Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : OBJECT DESIGN Inc.: Bargain of the year!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hasbeen101 who wrote (2335)	10/2/1998 11:12:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3194

The macro environment suggests investment caution. What else can you do? There may be a silver lining in this Oracle thing. You would think that a drop in price in Oracle's lines, would undermine any switch potential. Further, ODIS must lower its prices to prevent the existing base and undecideds from returning to the Oracle fold. But ODIS product does not compete directly against Oracle's. ODIS has a niche market whose characteristics aren't even well-served by hybrids. They have their own little world. Again ODIS never could pull market away from ORCL. It is why their performance is blah. They've had to build their own little somewhat independent empire. You have confirmed this in the performance difference. You have emphasized that where ODIS can sell at all, others need not even show up. This is an intrinsic advantage of small companies with specialized efficient products and one of the reasons why small companies will get the action in general in coming months. Also, the big companies are hostage to macro-economic forces that cause them to pull in their aggressive horns to simply hang on to what they've got. In a competitive transition a lot of intermediate companies get short shrift from operators like ORCL who must cut back their support and eliminate altogether smaller accounts. They don't want to; their size requires it, because in size you have trouble from negative cost/benefit when prices fall. The ratio exceeds one. This may be an opportunity for some of those neglected companies to consider alternatives like ODBS. ODIS must position themselves accordingly and they must discount prices to grab share. The right way is to get the deal in negotiation by finally coming back to the prospect who says no with a giveaway price. MSFT wrote the book on lowering prices and benefited a lot more than they lost. ODIS has nothing to lose that isn't lost anyway. So you report losses. If you don't get tough with the going, when things improve, where are you? Maybe Bowman understands this, but I have never seen Goldman do this kind of thing. It's called risk taking. Quite a lot more can be said. I've only sketched the basics. I recently tried to do this on the NSCP thread and the denizens there practically called me a heretic for trying to invent what I believe is the only way out for NSCP. It would be worthwhile to explore how pricing disorder in ORCL's finely oiled machine could benefit ODIS. No doubt there's plenty of bad implied and the players, the institutions, are already dwelling on that. You guys like to see the silver lining, so let's see you anticipate the way.