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Technology Stocks : Vantive Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kevin Rose who wrote (1512)	1/27/1998 7:10:00 PM
From: Trader Dave	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3033

Shege, Kevin, Steve: Thanks again for the additonal great posts. I hope you guys appreciate how much this stuff outclasses the typical wall street research. I'll keep sniffing around about psft's plans. TD

To: Kevin Rose who wrote (1512)	1/28/1998 12:40:00 AM
From: Shege Dambanza	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3033

Okay, Kevin. You win the 'longest post' and 'highest clich‚' awards. I hope you weren't doing this on company time (it's okay, Mr. Stamm, I have a job for him if you let him go). Now, on to the real stuff. You make excellent points, and I can't really disagree with much of what you say. But when has that ever stopped me? First let's separate the two issues: ease of entry into support automation vs. SFA; and ease of entry into the front-office space. I agree that the technology and know-how needed to develop good support automation is rare, and found mostly in the ranks of existing players. Your examples about clock drift and notification server requirements illustrate the point very well. Having said that, I maintain there is enough common knowledge about both the support business, and automation technologies (client/server, db engines, OLTP etc.) for someone to come in and develop a decent support app. There is currently not the same body of knowledge about SFA, which makes good SFA more difficult to do than good support automation. I disagree with your assertion that support is more difficult than SFA because the functionality bar is higher. You seem to be taking the view that there is a minimum bar that all participants must clear. But you forget that not all customers want all the bells and whistles. Let's face it, ClearSupport (and equivalent products from Vantive and Scopus) has far more functionality than most support organizations need or want. Surely some customers do, but the vast majority are pretty happy with about 80% of the functionality. I assert it is RELATIVELY easier to implement that core functionality for support, than it is for SFA. Note I never said it would be easy in real terms, just easier to do than SFA. Regarding wanna-be entrants from the ERP and/or client/server world: To be sure it will be a long time before new entrants catch up to the existing players, if ever. But that's besides the point. All these people have to do is to have the core functionality of front-office apps, to get a foot in the door. Some will stumble in getting there, others will not. Remember, they don't want to replace the front-office vendors, at least initially. They want to be able to sell a decent package to existing customers. Over time some of them too will develop the in-house knowledge and technology. I believe there are parallels here to the auto industry. Look what happened to US manufacturers when the Japanese auto makers entered the market. We laughed and touted our superior technological know-how, the Japanese manufacturers smiled and learned. Then they kicked our butts. Remember, the mass market does not want and cannot afford a Cadillac. Sometimes even a Yugo works. Well, okay, a Honda. Time for bed.

To: Kevin Rose who wrote (1512)	1/28/1998 10:25:00 AM
From: seth thomas	Respond to of 3033

Hey Kevin - good post. Shege - I agree that most customers would be happy with 80% of the features. The problem is that it's a different 80% for each customer. So, you've got to have them all. You could have some arbitrary 80% set - but then you'd be competitive in only 20% of the deals. You could win lots of small deals - but the money's in the big ones.