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Technology Stocks : Wind River going up, up, up! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (2909)	3/18/1998 12:58:00 AM
From: Allen Benn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10309

>Microware Announces Hawk Integrated Development >Environment for OS-9 I am a little bit saddened by Microware's announcement. A company that used to be about one-third of the size of WIND, and is now insignificant along side of WIND, simply cannot compete head-to-head with a market leader that left them in the dust. MWAR cannot spot WIND three years head start on an integrated development environment, and expect 3rd party developers or anyone else to commit scarce time and money to jump on board. I'm just an outside investor viewing what's going on, but sometimes I can't believe the egos, or lack of marketing awareness, or just general stubbornness that seems to affect management at many small firms. I cannot believe that MWAR can afford to mess around with Hawk, particularly after watching INTS struggle trying to do something unique in the IDE arena. If you are wondering how these kinds of decisions come about, here is my candidate suggestion. Your company is struggling, needing to come up with something, anything to beef up revenues and to regain positive momentum. Looking over the main competition, one obvious hole in your product line is the lack of an IDE and attendant integrated third party tools. Salespeople complain that an IDE is needed to compete. Management is wavering on the edge of committing to the development of an IDE, but your opinion is sought. What do you say? Suppose you say, "Geez guys, it's a little late, IDE's are too expensive to develop, and I doubt that many third parties will be interested in mucking around with us even if we had one." How do think that would be received? If they don't immediately question your loyalty, and toss you out on your ear, then they will say, "Oh, what do you propose we do instead?" Now, at that point if you don't have an alternative suggestion, you will find yourself going along with the crowd-even though you don't see how it makes any sense. Group dynamics dictate that betting the house on a stupid idea garners more support in tough times than following a survival policy focused on rejecting wasteful actions. MWAR is running out of options and cannot afford to duplicate expensive R&D at the level of INTS, much less WIND. Reagan bankrupted the evil soviet empire by suckering them into spending more than they could afford chasing Star Wars, and it appears that MWAR is going to fall into a similar trap, probably along with INTS. I thought INTS was wrong to develop pRISM+, and I think MWAR is making an even bigger error trying to compete at this level. Now, here's a question for the reader. If you think deeply about why it may be a mistake for MWAR to try to compete at this level, and you agree with me, then answer the following question. Suppose you are in charge of strategic planning for MWAR, what positive alternative would you suggest? What should MWAR do to survive and hopefully succeed in the face of the WIND juggernaut? (Remember that Ken Kaplan has about 4.8 million shares valued at about $20 million today, a huge come down from the $115 million he was worth a year and a half ago. Of course you are thinking that $20 million is better than nothing, the value of a bankrupted firm.) Allen