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Technology Stocks : CheckFree (CKFR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TQR who wrote (1464)	2/1/1998 1:33:00 PM
From: Brooks Jackson	Respond to of 8545

Thanks, TQR. Genesis needs more discussion like this. I think one of the few things that could screw up CKFR's bright future would be a fiasco such as AOL experienced. AOL weathered the storm, but if CKFR sent a couple of million bill payments into the ether -- or to the wrong merchants -- it could just about kill the company. And don't think it can't happen. A few years ago Managing Your Money brought out a new version that started sending (via CKFR) all payments to the wrong people. It took MYM weeks to dig out of that one. I use Quicken now.

To: TQR who wrote (1464)	2/1/1998 4:47:00 PM
From: Gullapalli	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8545

On the contrary, Cobol and DB2 is good for Checkfree. I feel a whole lot better already and sleep like a baby. Both Cobol and DB2 are matured technologies with absolutely no downside risk. They will provide the high quality, reliability and availability that is needed to support 24 hours a day, seven days a week processing this application will need. With this approach there will be no problems with expanding capacity. Sure initially it will cost a little more than a rinky dink client/server stuff. By the way, First Data (part of MSFDC) uses the same technology. So do every major financial institution in the world. Just for the record I worked with bith Cobol/DB2 and client/server. I will take the former any day for reliability and scalability.

To: TQR who wrote (1464)	2/2/1998 8:29:00 AM
From: Roger Bass	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8545

Though much of CheckFree's core transactionsystem is mainframe based, I'm not sure whether a big ramp of such skills would be just related to that change. They will probably need such skills also in building the pieces that integrate with banks' and billers' legacy systems (which would tend be written in such languages). Incidentally, the front-end pieces that talk to different service delivery channels (eg Quicken, Money, phone, Internet) tend to be Unix based servers. A ramp-up of the second kind of work would be an indication that they are now no longer focusing on building their system, but on building the links to customers that will deliver the value. Hard to tell though just from the job ads. I should be able to get more information on what is really going on here, and will post it if I am able.