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Technology Stocks : Vantive Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (2135)	6/30/1998 12:12:00 PM
From: Melissa McAuliffe	Respond to of 3033

Michelle, >>If you anticipate problems for Sebl with this Scopus merger, when do you think they will materialize, which qtr I mean - Oct? Somehow I won't be surprised if the answer to your question is whatever quarter happens to be next, in this case Q3. Then if it isn't Q3, the answer will change to Q4. Then it will be Q1 of next year, etc. That's how it's been so far anyway. I remember back in March when someone was saying it would start this quarter. Melissa

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (2135)	6/30/1998 12:50:00 PM
From: Melissa McAuliffe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3033

Michelle, I should have left this in the last msg. But have you given any thought to the idea that maybe.....just maybe.....one of the "larger" players in this sector might have also taken some business from vntv. As we who come from this industry know, it's not unheard of to actually sell something that isn't quite available yet. And it's not unheard of to sell an "obsolete" product either which would translate into current quarter revenue. Even if this represented future revenue for this larger company, it would potentially represent lost revenue for vntv. I said yesterday on the sebl thread that sebl had to have sold some of this software this quarter...there's just no way they didn't. And I can't believe the deals were all non-competitive. Or maybe they just successfully delayed some decisions. That's always a good strategy. Anyway, just offering a different perspective here. Melissa

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (2135)	6/30/1998 1:27:00 PM
From: Amsterdam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3033

I wish I knew when the Scopus merger would cause problems for Sebl, but Q3 or Q4 would be a reasonable guess. I think TD has a good sense for the timing of these things. I've seen so many blowups from acquisitions of this type, Clfy and Astea to name two, and I can't think of one that went without a hitch. Scop was on track to do $100 mil in sales but now their product has been "functionally stabilized" until Sebl gets their new product out. Therefore it would seem obvious that Scop will have difficulty competing for pure customer support deals until they get a new product out, and should have some maintenance erosion. Scopus' loss should be Vntv and Clfy's gain, and Sebl would have to really have to grow their SFA business to pick up the slack. Vantive should be cleaning up on customer support deals now that Scop is less competitive, but instead they seem to be focusing on SFA deals, so their stock dropping is a bit bewildering to me. I think both Clfy and Vntv should be winning more deals. As for Y2K slowdown, I think that customer support is more mission critical and hard dollar justifiable than SFA is. For example ISO 9000 or Malcolm Baldridge qualification pretty much requires a clearly automated CS application, whereas SFA is easier to defer. But, the market is trying to tell me something else.