Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 679 This is the ultimate PC battle
The California high-speed rail is a large project costing more than 300 billion US dollars. Even if one-third of the funds go around the Bank of America, it is enough for the Bank of America, which is plagued by bad loans, to breathe a sigh of relief.

"Everyone, I just said that Don can bring us the most powerful good news." Alden Clawson looked around everyone with a smile.

……

"Don has always been our highest quality and most important customer."

"If Tang can become our partner, then this current difficulty will not be a problem at all, and there will be no need to sell assets on a large scale."

……

"Thank you all for your support." Amidst the compliments, Tang Huan smiled and waved his hand.

Can the sweet words of bankers be taken seriously?
Besides, the aura of the richest man in the United States is already dazzling enough. Tang Huan doesn't want to overly tease the sensitive nerves of those traditional tycoons outside of the IT industry.

Therefore, there is still a distance between the calculations of the Bank of America group and Tang Huan's ideas.

"I have just stated the principles of this cooperation." Tang Huan continued: "Based on this consideration, PeopleSoft should be more suitable than me personally, and Louis Gerstner is the best candidate to join the board of directors .”

The conference room fell completely silent, and Bank of America began to think about Tang Huan's cooperation plan to launch agents.

"PeopleSoft is an IT application provider that has made great achievements in the field of enterprise management. It has successfully provided solutions for nearly a thousand companies. If we partner with Bank of America again, we will undoubtedly benefit from it." Tang Huan took it easy. ground added.

"Whether it is PeopleSoft or Tang, there is no difference in essence. Everyone is in the California system, isn't it?" Alden Clausen took the lead.

"Indeed." The others began to chime in.

Amidst the discussion, the serious-looking Louis Gerstner straightened his back.He didn't expect that he would return to his old financial career so quickly after he switched jobs from American Express to the IT field in frustration.It seems that the boss is right, there are infinite possibilities in the future!

……

There is a hostile takeover by First Intercontinental Bank, and Bank of America is in a critical situation.Naturally, this group of people with vital interests did not dare to slack off at all, and the meeting continued until night.

In this way, Bank of America was able to hold a press conference as quickly as possible.

The media has been watching Bank of America's every move for a long time. After being notified, they immediately flocked to see how it plans to get out of the current predicament.

To people's surprise, Bank of America CEO Alden Clausen first introduced Louis Gerstner, who was sitting next to him, before making the big announcement.

Several heavyweight executives under Tang Huan are not unknown, and reporters can recognize them at a glance.They couldn't help but wonder, what is the chairman of the board of directors of PeopleSoft doing sitting here?
Alden Clausen quickly gave the answer, "What I want to tell you is that Bank of America and PeopleSoft will hold mutual shares and become strategic partners; and Mr. Louis Gerstner will enter Bank of America's Board of Directors."

Seeing everyone in the audience whispering and whispering after being surprised, Alden Clausen smiled smugly. This is what he wanted.

Next, the CEO of Bank of America, who had just taken office, began to announce the second news: "In the next few years, Bank of America will carry out a series of reforms including administration, and vigorously adopt the latest advanced technology. , while reducing operating costs, to provide customers with the best service. Regarding the plan in this regard, please introduce Mr. Gerstner to you.”

……

This press conference was almost like Alden Clausen's policy speech. There was not even a question session, and there was no mention of how to counter the hostile takeover of First Intercontinental Bank.

However, after these reporters left the press conference in a daze, they received the latest news. Bank of America had launched counterattacks. As soon as the New York Stock Exchange opened, it began to repurchase its own shares on a large scale. , that momentum is not ordinary decisiveness, obviously he has received Austrian aid, and his confidence has doubled.

Prior to this, the stock price of Bank of America fell as low as $8, which made First Intercontinental Bank covet it.When it launched a hostile takeover, Bank of America's stock price remained sluggish.However, after Bank of America's funds entered the stock market with great fanfare, it finally gave the stock price a shot in the arm, and began to rebound slowly under the competition between the two sides.

In fact, First Intercontinental Bank's hostile takeover of Bank of America was of a gambling nature.You know, Bank of America's portfolio is not small. Any increase in price will cause obvious cost pressure on the acquirer.

By the evening of the same day, interpretations of the news disclosed at the Bank of America press conference were also released.

Almost all accounts are: Bank of America is really lucky and has found a cash cow full of milk.PeopleSoft, which just successfully went public this year, is holding a lot of cash in its hands.

Of course, this is a very superficial analysis result.

The deeper meaning is that PeopleSoft, a supplier of business applications, enterprise resource planning solutions and independent software, is very likely to experience a leap in the breadth and depth of its product coverage through this strategic cooperation; This line of PeopleSoft has approached the companies it serves from another angle, and has further connected with Tang Huan and the upcoming California high-speed rail project to open up a vibrant business field for itself.

Under such circumstances, the First Intercontinental Bank, which was supposed to take a risk, might fail.

Sure enough, as the market digested the good news, Bank of America's stock price further rebounded, and the acquisition of First Intercontinental Bank became more and more difficult. It seemed that the goal was very close, but it just couldn't reach it, and finally had to announce the abandonment of the plan.

……

This result was expected by Tang Huan. After all, the Bank of America was only suffering from a serious illness, and its foundation was quite solid.

Seeing that the critics did not praise him, Tang Huan felt relieved and stopped paying attention, and continued to read the report of Yongtong Electronics.

This company, which operates telecommunications equipment, was listed on Nasdaq in early October.With ADSL, cable modem and other technologies, it has become a very popular newcomer in the telecommunications equipment industry with many powerful powers.

For this reason, some people also linked the IPO of Yongtong Electronics with the "Forbes 400 Rich List in the United States" - if the listing time is further advanced so that it can be included in the statistics, the richest man's net worth of 366 billion U.S. dollars will definitely increase A little longer.

However, Yongtong Electronics cannot compete with Renko, which develops software services. It is similar to Fangyuan Computer Company. During the operation process, it quite squeezes funds, so the money from the IPO circle really cannot be messed with.

"Competition in this field has not really started yet." Tang Huangang sighed, and Zhou Mi called from Xiangjiang and said: "HSBC secretly caused trouble and sent people to propose to the Hong Kong government to take back the franchise of Xiangjiang Telecom and release the license. Let more people share this cake.”

Xiangjiang Telecom's local local call franchise expires in 1995, and its long-distance call franchise will not expire until the beginning of the next century. The time is by no means short, and no one can casually give up the opportunity to enjoy this delicious cake. , Tang Huan is naturally no exception.

"Shen Bi, an old guy, really knows how to pick the weak point." Tang Huan sneered, "Just in time, I also prepared some pastries for HSBC, so let's tear them apart."

"In the past few years, Heung Kong Telecom has spared no effort in infrastructure construction and other aspects. Who will pay for the loss caused by forcibly recovering the franchise?"

"Take this opportunity to share the account book and let everyone see what practical things Heung Kong Telecom has done after it fell into our hands."

……

After giving this tit-for-tat instruction, Tang Huan couldn't care less about continuing to pay attention, because more and more news about IBM's new generation of personal computer PersonalSystem/2, namely PS/2, was disclosed, and the momentum became more and more popular. It is clear that it is about to come out, and he must hold a meeting immediately and be ready.

There is no doubt about the strength of the blue giant, not to mention the drive to do everything in its power and fight to the death.

Judging from the current information, the biggest feature of PS/2 is that it summarizes the gains and losses of all previous IBM-PC series, and draws on the success of Fangyuan personal computer to carry out a higher and wider overall perspective. The thorough and brand-new design is very similar to Tang Huan's high-level view and overview of the overall situation when he launched the Fangyuan personal computer.

Strictly authorized PS/2, supports Intel8086 and Intel80286, two old-fashioned microprocessors, can replace the previous IBM-PC, IBM-PC/XT, IBM-PC/AT and other full-line products, as if to make all current IBM- PC compatible machine manufacturers are killed, which can be seen from the announcement of more than ten product models aimed at this direction.

Of course, IBM will not forget Intel's latest generation microprocessor Intel80386. PS/2 has models using this CPU. Although it is late compared to competitors such as Fangyuan personal computers and IBM-PC compatibles, it is also more powerful because of it. for maturity.

Just before the opening of COMDEX in Las Vegas this fall, Cupertino in Silicon Valley suddenly became lively. Luxury cars gathered in the parking lot of Zheru's US headquarters, and helicopters occasionally took off and landed.

After seeing the grand occasion, local residents, colleagues such as Apple, and interested media people all understood that this is the people from all walks of life that Tang Huan scattered like dandelion seeds. They were summoned to come from Mountain View , Redwood City and other places gathered in Cupertino to hold a meeting of the entire group.

And there it is, in the huge Cupertino Center conference room, where hundreds of attendees are looking at slides and listening to an analysis of the current market situation, especially new products from archrival IBM.

……

"IBM has not only launched a series of new products, but also established a new personal computer standard. The MicroChannel Architecture adopted by PS/2 - the micro-channel architecture, is the most powerful proof."

"This is a brand-new and powerful system bus architecture, which adopts some technologies of mainframes such as System/360 in design, so it is different from the previous IBM-PC, IBM-PC/XT, IBM-PC/AT It’s a free model, and any company that wants to use it needs to pay a licensing fee.”

"The operating system that supports PS/2 is OS/2 jointly developed by IBM and Microsoft. Simply put, it supports all the most advanced mainstream functions such as protected mode and multitasking, except that it does not have a graphical user interface function. It will be It replaces the PC-DOS previously developed by Microsoft for the IBM-PC, which is MS-DOS."

"What we need to pay special attention to is that with the launch of PS/2, IBM also introduced an ambitious plan called Systems Application Architecture - System Application Architecture or SAA."

"As we all know, we have launched a series of Application Programming Interfaces - application programming interfaces or APIs - in the fields of underlying system calls, network communications, video acceleration and other fields. The response has been excellent and very popular, and has won the support and support of a large number of third-party manufacturers. It plays a decisive role in occupying more market share for our products.”

"IBM's SAA, similar to our API, would provide a mainframe interface on the PC platform. That doesn't mean much for a computer that's completely personal, but it's different for a business computer. We know that IBM still rules today leading the mainframe market."

"One of the reasons why IBM's mainframe, the System/1960, was so successful in the 360s is that all hardware platforms have a consistent software interface."

"Now, IBM intends to replicate this successful experience through SAA, so that all its products from mainframes to personal computers have a unified interface."

"It can be said that we have realized IBM's vision in advance to a certain extent. But don't forget that our Fangyuan personal computers, Fangyuan workstations, Fangyuan servers, and Fangyuan supercomputers are brand-new products in the 1980s. They were designed from the very beginning. Taking into account the need for the same interface, space was left.”

"After enjoying the huge profits brought by the mainframe for decades, IBM has also carried a heavy burden virtually. SAA wants to integrate all the old-fashioned products and the latest products into a unified architecture, just like It is almost impossible to pursue [-]% perfection."

"Still, as long as the SAA achieves most of its goals, it's a big enough threat."

……

When the slide screen dimmed, Tang Huan turned on the microphone in front of him and slowly said: "You should have felt it, the elephant is really angry."

Amidst the laughter, Tang Huan's face became more serious, "You should be able to imagine how cruel the next market competition situation will be. This will be the ultimate battle for personal computer standards. Within the next 18 months, we will be able to distinguish The results will come.”

(End of this chapter)