Web Conference?  Don't you mean Sales Pitch?

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 12:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [HP3000-L] Eloquence


I listened to the Web conference today about Eloquence.  I do not doubt the
technical aspects of the product. I do not want to discuss the technical
merits.

What I doubt is the economic long term viability of the product.

They claim 2,000 users today.  I would estimate that if they got every
HP3000 in use today, they are talking about a community of maybe 20,000 or
so.  So they maybe over the next few years grow significantly in percentage
numbers.  But at the end of that time, the number of users/servers running
would be relatively low compared to everything else on the market.  The long
term market differentiation is that it is compatiable with HP3000.  The only
interested customers would be HP3000's with less than 300 users with limited
user growth prospects.  Now you also remove from the list package solutions
and large customers, and you end up with even a smaller number of potential
users.  It may be low priced, but it's long term economics has to be less
than the HP3000's long term economics and HP is discontinuing that.

So I am hoping someone can explain how this product is economically feasible
over the long haul and not just a stopgap interim solution.

On the other hand, if OPENMPE was to be viable and this product was
integrated with other MPE parts and tested and sold as a
hardware/software/support solution owned by the user community where the
user community as a whole has a greater economic interest in the long term
survival of a single product. That message would be a much more powerful and
Eloquence could be a cornerstone to that solution.

As a standalone product, whose long term survival is the success of that
product alone, it just seems as a very risky long term solution.

Terry Warns

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