Hi Fred. I answered Paul before I saw this post. I'm still here (and still an "again" future shareholder ...). As I told Paul, I see a lot more "right" moves being made now, then "wrong", but the "perception" thing is everpresent. When it changes, believe me, IMO you (generic "you") will know it.
It's all "timing" for me right now. As you said in some of your previous posts (of which I agree, by the way), "whining from too many who got in too soon, etc...".
And again Fred, I really *do* want to see this company succeed and give MSFT the competition it most justly deserves.
Oh, since you mentioned Corel, that's another one I'm watching very closely right now. That one is (or could be) a "very interesting" play.
Regards,
Joe...
PS: This is an article about Compaq, however, it does make some postivie references about Novell's Intranetware in regard to CPQ's small business oversea market. One interesting thing about the article is that it's "NT free" <g>.
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Compaq to focus on small business segment
The small and medium business segment, alongside the enterprise-corporate
segment, tops the priority list of Compaq India, a subsidiary of the US-based
Compaq Computer Corp.
Almost 25 per cent of the company's revenues in the country, estimated at
about Rs 3.6 billion in 1996-97, come from the SMB segment, according to
Abhishek Mukherjee, country manager, Compaq India.
Mukherjee said that though the segment is not very
mature in the country, Compaq is set on it as it is
the fastest growing along with the consumer and
'small-office home-office' segment (from which 15
per cent of its revenues come).
He compared these to other segments such as
enterprise-corporate and the government.
"The SMB, according to our estimation, accounts for around 40 per cent of
the total annual IT expenditure (in unit terms) in the country,'' said
Mukherjee.
Any company which has a turnover in the range of Rs 100-2,500 million and
one which has up to 100 employees is categorised as SMB by Compaq.
"Most of these companies are looking for PC servers, desktops and LANs,
communications tools such as fax and mail and some accounting or financial
software,'' he said. But most of the SMBs IT investment is tied more to
profits than to the turnover, he added.
N Bringi Dev, head, marketing services, Compaq Computer Asia, said: "We
have been creating awareness in this segment through advertising, direct
marketing, product demonstrations and road shows. We are now
concentrating on development and expansion of our distribution and service
channels and brand equity development.''
The SMB, traditionally, uses local or assembled brands as the MNC brands
are perceived to be costly. "To address this, we have brought out low-cost
packages such as our Rs 99,000 offer for the ProSignia server with Novell
IntraNetware,'' he said.
Compaq is not alone in this game, as lately other information technology
majors such as Intel and IBM have started a renewed focus on the SMB
segment. "We estimate this market to be worth about $600 millions,'' said
Richard Francis, country business manager, Tata-IBM Limited.
The company, which looks at two bands of firms, with turnover up to Rs
500 million and Rs 500-2000 million, stresses more on providing solutions
and value-additions rather than "boxes''. "Our intent is to focus on
value-added services through our partners, as well as current applications
and solutions,'' said Francis.
Tata-IBM has a concept of collaborating with "partners in development''
who are local software companies and whose solutions are ported on the
IBM platform. The company plans to achieve a cost advantage by offering
these to the SMB.
While the company also offers similar solutions such as its Rs 6,263 per
month offer of IBM PC server with Novell IntraNetware and Lotus Domino,
"we also offer homegrown packages and those developed in, collaboration
with Tata-IBM,'' said Francis.
These packages include manufacturing, financing and accounting packages,
distribution and retail solutions, hotel/hospital management packages and
clinical and legal solutions.
The company also plans to make use of network-centric computing and
Lotus groupware solutions such as Lotus Notes.
- Compiled from the Indian media
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