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

To: J. Kerner who wrote (2959)	3/31/1998 9:37:00 AM
From: w2j2	Respond to of 10309

Embedded Systems Conference - CHICAGO, March 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Zinc Software (Pleasant Grove, Utah) today introduced its award-winning Zinc(R) Application Framework(TM) (ZAF) for Wind River Systems' (NASDAQ:WIND) Tornado(TM) development environment. For the first time, embedded systems developers building products based on Wind River's VxWorks(R) real-time operating system can add a full-scale graphical user interface without sacrificing time to market or product resources. At the same time, Zinc has become one of Wind River's premier WindLink(TM) for Tornado partners. Once the exclusive domain of the personal computer, the graphical user interface (GUI) is rapidly becoming a check off item for monitoring, managing, and interacting with many embedded devices including PDAs, telecommunications equipment and imaging products. However, the unique and varied requirements of embedded and real-time devices have often made available GUI solutions unsuitable. "Traditional GUI solutions such as X/Windows derivatives and Microsoft Windows CE are too large and suffer from legacy 'PC' approaches that are not technically or financially ideal for real-time embedded solutions," said Robert Bishop, founder of Zinc Software. "ZAF for Tornado is targeted specifically at the embedded market, where product differentiation is still king and every byte of memory adds dollars to the end product." "Until now, companies requiring GUIs on embedded devices were forced to either use expensive hardware capable of supporting a full scale GUI, or build a minimal GUI solution from low-level 2D graphic primitives," commented Curt Schacker, vice president for Wind River Systems. "ZAF hits the sweet spot between these two scenarios -- a full scale GUI with a footprint of around 500K. We are extremely pleased to have Zinc Software as a premier WindLink partner addressing this timely issue." Complete GUI Solution for Embedded Products Zinc Application Framework provides a complete object oriented, C++ API for the creation of graphical user interfaces and event-driven applications. It includes a portable visual design tool, portable makefile utility, hypertext-based on-line documentation, and numerous examples and tutorials. By default, ZAF's user interface objects display the popular Windows 95/NT look, yet any user interface object -- ranging from windows and buttons to notebooks and tables -- may be easily customized to deliver a unique appearance and feel. ZAF enables international user interfaces through transparent support for both ISO (single byte) and Unicode (double byte) character sets. With ZAF's built in support, developing localized and multilingual applications is trivial. Familiar Development Environment Maximizes Productivity ZAF's intuitive, next-generation API is completely portable, allowing ZAF applications to target Windows and Motif platforms, as well as Tornado. This flexibility allows user interface developers to build and test a complete GUI on their preferred development platform and deploy to VxWorks-based embedded products at any time. WindLink for Tornado Partner Program WindLink for Tornado is a focused marketing program designed to help hardware and software developers and system integrators create and sell Tornado-compatible or Tornado-integrated products in the real-time operating systems (RTOS) marketplace. Premier Partners are committed to developing an application with Tornado and to using Tornado as their preferred operating environment and system. Premier Partners also have dedicated engineering staffs available to upgrade their products along with releases of Tornado upgrades. Availability Zinc Application Framework for Tornado is now available from Zinc Software. For more information about Zinc's products and services, call 801-785-8900 or stop by the Wind River booth (#811) for a comprehensive demonstration at the Embedded Systems Conference East in Chicago, March 31 - April 2, 1998. Zinc Software Since 1990, Zinc Software has developed and marketed innovative products to help developers meet the challenges of portable/international application development. Zinc has sold more than 30,000 development licenses in over 89 countries through its offices in North America and Europe, as well as through resellers around the world. NOTE: Zinc is a registered trademark and Zinc Application Framework is a trademark of Zinc Software Incorporated. Wind River Systems and VxWorks are registered trademarks and Tornado and WindLink are trademarks of Wind River Systems, Inc. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective companies.

To: J. Kerner who wrote (2959)	4/1/1998 1:26:00 AM
From: Allen Benn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

Radisys (RSYS) Postmortem RSYS was espoused frequently by Mark Brophy, its biggest advocate, as an ideal high-tech investment: high growth, great earnings, top-notch management. "Why would anyone pay a 60 multiple for WIND when RSYS could be purchased for a 20 multiple," he said? We said, "Because we want sustainable earnings growth. We want a franchise. We want barriers to entry." RSYS has little value without those characteristics, whatever its P/E ratio. There has never been anything about RSYS' hardware business that suggests it was anything but an early entrant in a budding commodity business. Last fall I posted an announcement of a hot board by Motorola containing dual pentiums and just about anything else that might be desired. It was just a matter of time before RSYS began to feel inexorable pricing pressures, causing margins to deteriorate. The last appeal on this thread to forsake WIND and jump on the RSYS bandwagon was posted on a couple of months ago. Curious, I researched RSYS and did my own analysis of whether or not RSYS was on sale and should be bought. At that time, I discovered that RSYS began suffering from a malaise in the quarter ending Sept 30, 1997, before the Asian Crisis. The malaise took the form of decelerating revenues and earnings, suggestive of pricing pressures. The problem just got worse in the last quarter of 1997, although RSYS continued to increase revenues and earnings. I then read the RSYS thread and discovered everyone complaining about the stock price, and beginning mistakenly to blame insider selling, management, the market, or anything else that popped in their heads. The stock price was in a downtrend until December of last year when it entered a prolonged period of sideways trading. I knew the stock either would recuperate and, in time, break out to the upside, or else capitulate and break down, with the odds favoring the latter as the continuation of the trend. Throw in my suspicions about margin pressures, and probable disturbances from the Asian turmoil, and a breakdown was indeed highly likely. The breakdown began about a week ago when the price dropped into the low thirties. At that point I started shorting the stock. My last short was completed yesterday by early afternoon. That evening, the company warned on earnings for the quarter and the near term. Today the company sugar coated the warning with announcements of design wins and signs of encouragement, which stabilized the stock at a loss of about $8.50, and caused it to slowly rebound to a loss for the day of a mere $6.50. Anticipating the dead cat bounce, I covered my shorts early, thereby retaining the full drop from the warning, and a sizable profit for five days of trading. There are lots of morals to this story. The most important is that low P/E stocks are rarely cheap when you buy them, for they often get a lot cheaper later on when earnings fall through the floor. This is especially true for Hi Tech stocks. This point has been made over and over on this thread using abstractions about underlying economics; now it is made in concrete trading terms. This is why WIND is such a terrific stock-it never disappoints. Another moral is that you must always beware companies that are in a commodity business, or a business that may soon become commodity. Signs of commodity business are to be found in recent financial reports (like I found the signs in RSYS's September and December quarters), competitive products entering the market (like the Motorola board) or just by asking the question, "What would be the barriers to my entering this business?" Ironically, Mark may be absolutely correct in claiming that RSYS management is excellent. The problem is that excellence is not enough to make a silk purse our of a commodity business. This is another reason why WIND is such a terrific stock-it has excellent management and it is not a commodity. The last moral is that shorting stocks is not evil, although I rarely do it. The Short Attack I reported last spring was evil, because, if true, it was an attempt to manipulate the market, which is wrong. On the other hand, speculative shorting makes the market more efficient, by providing a counter weight to excessive optimism about any stock. Finally, what do we expect for future RSYS price performance? That's another story. Allen