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To: Allen Benn who wrote (2910)	3/18/1998 9:18:00 AM
From: J. Kerner	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

I thought INTS was wrong to develop pRISM+, and I think MWAR is making an even bigger error trying to compete at this level. INTS announces earnings in the next few days so we'll get an opportunity to see whether pRISM+ is having any success or not. Last quarter license revenue was fairly flat, but analysts have much higher expectations this quarter.

To: Allen Benn who wrote (2910)	3/19/1998 3:29:00 PM
From: F. Foos	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10309

>Allen, re: What should MWAR do to survive?< For MWAR to be successful in the future, they must focus upon the areas of the RTOS market where they have had past success and attempt to build upon it. MWAR had a stronghold in the RTOS for the interactive TV "Set Top Box" market. The STB market is still young with enough diversity to allow room for MWAR to grow. The consumer electronics and cable TV companies are wary of and want to avoid another Microsoft sweep. MWAR could leverage their STB experience to develop turnkey applications programs for their customers without further straining company resources, since they would probably already have the necessary customer contacts and skill set in-house. If MWAR can't make a living in their traditional niche, they should probably clean the company up and sell it before the IDE development pile-drives them into the ground. Frank

To: Allen Benn who wrote (2910)	8/19/1998 6:07:00 PM
From: William Sheppard	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

Hi, Allen, It's probably been nearly a year since I've provided any substantive contribution here, but I'm now slowly making my way through the backlog and felt this post was worth a response. For background info, I was employed at MWAR for eight years and deeply involved in most of the technology and markets discussed here. For the last year I've been at SUNW working to keep a level playing field for the RTOS community (as opposed to WinCE owning this space) by getting PersonalJava into intelligent appliances, especially settop boxes and digital television. Allen writes: 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. [...] 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. (I'm writing this without benefit of reading the follow-up posts, so I apologize if I rehash things already said.) What's the alternative? MWAR has very viable OS technology (from a technical standpoint I believe that QNX, OS-9, and EPOC32 have substantially better OS architectures than VxWorks and pSOS), a substantial existing customer base, and strong relationships with major CE manufacturers. Their recent slide has been, in my opinion, largely due to a reorganization resulting in a complete replacement of the executive staff and the loss of their entire salesteam (which I was part of). While the OS technology remained strong they simply didn't have anyone to sell it, and the many existing opportunities in the pipeline largely disappeared with the former salesteam. Prior to their reorganization MWAR's growth lagged WIND's, I believe in part due to far less aggressive sales management and partly due to MWAR's development tools not being competitive with WIND's (especially the lack of a WindView-type tool and little 3rd-party support). So what's to be done today? First, rebuild the salesteam, which my contacts suggest has largely happened. Second, address those product areas where MWAR falls short of the competition. Embedded systems are by all accounts a growing market, and will continue to be as far as anyone cares to forecast. While WIND may continue to garner an increasing share of the pie, the pie itself is growing at a rate to allow WIND, INTS, MWAR, QNX, and others to grow and maintain (regain) profitability. There are substantive technical differences between these products, and as the market evolves new opportunities will present themselves for these companies to exploit. If MWAR didn't evolve their development tools they'd essentially be saying "let's get out of the embedded OS market". Does that make sense? Not when that market currently represents 100% of the company's focus. I expect to see MWAR regain some level of profitability and show modest growth, perhaps to be acquired by MOT, IBM, or some other company looking to provide a credible in-house alternative to WinCE. Does this mean I recommend the stock? Not necessarily, although at its current level it might make an interesting high-risk play.