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Technology Stocks : BORL: Time to BUY! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kashish King who wrote (9622)	3/29/1998 3:16:00 PM
From: Jocelyn Ally	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10836

Hello SIers, I'm coming back from JavaOne and feel compelled to provide some feedback. It was huge: All of Moscone, 14,000 developers and long days crammed with interesting sessions. I was there with a software vendor that is reenginering its vertical apps from a client/server C code base to a distributed object architecture and Java. We were mainly looking at application server technology, and there was a lot of talk on this, given the rollout of Enterprise Java Beans. The architecture and server issues are a lot more important to us than the IDE, but from what I heard about IDEs at the conference, to most people the choice is between Symantec and Borland. Symantec had the early lead, but it seems that the momentum is tilting toward JB. People like the approach taken by JB with regards to standards : pure java, real javabeans, jdbc database. While the IDE battle is not over, I think JB placed itself in the top-tier and has a good chance to become the top tool. What is holding it back seems to be the stock price! Consultants and decision makers are still worried that they may get egg on their face if they push this company. Compared to other middleware vendors, the visigenic presence was very quiet. They were even missing from the corba panel session where they were supposed to appear... This is intriguing. I reviewed the visi stuff once more today on www.visigenic.com and they have a very nice stack of products and their DAP strategy is right on. Large shops such as banks are looking at wrapping their legacy systems with corba, since they can't think of rewriting, and they want build java apps on top of them. Then they needs the transaction services, failure recov, load balance etc... that an app server can provide. Looking forward to the Object Application Server, but Borland missed a nice opportunity to tout this stuff at JavaOne. Now more than ever, Borland would really be a good buyout target for Oracle or IBM, and even SUN. Sun was mentionned here prior and met with scepticism (sp?), but apparently javasoft begins to focus on product implementations, not just jdk and specifications. The Java WebServer is one of their first such products, and application servers are likely next. Given that the visi stuff is all java and comprehensive, they would get a good lead. One big hole in the java dev space is a report-writer. Crystal has a java viewer, but the engine remains as before. They plan to wrap it in java "this year" but it will not be pure. One startup "jinfonet" is taking a shot at this, but it still has a way to go. Moreover, I see a need for an Object-based tool instead of only relational-table tool. One has to be able to query and print business objects because some info is only available from method calls, and not from columns in tables. Side note: What a crazy market, this must be a blow-off that happens before the end of a mania. I'm personaly holding all cash and bonds, except for my BORL position, which I'm very comfortable holding with a few years outlook. If I was not upgrading house, I'd certainly be buying more BORL. At one point, the stock will have to reflect the value. BTW, large use of the internet pc at javaone to check stocks portfolio! IMO, the nerds may confuse a bull market with brain... but so far they are right! Oh, and like Rod, prior to java and distributed objects, never used nor cared about Borland since turbo pascal in school. I like this stock because it is my proxy for quite a few growth opportunities: java, distributed object computing, NT, SAP, while I feel it is cushioned by traditional revenues: Windows dev with C++ and Delphi. I think many are holding Borland for the traditional revenues, but then get comforted by the fact that others like me see more value in the visi/java/corba stuff. Jocelyn