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Technology Stocks : Forecross Corporation : Y/2000 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rick Voteau who wrote (937)	4/26/1998 10:56:00 PM
From: Rick Voteau	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1654

Forecross Facts: Listed below are most of the Forecross facts as I have come to know them in my 2+ years of knowing and investing with them. I continue to have full faith in Forecross, their products and their management. The Y2K Market (Demand) From the demand perspective it is amazing that corporate America has waited so long to fix a problem that will cripple them. Cap Gemini and others have recently released surveys indicating that 75-80% of the work is yet to be completed. It is this pent up (nondiscretionary) demand that provides the biggest opportunities for Forecross and for its shareholders. Many articles report that there are several companies that have started the conversion process and have already found their approaches flawed and have had to start over again at least once. This means that many of those who have claimed in house progress are in for a rude awakening Also of note is the obvious fact that the more lines of code the bigger the agony. What many people don't seem to know is that lines of code are not proportional to either revenues or market cap. Many huge multinationals do not have much more code than mid size NASDAQ companies. They all have billing, inventory, customer, product, etc applications and in many instances the difference is in the number of records in the databases not the lines of code in the application. Conversion work is priced on lines of code not records in the databases. For all but the very smallest sites the in house option is now eliminated as a practical solution. There is not enough time. Forecross offers an AUTOMATED, proven Y2K analysis and renovation factory process. Prominent Y2K analysts have recently pointed out that the market and the time favor a factory solution. Profit margins will of course also favor the software driven solution. Forecross pioneered the "factory" solution for Y2K and was using the factory solution for its automated legacy migrations years ago. While this market was in its infancy and while there was no significant business to be had Forecross targeted the largest and most prestigious national and multinational system integrators and consulting firms in the WORLD. These body shops are the last to naturally seek software solutions to anything. A year ago the smartest of these shops realized that using manual approach would not be possible. They would be too swamped. The way these companies could best perform for their many customers is to plug in to an automated find and fix and then use their bodies to test and customer hand hold. These guys were not an easy sell. They collectively examined every aspect of Forecross and its technology before signing and making their respective announcements. There have been recently announced signings with BDM, EDS and Cyber. (There are rumors that others have been signed and the announcements are pending the first contracts). NO other Y2K company in the world has such broad ranging endorsements and teaming partners. This is the pipeline that will bring the company business in addition to the business brought by its growing distributorship network. This distributorship network has more than established its credibility by getting the biggest and the best to sign. They are now out bidding on more business which no doubt will come soon. Remember, they have a $1million investment for which they want a return. Seems like quite an incentive to me. Methodology and Technology The process of bringing an application into Y2K compliance has several components. First you must analyze the application for date occurrences and then renovate the affected code and then have some process for dealing with errors, non-compile errors and errors found in testing. To fix it you must first find it. Today's traditional Y2K analysis consists of some sort of scan of the source code for a list of date references. This list usually has a couple of hundred "date name" like; date, yy, mm, year, birthdate, employee_start_date, etc. The source code is scanned much like the find part of a modern word processor and then the hits are either repaired manually or some bits of the code are replaced much like the find and replace in a word processor. For over Over 15 years, Forecross' has migrated whole applications containing many programs from one language/platform to an entirely new language/platform, again, automatically. The difficulty of repairing a statement containing a date in the same language is nowhere near the task of migrating every verb, every variable, every statement (including date statements)to an entirely new language and requires but a subset of Forecross' technology. At the Forecross factory first the source code is not just scanned, the whole program is parsed into a repository just as though the whole program was to be migrated. This repository is a relational database and contains all program statements not just date "suspects." Next samples of the data are analyzed using Forecross' data analysis routine to find date fields in the databases that have field names that are not on the usual "date suspect lists." Some of the languages have restrictions on the numbers of characters that can be used in a data name. For instance it is estimated that a source scan will find 80+% of the dates in MVS COBOL while it will find considerably less in languages like C and C++ and as little as 20-30% in languages like ADF and SQL. Data analysis will find virtually all of the remainder. If you don't find it you can't renovate it. Unrepaired dates may compile but they certainly won't test. After the analysis is completed, the customer of the "traditional" Y2K vendor receives a report that is usually some THOUSANDS of pages long and it is the customer's responsibility to verify the finds and accept or reject defaults as to windowing or data expansion and format. Each find is reported and must be dealt with by hand on paper by the customer even if it is the same variable over and over again. Forecross has software it calls CRS, Customer Response System. This is a relational database that the customer receives on a notebook computer that allows the customer to deal with all suspects globally and automatically. This provides a substantial time savings for the poor IT guy who's already overwhelmed. The CRS also produces an electronic report that is transmitted to Forecross and becomes part of the rules for the automated factory renovation. The renovation and error handling An easy way to judge the effectiveness of an "automated" Y2K process is to look at the error handling. Forecross' renovation is a rule-based process, i.e., the more code it runs the better it gets. When there is an error, nothing is fixed by hand, rather a rule is written. In traditional Y2K jobs when an error is discovered it means a mini-start over. Every program in the application must be reopened and scanned for the error and then that error repaired. At Forecross when the renovation encounters a compile error, a note is automatically sent to a "rules engineer." Since all of the programs have already been parsed into a repository along with the customer's input the "rules engineer" already knows the exact line number and program name of every occurrence of the error and can engineer a rule that fixes the problem globally with a few key strokes. The same applies to any errors discovered by the customer or its consultants during testing. Automated find and fix is good. Automated error handling is another way Forecross sets itself apart. About Forecross Conversations with Forecross or any other Y2K vendor for that matter will reflect that the Y2K market is finally starting to accelerate. EDS, BDM, and Ciber give Forecross an unmatched validation. In addition to signing with the biggest and best consulting and systems integration firms in the WORLD, they also have a growing and very credible distribution network in place. Forecross will present at the biggest Y2K conference in Europe to date next week in Paris. The company has completed automated migrations involving Chinese and Japanese (double-byte) character sets The company has a premier technology in a market where technology will determine success and profit margins. I believe they will be asked to come in and clean up damage caused by inferior conversions in the year 2000. In my opinion, the downside potential is minimal (especially at this point). The upside potential is tremendous. Very few additional costs to support additional revenue. I have owned and added to Forecross over the past two plus years and will continue to do so. No way would I sell when the party is just starting.

To: Rick Voteau who wrote (937)	4/27/1998 10:28:00 AM
From: Steve Andrew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1654

Hey everybody..... After much travail, I am allowed to post again. I want to thank everyone for e-mailing me your support. SI has quite a set of double-standards........lying and intentional deception is acceptable and "name-calling" is not. Go figure. David, how about that HDIE stock. If others would have followed your advice and held on for the "Big Move" on last Wed. they would have lost at least 15% or more.....GREAT advice...."stick with me and I'll take care of ya....." Any more great picks/hypes out there???? An MBA from "BOGUSTA" is quite a credential. I have a friend who is related to the registrar at Columbia University (you know...the one in NYC,USA)...maybe you can tell us which year you graduated and we can stop doubting your emininence???? I hear the heat down in FLA. can become oppressive this time of the year, especially in those hot, non-air-conditioned courtrooms. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes this summer. A Wharton Grad P.S. Is it true that stock symbols with the letters FR mean undervalued and soon to appreciate. That is what I believe.