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To: Andrew Vance who wrote (10802)	1/21/1998 4:51:00 AM
From: Andrew Vance	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17305

AV--SCARY ADPT STUFF I have been on this kick about ADPT recently and made a comment somewhere (If you know where or which post of mine it was) about all the cash they had on hand and why they were really foolish not to take some of this cash and put it to good use in a buyback program. Actually, I said why not go out and repurchase close to 10% of the shares (10,000,000 shares to use the exact figure) as an solid investment. Well, somebody must have been listening to me and read my post (wherever it was) because: Tuesday January 20, 4:05 pm Eastern Time Company Press Release Adaptec Announces Stock Repurchase Program MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 20, 1998--Adaptec, Inc. announced today that its Board of Directors has approved a stock repurchase program under which the company is authorized to purchase up to 10,000,000 shares of its Common Stock from time to time in the open market. Paul Hansen, Adaptec's Chief Financial Officer, stated that the Company's decision was made in view of the prices at which the Common Stock has recently traded. He also said that the Company planned to reissue the shares acquired in the repurchase program upon the exercise of options granted under the Company's stock plans and upon purchase of shares pursuant to the Company's employee stock purchase plan. Scary that I had the number precisely to the amount they decided on. Only difference is that I would have done it at a cheaper price. I saw the real bargain<GGG>. Andrew

To: Andrew Vance who wrote (10802)	1/21/1998 8:19:00 AM
From: Patrick Slevin	Respond to of 17305

Last time in Chicago I brought along a package of charts to show you a trading system but then forgot about them. Remind me to go over it in LV.

To: Andrew Vance who wrote (10802)	1/21/1998 9:43:00 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17305

Ready for the Great IT Moratorium of 1998 By Ed Yourdon Enterprisewide moratoriums on new IT development will be the big news this year. If your organization hasn't declared a moratorium yet, it probably should. Why? Because of the increasing urgency of the year 2000 problem, which many organizations have avoided dealing with until it's almost too late. The governor of New York imposed a moratorium in September, and the governor of California did it in November. The secretary of the Air Force announced one last June, and by now it's spreading throughout the entire Defense Department and many other federal agencies, too. More importantly, it will hit the entire private sector of the economy as 1998 budgets are announced. There were a few isolated examples of moratoriums last year, mostly in proactive organizations that did the arithmetic and concluded that they didn't have enough resources to focus on anything but the year 2000 problem in the months remaining before the Big Day. But for most organizations, the wake-up call came during the budget-preparation period that traditionally occurs in the late fall and early winter. In late 1996, when the '97 budgets were being prepared, the year 2000 still seemed far, far away and not much of a problem, either. Organizations have ongoing maintenance work that's required to keep the enterprise running; you also might have some unavoidable development work because of government regulations or other non-negotiable demands on your company. But anything that could be considered optional or discretionary should be brought to a screeching halt until you've not only repaired your own internal systems, but also taken the necessary steps to deal with the business consequences of the year 2000. This isn't going to be a popular message, and it will almost certainly meet with heavy resistance from end-user departments that view themselves as semi-autonomous profit centers; in a decentralized organization, they may feel they have the authority to ignore the moratorium request from the year 2000 program office. But 2000 involves survival, and it will probably be up to the CEO and the board of directors to impose the necessary moratorium to ensure survival. So, what'll be on hold? What projects will have to be put off? For many companies, a moratorium will mean deferring the rollout and deployment of Windows NT. It may mean postponing the implementation of Windows 98 (assuming that Microsoft even bothers to release it in 1998) and perhaps Office 98, as well. It means that a lot of the sexy new Java/Internet/Web projects will have to be deferred until 1999 or beyond. It probably means deferring the customary upgrades to PC hardware and software knowledge workers will have to forgo those new Pentium IIs. Along with a moratorium on brand- new application development, this year will bring two other forms of moratorium: one on replacement of legacy systems with new technology versions of homegrown applications and another on replacing proprietary legacy systems with large, complex packages from vendors such as SAP, PeopleSoft and Baan. Both forms of replacement were viable business strategies from 1995 to 1997, when organizations were first awakening to the year 2000 problem, but the window of opportunity is now effectively closed. It takes a large organization at least two to three years to adopt, customize and install a large, vendor-supplied package; there isn't enough time left to ensure finishing that task. Similarly, it may have made sense in 1995 or 1996 to launch an in-house proj-ect to replace an aging mainframe system with a new client/server or Web-based system. But given most organizations' dismal track record for finishing development projects on time, any manager who can spell the words "risk management" has to put a moratorium on that strategy, too. Savvy organizations launched dual year 2000 projects in 1997; year 2000 remediation of old systems took place concurrently with separate projects to build replacements. This year, there may be a few cases where that still makes sense, but most organizations no longer have the human resources for such a redundant approach. Bottom line: The IT moratorium is here, and it's real. The sad thing is that it's too late and too uncoordinated throughout the economy. It won't happen in Europe and Asia until next year. It won't eliminate the year 2000 problems associated with the supply chain, which, for most organizations, involve 1,000 to 3,000 separate companies. The moratorium will reduce the size and scope of the year 2000 problem in an organization, but when the Big Day arrives, the only surviving organizations will be those that have adopted a full-scale contingency plan. As Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray, "The basis of optimism is sheer terror." computerworld.com