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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Punko who wrote (9990)	3/17/1998 5:54:00 PM
From: uu	Respond to of 14631

Punko: > What's bad for Microsoft is good for Informix. Hmmm.... interesting comment/observation. In a way what is bad for Microsoft is good for ORCL, SUNW, IFMX, SYBS, NOVL, BORL, NSCP, AAPL, IBM, ... jut to name a few! Just an observation and nothing more was intended. Regards, Addi Jamshidi

To: Punko who wrote (9990)	3/19/1998 1:47:00 AM
From: Javelyn Bjoli	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14631

I don't follow how Informix and Microsoft are necessarily competitors in the NC space. Let's say Microsoft (Compaq/Boundless/Wyse etc) sells NT servers to the back end and cheap CE terminals to the front end. The terminals have JVM built into the OS. These terminals look to Java applets just like whatever other Java terminals are out there. So a company can buy the Microsoft terminals or other brand, and deploy the same back end. Perhaps Microsoft will get crushed based on price, and perhaps Microsoft will give IT the features they really care about, such as lower hardware and maintenance costs, easy switchover, etc. and maintain their dominance. Personally, I'd bet on the guys spending $2.6B/year on R&D. Either way, it doesn't matter to Informix at all. They get written into the sophisticated server side apps, which for now is probably running on Unix. Unix may even get a push as HP rolls out machines based on Intel's IA-64 in a year or two. If not, at least Informix is into NT now and can let their business model shift over as it becomes more popular. So the only segment of the NC market that Microsoft is a threat to Informix is the low end, where the entire deployment is Microsoft, such as NT servers, CE terminals, SQL Server, etc. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Informix is not making the client or server software really, they just get designed into the larger system as a component of the server side, unless their high-end expertise is not required to get the job done. By the way, what is a "truly free and open" platform? Every box needs some software on it. If everyone was making their box meet some IEEE standard (and no more), like 14.4 modems or something, then it might really not matter who you buy your boxes from. But until the industry stabilizes what it is trying to make exactly, everyone will have a proprietary design to out-feature the competitors.