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Technology Stocks : Enterprise Informatics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (3704)	5/19/1999 12:48:00 PM
From: Greg h2o	Respond to of 13797

thanks for your input, Michael. i think it's extremely important to remain objective in analyzing any stock--especially one which has put itself in the situation with which ALTS currently finds itself. it's easy to get overly optimistic when there appears to be a little light at the end of the tunnel, but i tend to agree with the extent challenges which Michael has brought to light. looking forward to seeing the turnaround, and alts is in a much better position to make it happen.... Jack, i hope you're correct and this is the best software of the bunch, but i that's exactly what i thought when alts sent me the cd rom that had a guy from microsoft touting the benefits of the new EB product.... hope things have truly changed and we see REAL sales of REAL product, but i'll have to see it to believe it. greg

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (3704)	5/19/1999 2:08:00 PM
From: jackhach	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13797

The current industry consolidation should bode well for both Altris shareholders and the Altris pipeline. People/Companies inevitably, like all other industry consolidations, begin to feel helpless in an environment dominated by one, two, or three big names (see: Banking, Auto, Airline, & Telecom as examples.) The service inevitably suffers, prices resume up, and focus becomes poor. Seat, seats, seats becomes the only solution to all of the "evolving/specific" problems the customer faces. There in lies the best opportunity for a small player to quickly gain market share. As you said "differentation" is lacking among players to this market. Altris is able to offer the flexability and immediacy that will otherwise become harder, and harder to come by with OTEX, DOCS/HUMC, & the Lotus's of the world. Altris, for example, used its own delays to its own benefit by incorporating SQL etc.. into its the "Even Better" EB. Lotus could not do this during its R5 delays. Like politics -- the broader your customer base becomes -- the less likely you'll be able to make any meaningful change. How will Microsoft, for example, top Windows 98? They have a platform monopoly that will slowly pay less and less dividends going forward -- and what motivation do they have? The standard we now conform to will soon enslaves/limits us (i.e. Windows.) A smart company maintains its independence and quite intentionally trys to stay customer-specific and focused (there are far higher margins in this approach anyway.) This is not the direction most DM/KM companies are heading. They are all chasing the numbers and not the "client-specific" solutions. Nothing pays better then ingenuity. Besides nearly 85% of employees (those seats) work for companies with less the 50 people in the USA. I worked at Lotus -- they now embrace change like a Goldwater Republican -- although they will publicly swear/advertise up and down that they do embrace it. They are fully enslaved by the need for enormous overhead. They are losing money while gaining seats -- how does that figure? Lotus has fallen into the the same trap (faulty sales model) that destroyed their speadsheet dominance. They are enslaving themselves to numbers and not ingenuity. They are becoming followers (sheep/standardizers) and not inventors. Lotus now must compete with Microsoft Exchange instead of Microsoft having to compete with them. Notes has nearly becoming indistinguishable from Exchange. 50% of R5's features are useless to 80% of its users. Does a small shop (<50 EE) want such a solution? Let them beat themselves to death over the large employers. There really is no "lasting" money in it. The demographics are simply horrible. -JH