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Technology Stocks : FirstWave Technologies (FSTW) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike M who wrote (7341)	12/29/2002 10:25:20 AM
From: TEDennis	Respond to of 9677

re: Richard wouldn't book revenue unless he had a veritable certainty that that revenue had been earned and wouldn't need to be retracted. I didn't imply there was anything done to intentionally mislead anybody. However, even the best CFOs miss a detail or two occasionally, you know. It happens. re: where does it say that this is Beta testing? That has been your assumption all along...but I have never heard the company suggest that The 9/27/2002 PR where they announced David Simmons as COO said: “Firstwave is on the cusp of an exciting growth period, including our new .NET product that we expect to launch in November. David’s leadership and management skills will ensure that Firstwave continues to satisfy its customers and deliver leading-edge technology and allow me to focus on customer and corporate relationships and industry involvement,” said Richard Brock. Even without the contents of the email that RTB read at the RedChip conference on November 23rd where the EL programmer mentioned the ongoing development of the IDE, it's obvious that the product wasn't complete (at those particular times). If the product wasn't complete, then what was it? It doesn't necessarily make it Alpha or Beta, although that's the standard terminology used in the software industry. It makes it whatever the vendor decides to call it. It doesn't appear from out here that FSTW has called it anything, although I'm sure they had some kind of naming convention that was used internally so they could refer to the product at its various developmental stages. So, from the perspective that they didn't call it anything publicly, you're right. The company never suggested that it was Beta. But, it's not complete. It certainly wasn't complete in Q3. And, that's the point that's a bit fuzzy with respect to revenue recognition. BTW, I think I mentioned in the past that the new COO was the one who said the new product would be launched in November. However, I see from the quote above that it was actually RTB. My apologies for the error. Regards, TED

To: Mike M who wrote (7341)	12/29/2002 11:29:44 AM
From: TEDennis	Respond to of 9677

Mike: Following up on our "discussion" of the Football Association ... First of all, please re-read my original musings on the subject: Message 18360520 Now, you seem to think (although you didn't actually say so) that the product was beyond Beta stage in Q3, and that's why the revenue recognition was kosher. According to the EL programmer's late November email, the FA "have no intention of generating applications yet". Now, from various comments from various sources, we all know that the FA deal has been going on for some time. Probably many months prior to that email. After all that time, they still didn't have any intention of generating applications? That seems odd. What the heck have they been doing? For a moment, let's assume you're right and the new product was "complete" back in Q3. Most likely it went through a Beta period prior to that (going live without a serious Beta test is asking for a disaster). Assuming that FA was the Beta site, then they should have already gone through the "application generation" process at least once. So, why would the EL programmer's email indicate a revelation that the IDE could be used as both a modeler and an execution controller (my paraphrase)? That doesn't make sense. Frankly, I think there are a lot of players in this game, and they're all trying to outsell each other. We know the product wasn't "launched" in November as originally planned. Otherwise, we would have had a PR announcing the latest and greatest innovation from FSTW that will "shake up the CRM industry". If you take the time to contemplate all the little inconsistencies that have been brought up on this thread, I think you'll come to the same conclusion I did. The product wasn't ready in November ... was the revenue recognition valid? TED