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Technology Stocks : BORL: Time to BUY! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Miller who wrote (7260)	11/10/1997 10:55:00 PM
From: David R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10836

re: Getting away from your traditional area of competence may make sense from a marketing standpoint, but it imposes new strains on the organization. I think that you are missing the point. BORL is not getting away from its traditional area of competence at all. BORL has always been a provider of world class development tools. The problem was that they got sidetracked trying to compete with MS in apps and db's. The enterprise tools are a nice growth strategy for a tool company. Clearly, BORL can not grow selling $99 compilers. The nice thing is that they still sell $99 compilers, and by the way, these tools now scale all the way up to $45000 enterprise ready multi-platform. BORL is making the right choices. They have jettisoned all of their non-core products except dBase. dBase has been transformed into a open data base app builder so even dBase fits into their tools strategy. MS tools are a joke. BORL has no across-the-board competition. If they keep focused, they will own the tools market. BORL's enterprise tools do not threaten this opportunity, they enforce it. I do not think that Corel and Informix are really good case studies for BORL. The Java effort did not kill Corel. Their insistence on fighting MS head-on did.

To: David Miller who wrote (7260)	11/10/1997 11:13:00 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 10836

Borland needs to quickly become competent in i) selling this style of product, and ii) cultivating the new style of channel partners they will need to make it work. Getting away from your traditional area of competence may make sense from a marketing standpoint, but it imposes new strains on the organization. I agree, and I agree it is a risk factor. On the other hand, it is also relieving them from head to head competition with MSFT on many fronts, and that has to be considered a big plus, since MSFT has consistently whipped Borland in the marketing department. Another big plus is that Borland seems to have more focus now than at any time in my memory of the Company. And I find focus to be a most essential element of a company's success. Del has clearly articulated objectives for the turnaround, and has done an excellent job of heading that direction. Again, though, I agree that there continues to be substantial risk in this stock. The notion that it is headed up with no chance for backslide is just not realistic. While I feel positive about the stock, there is a lot that could happen to foul things up. This entry into new markets is one of them....