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Technology Stocks : Siebel Systems (SEBL) - strong buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Melissa McAuliffe who wrote (2136)	10/13/1998 6:37:00 PM
From: j_b	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 6974

<<I wonder if PSFT isn't making a mistake by not acquiring one of these companies vs. this partnering thing they're doing. >> Interesting concept, but I would think the potential customers of a front-end product would think twice about purchasing a Siebel product if it was too tightly associated with one back office vendor (if it wasn't the one the potential customer was using, or if they felt that it would limit their future ability to change back office packages). It would decrease the value of Siebel overall, making the acquisition a bad deal unless they could adjust the valuation of Siebel to match (unlikely to be accepted by SEBL shareholders). By partnering, they extend the utility of their own product, without having to pay a premium for the front end product that would take 5-10 years to recoup. If this was a build versus buy decision, I would agree with you. The reduced time to market, the existing market share, the goodwill, etc. would justify paying the premium.

To: Melissa McAuliffe who wrote (2136)	10/13/1998 7:51:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Respond to of 6974

Melissa, yep the ERPs have to find new opportunities. Thats what this whole middle mkt thing is about sure. Except the ERPs products are hardly geared for the middle market. You know what this reminds me of? A few years ago with engines. The engine vendors in the early 90s sold "site licenses" which was great for a while because it encouraged new users to come into the fold. But then, all the companies that wanted a dbms had one - then what? Kindof like ERP. We had so many years of tremendous growth with all these implementations. Now everybody has their ERP solution, now what? The thing is, in a general sense of course we are only on the very fringe of business automation what with the internet and all. But there arent any new products that really change the landscape for business to business automation yet - when and if that happens, it would probably spur the next phase of growth. But without that, its maintenance mode for backoffice. Frontoffice seems like a whole different thing since the market is newer. But still with the rest of the sector in a slump no one is going to give Sebl the premiums he used to have. Rats. Michelle