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Technology Stocks : PSFT - Fiscal 1998 - Discussion for the next year -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: adad69 who wrote (3589)	11/17/1998 11:04:00 PM
From: ratlong	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4509

Anyone ever hear of a company called Pandesic? A "start-up" jointly funded by SAP and INTC. Once of the companies primary goals is e-commerce applications built on/with SAP applications. They took management from both companies, put them together in a start-up environment and gave them TONS of cash. Pandesic is proceeding to run itself into the ground. Had a friend that worked there last summer- place empties out at 5:00. It's dying on the vine. I agree with the "financial instrument" argument but I think there are also some similarities to how SAP tried to institute a next level of products without shifting their core focus. PSFT may be taking a clue from SAP on WHY to do it but learning from SAPs mistakes and taking a different approach on the HOW part. Good that they are learning from past mistakes, but IMO, the problem with research/think tanks is that with all of their brillant ideas and people, they seem to continually miss one key item- TIME TO MARKET. Look at PARC, SRI and other "incubators." Also, when they have a product, it is often too great a shift to put the marketing/sales/distribution model around it. By automatically sticking it into PSFT, they address that concern. Now, in a more optimistic assessment, I had a lengthy conversation with one of the heads of R&D at Baan several years ago at the Microsoft PDC conference. He said(oversimplifying his comments, btw) that Baan and others were looking at repackaging their products based on very small components that could interoperate across any environment/network. Take something from Baan, something from PSFT, something from SAP and pick and choose your products. In that situation, "PSFT" as "PSFT" would have trouble getting access to the type of information required to conduct the R&D necessary to execute on this strategy. As MBA, the company would be able to collaborate with people outside of the framework and weight of PSFT. MBA will be relatively "unbiased", MBA addresses PSFT short term earnings/income issue and PSFT creates an opportunity to cultivate an entreneurial spirit in a company hiring 3000 people per year. If they address the TIME TO MARKET factor, I like the idea...