Hi, a) Anybody investigated the "IBM ON DEMAND" offer ?
We did because we thought we are running all the software as advertised but it's not true. There is so many new software things in here and everybody came back with : "What... never heard of some of these things".. b) Noticed the mess over at Oracle ? "At most companies, the loss of three chief financial officers in less than two years would be a disaster. At Oracle (ORCL:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take), it's more like a farce. Wall Street is shrugging off the surprise resignation of Greg Maffei, who quit Thursday after only four months on the job. In recent trading, shares of the database giant were up 21 cents, or 1.7%, to $12.41 a share. http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/tech/billsnyder/10251386.html?cm_ven=GOOGL EN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA My comment : Normally if a CFO decides to run, it means he decided it's impossible to "cover up" the skeleton's and here we have three in a row but you knew that already. Remember the CA debacle ? c) What's happening over at Software AG (Frankfurt TecDAX: SOW) : "Software AG (Frankfurt TecDAX: SOW), today announced its results for the third quarter and first nine months ended 30 September 2005. Operating income for the third quarter rose to €23.1 million, an increase of 10% over the €21.0 million for the year-ago period." A) Net income for the third quarter rose by 20% because : 1) managing operating expenses .. ( Hmmm... how did they do this ? ) 2) a lower tax rate b) Total licensing revenue for the third quarter increased 16 % 1) Not sure how much of this was because customers upgraded their hardware ? This was achieved in spite of : 1) continuing investments to introduce new products 2) entering new markets 3) expand the partnership network 4) and strengthen sales and marketing activities 5) the company acquired Casabac Technologies GmbH, a specialist for web-enabled enterprise applications, during the third quarter. 6) Appointed Alfred Pfaff to the Management Board responsibility for the "Region Central Europe and Asia". ( Sounds like China/South Korea is the potential new market area but Singapore wants to build a Casino Resort ) http://www1.softwareag.com/corporate/news/default.asp d) Big cuts in Federal/Military spending I knew this was on it's way. Anybody saw that the Pentagon warned all the Defense Contracting companies about the pending reduction in the budget. Final Figures will only be available in 3 weeks... cause they are waiting for the Whitehouse. BMC , are you listening... Had some flak from some software grease monkey's in BMC about 3 weeks ago. ( Yes, BMC did not lay off all their people and some of them have time to play on the IBMMAIN email list during the week. ) And Kathleen Blanco's share of the spending "party" down in New Orleans is going to be about 3.7 Billion. Her re-action ? "We can not afford that" but the spending spree is still continuing. Did anybody see the reaction of Ted Stevens after a general request for spending cuts to pay for the "Katrina Party" ? Watch the Jon Stewart show at 19:00 CST on the Comedy Channel because it's unbelievable. e) DELL Had lots of friends that where laid of from DELL within the last 2 weeks. I think they "dumped" 700 people... It's called the American way of caring for the most important thing. Enough for one day... At least Greenspan is convincing the World Markets to keep faith in the Dollar and Clinton made the big suggestion this week, as some of us expected ... it's called "An alternative to leadership"... Not so sure about that ? Anton Pointers to some of the above : Ted Steven's Tirade : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-yn/content/article/2005/10/22/AR20051022010 40.html Guy Fawkes : http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/state/monarchs_leaders/gunpowder_hutton_01.shtm l ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
