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Technology Stocks : INPR - Inprise to Borland (BORL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TTOSBT who wrote (316)	6/25/1998 1:29:00 AM
From: David W. Taylor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5102

We'll see $6.x tomorrow.

To: TTOSBT who wrote (316)	6/25/1998 8:53:00 AM
From: alex rosenzweig	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5102

Can we PLEASE revert to constructive contributions? Understand the frustration, but the insults won't help the stock and certainly won't get Del Yocam back on this board. (Constructive examples: someone who attended PC Expo or Sapphire reporting on INPR's reception at these shows, etc.) Wall Street will only "get it" when revenue and income start to show substantial, sustained, growth. The only announcement INPR could make (PLEASE!) to stem the renewed slide is another "we'll meet or exceed expectations" release, once they know for sure, upon provisional tally end of June / early July. Product or strategy preannouncements at this point would only appear as "hyping" the stock price. Regarding all the comments about INPR getting killed by MSFT: INPR knows firsthand how dominant MSFT is and how easily it can squash competitors. It also has been keenly aware of good competitors, old and new, such as Powersoft, Forte, Iona, Silver Stream etc. That's exactly why it has taken INPR years, and several premature, poorly executed false starts, to put together the suite of tools, middleware, sales and support structure to create a SUSTAINABLE lead going forward. (That's no hype. INPR really is the only offering around that brings [ok, WILL bring] together open standards AND MSFT-platform support, scalability, performance, ease and timeliness of development, integration with legacy systems and ERP software, tools and middleware not just for development but also for deployment and management, [presumably] tight integration and high customization of application server and multiple tools and, finally, the consulting services and well trained/certified channel partners required for helping corporate IT with design and implementation). Under Del's team these pieces are finally coming together as one. The complete offering, centered around the application server, will do for INPR what Notes did for Lotus years back, or Unicenter is doing for CA. (Not good comparisons, just trying to illustrate the effect) Any excessive hyping before all the pieces are fully in place, while providing pleasing blips in the stock price, would only have hampered INPR's long term efforts, bringing out all its competitors in force, especially MSFT (and indeed it did, as evidenced by the MSFT raiding less than 2 years ago). -- On the other hand, INPR/BORL's "PR policy" of silence has undermined its credibility and appeal not only on Wall Street but also with corporate IT. -- So management is continuing to walk the fine line of underhyping publicly while slowly building up confidence (and sales) with IT "behind closed doors". Could the balance have been better? I certainly think so. But the marathon has been run this way and we're on the last 5-mile stretch. Not much sense in screaming for a change in public-relations style at this stage. We'll start seeing tangible evidence of sustainable long term growth in the second half of this year. If we're lucky we'll even see some of it in this or next quarter's results (HOPEFULLY). PS: "Disclosure": I've been silently reading this board for years. Won't become a contributor now, just could not hold back on the last round of frustrated outcrys. I hold an "institutional size" position in INPR, built up over the years on every dip, but I have no personal contact to anyone at Inprise.