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 : The New Economy and its Winners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (13295)	8/3/2002 1:46:06 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57684

Do you think you have a feel for the general project pipeline? The reason I ask is that the enterprise software analyst at BofA said in 2001 that he believed about 40% of the projects that weren't being built were just being delayed, and would ultimately be built. If that is the case it would seem to me that a year later we could have quite a backlog that could be greenlighted when confidence returns, making for quite a growth spurt. My feeling is that the classic enterprise software pipeline (crm,erp etc) is more than 40% delay vs cancellation- I would say more like 60-70%. The conference calls for psft,itwo,sebl reflect this too. But the problem is they might be waiting for a lower price? I'm not sure what the delay reasoning actually is. Nobody is tearing out software thats already in, for sure, and upgrades to new releases have to be done so you can't wait forever for this stuff. Oracle 11i is a compelling upgrade for those customers and they are selling it, upgrades can sell even now. The sebl 7 upgrade is stalled a little waiting for the "windows accelerator" I hear, but early adopters are going for it. The boutique companies like itwo have a real problem because they need new business and are being cannibalized by the erp players bundling in something thats "almost as good" for free. Thats why arba,itwo and that gang is so cheap... I don't know when that situation will reverse for them but in itwo's case their analytics expertise is going to turn them around at some point, imo. The erps just can't grow that organically here (although they could buy). I have another take on it too... the economic numbers were telling us the recovery was over but not for software. That means the roi wasn't delivering for crm,scm etc. and the deals weren't happening because they were not mission critical even in a robust spending environment. Tom on his call said "Greenspan didn't tell our customers the recession is over".. this just added to the gloom in the sector. Now that the economy is exposed for what it is, it is believeable that these deals truly are delays. I sold a bunch of fragmented software positions I had lying around, orcl, itwo etc last week (some big losses) and consolidated into sebl in the 8's and low 9's. I believe spending will come back based on the pipeline pushouts and sebl is the best investment in software right now, since Tom had a rare misstep last qtr, and sebl 7 is ready to go for the upgrade cycle (the windows accelerator is just a small thing). Tom got burned overpromising this year and maybe he's underpromising now. Something else- Tom offered about 1/3 of his layoff people an option for a leave of absence vs termination, strictly voluntary. To me this means he think he might need some people back soon and wants to keep them around. L