeeBeyond (NasdaqNM:SBYN - News), webMethods (NasdaqNM:WEBM - News) and other integration software makers. Key systems integrators like Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Accenture (NYSE:ACN - News), KPMG Consulting (NasdaqNM:KCIN - News) and IBM Global Services (NYSE:IBM - News) also are involved. Notably absent from UAN, however, are competitors Oracle Corp. (NasdaqNM:ORCL - News), PeopleSoft Inc. (NasdaqNM:PSFT - News) and Germany's SAP AG (XETRA:SAPG.DE - News), whose software is often linked to Siebel's. Those large software makers also are moving aggressively into Siebel's backyard. The UAN initiative also comes amid a deep freeze in corporate spending that has left Siebel and many other software chiefs searching for a new story to sell. Because the cost of installing software and connecting different applications from various providers can equal up to six times the price of the code itself, budget-conscious customers have put the brakes on big projects and orders. That has caused software sales to stall at Siebel Systems, which in its most recently reported quarter saw software license revenues drop 27 percent year-on-year. Rivals Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP AG (XETRA:SAPG.DE - News) have also seen double-digit percentage declines after growing rapidly. The shares of each of the U.S.-based software shops have lost more than half of their value from a year ago. Siebel stock is even worse shape, trading down more than 70 percent from last year in the $14 a share range. THE SIEBEL SERIES "Everybody wins here, most importantly the customer," said Siebel, who conceded that taking the pain and cost out of integration will give him the opportunity to make more sales. "It's not entirely altruistic, let's not fool each other. But I'd say we're taking a long-term view of the market here," Siebel said. While Siebel's partners are publicly elated about the UAN, the rumor mill is rife with stories of their unhappiness over the specter of taking a serious revenue hit. That doesn't phase Ray Lane, former Oracle President and current partner at Silicon Valley's elite venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "Happiness is irrelevant. There is no choice. The days are over where you have these $50 million, $100 million consulting projects. Those days are gone and they're never coming back," said Lane, who also is on the board of directors at Siebel's UAN partner SeeBeyond. Lane said Siebel is doing "exactly the right thing" with its initiative. "The question is whether the customer agrees to use Siebel or SAP as their main portal to get information," Lane said. But industry watchers give the UAN mixed reviews. Joshua Greenbaum, principal of Enterprise Application Consulting in Daly City, California, was among the analysts to note that some of Siebel's competitors, particularly SAP and i2 Technologies Inc. (NasdaqNM:ITWO - News), are working toward the same goal. "It's very much a me-too strategy ... and a little late in the game," Greenbaum said. Siebel says his company's effort is unique in that it will not lock customers into building a system with software from a single vendor, such as Oracle, SAP or PeopleSoft. But Gartner's Maoz countered: "It's 'universal' only in the sense that it's from Siebel out to other systems." "'Universal' is like U.S. baseball saying it has the World Series," Maoz said. "This is the Siebel Series."