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

To: Elmer who wrote (3679)	11/22/1998 1:43:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4509

David, in the last month or so? Well, 2 things I guess. One is this new entity which I see (from a non-financial perspective) as a means for development of new technologies that psft couln't buy. In the past they have purchased technology and acquired talent that way - this is a diversion. Psft has made some investments in e-commerce ventures such as Ariba so an alternative strategy to forming momentum would have been to buy Ariba and staff up from there. But Ariba is a java product and has an architecture that perhaps psft decided was not appropriate for a next generation e-commerce platform. I see this as a positive move because I dont see any obvious e-commerce companies now that really offer much to psft (Im not in the business of looking at startups Im just saying in general I dont see anything - the ecommerce companies around are content like ebay, etc). I suspect what psft wants is some technology to plug into theirs to create a Dell-like shop. It isnt there - they have to develop it. This is a double edged sword, so Id say momentum is a small positive - representing something, but what will materialize we dont know, however better than sitting around since psft isnt Sap and cant afford to do that. The second thing which is a positive is weve seen yet more reflections from software vendors indicating slowing - the latest is BEA - so its clear this is an industry thing vs the original denial where some were speculating that Sap gaining mkt share was the issue. So overall neither of these is a big positive for now, however a different outcome to one of the above (like Sap mkt share) could have been a big negative. Im still bullish long term on psft - love the company - but I just dont see much happening in sw until mid-next year so its inktomi for me, for now. Michelle