Unisys to miss targets, but SAP is upbeat

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Unisys could have done well. SAP can't lose.

Unisys could have been a great company. They had tons of great software that would have been well received if they sold it. Their best inventions were kept internal, and then mismanaged into oblivion.

Forget the GIF fiasco. Unisys had the patent, and their lawyers had to defend it if its use came to their attention. But Unisys really tried to make certain that very few products came to their attention. It was almost impossible to discover who to contact for a license, and they set the RAND cost of the license so low that it did not cover the cost of handling the paperwork. ASAP, they released the patent into the public domain.

Unisys' big mistake is that they became a Microsoft "partner". For the "priviledge" of putting MS's logo on their website and marketing materials, they agreed to share their technology research with MS. MS does not treat their free research centers well, and made the announcement of MS's 8-node 8-processor Enterprise Windows NT while Unisys was still trying to build a customer base for their 10-node 20-processor ES7000. This undercut the market for a third-party version of scalable Windows. Why pay the premium for Unisys' 200 CPU system when you can buy MS' 64 CPU system much cheaper?

Then you have the increased competition from the *NIX world. Few managers will bet their future on MS-related products when free-licensed Linux clusters can be had for less, and are more stable. Unisys' fortune is tied to MS's fortune, and even MS's management cannot see how MS can be relevant for another decade. When MS collapses, so will Unisys.

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SAP cannot lose. Oracle has admitted they have no clue how to compete beyond buying the competition to eliminate it. Even if Oracle is allowed to buy PeopleSoft, the merged company will be much smaller than the combination of the separate companies. See Unisys' history for how not to do a merger; Oracle + Peoplesoft is very like Burroughs + Sperry. Oracle's best hope is to lose their bid for Peoplesoft, but both companies have spent much effort and money in this deal, which hurts their competiveness. The uncertainty has helped SAP, and SAP will win more if the merger happens.

Posted by: solprovider   Posted on: 07/09/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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