Rebirth of the Tech Madman

As far as development is concerned, sales alone are enough to explain everything-in the last fiscal year, PeopleSoft's operating income reached 5 billion US dollars.

What is the concept of this data?

In the past 1985, the operating income of IBM, the veteran computer overlord, exceeded 40 billion US dollars; the big brother in Silicon Valley, HP, had an operating income of about 6 billion US dollars; Motorola's income level was roughly in this range.

Compared with more comparable startups in the industry at the same time, PeopleSoft's sales are several times that of Apple and more than 30 times that of Microsoft, and can be ranked within the top 150 of the Fortune 500.

It is not surprising that PeopleSoft, which was founded the latest, has achieved such amazing results. This is determined by the characteristics of its products.

As early as the end of the 1970s, enterprise application software with simple functions such as financial management and inventory management that appeared on the personal computer platform could sell for more than 2,000 US dollars, far from spreadsheet software, word processing software, and basic compilers. Class products can be compared.

Gein, such a cost is already very close to the people. Mainframe and minicomputer systems are so expensive that only large enterprises and institutions can afford them, while small and medium-sized enterprises that also have needs can only sigh.

What's more, PeopleSoft is backed by Tang Huan's advanced and mature computer hardware platform, database platform, application development platform, network architecture, and more importantly, new solution concepts. , The very mature mainframe and minicomputer systems are poor.

Just in the first quarter of this year, PeopleSoft launched the latest version of its flagship product—enterpriseone3.6, announcing that the c/s—client/server architecture it adopted has been fully mature, fully supporting LAN and dial-up connections on the Internet. electronic data interchange.

PeopleSoft's products have a remarkable feature, that is, after several years of development, they have formed a set of their own development system - peopletools, which has a complete and friendly graphical user interface interface components on the front end, and a reliable and powerful interface component on the back end. business components, and even has its own scripting language——.

This scripting language is based on one of Zheru's development software, retains the original beautiful grammatical structure of the Pascal programming language, and is 100% compatible with the localized structured query language zeronesql of the Zheru database ebase, and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) will be officially released soon The sql86 standard.

This means that PeopleSoft's products have considerable independence, and it is entirely possible to support databases other than Zheru ebase at some point, such as ibm's db2, Oracle's oracle, etc.; The scripting language compiler allows the application software produced by the development platform peopletools to run on computer hardware platforms other than Fangyuan computer standards.

It is worth mentioning that peopletools has a gimmick, which is what Tang Huan mentioned in a paper discussing the software development process-rapid application development is the rad concept. Although the actual utility is hard to say, it does In terms of secondary development and other support links, it appears to be more responsive and flexible than similar products.

In addition, as a newcomer, in order to catch up with the old pioneers in the industry, PeopleSoft not only continuously strengthens its own team of industry experts, but also seeks cooperation with professional accounting firms to perfectly integrate IT technology and industry needs. One of the eight major accounting firms Arthur Young Accounting Firm, which was once established, was developed into an external strategic partner, which greatly challenged the cooperative business between IBM and Andersen.

After going through the IPO and becoming a listed public company, PeopleSoft's business can more easily penetrate into special target groups such as the government and institutions.

All of these all show the excellence of PeopleSoft stock, and Goldman Sachs dare not play tricks on the issuance link.

Not to mention that Tang Huan has long been an old fritter, and the cooperative relationship between them for many years, PeopleSoft alone can definitely be regarded as an expert who does not rub sand in his eyes.

...

On July 1, after watching the World Cup in Mexico, Tang Huan, who had cleared his heart of gloom, came to New York and summoned Louis Gerstner, David Duffield, Ken Morris and others to hear the latest status of the IPO.

Unlike being the largest shareholder in Zheru, Fangyuan, and EA, Tang Huan's personal shareholding ratio in PeopleSoft is not high, and his shares have been dispersed to various institutions, which can be regarded as a kind of hiding his wealth.

Correspondingly, Tang Huan is only a member of PeopleSoft's board of directors. The chairman is Louis Gerstner, the chief executive is David Duffield, and the president is Ken Morris.

After the successful listing, PeopleSoft will become our third largest company after Fangyuan and Zheru in one fell swoop. Louis Gerstner, who has always shown himself as a cold-faced Hades, said excitedly.

It seems that you haven't paid much attention to EA recently. Tang Huan smiled and didn't say anything more.

...

On Thursday, July 3, 1986, PeopleSoft's stock was listed on Nasdaq, with an issue price of $24 per share, a maximum of $46.8, and finally closed at $43.9.

Such a lively scene also reflects how good the current economic situation in the United States is.

In another day, July 4th, the National Day of the United States, followed by the weekend, this buffer period is enough to ensure that market-making companies and investors can further digest the value of PeopleSoft.

However, PeopleSoft, as judged by Louis Gerstner, surpassed EA in an all-round way, and encountered some resistance, because the haze of the Great Depression in the American game industry in 1983 had completely dissipated, the entire market was reactivated, and practitioners became active one after another. Finally, EA, who has finally made it to the end, will certainly not miss this revived video game gold rush.

The second-generation Xiaobawang game console no longer needs to carefully test the reaction of the market as before, and led many games with great fanfare, and came back from the Japanese market in a mighty way.

For this homecoming, EA has made careful preparations in both hardware and software.

In terms of hardware, the second-generation Xiaobawang game console has been optimized, and a new 1986 version of the second-generation Xiaobawang game console has been launched.

In fact, this move is also a challenge to competitors.

The first generation of Xiaobawang game consoles can be said to have tapped the potential of 8-bit home video game consoles to the extreme. Anyone who squeezes in will end up eating dirt behind EA's ass. The Nintendo FC game console was born at an untimely time and is in a miserable situation. , is a bloody vivid example.

Therefore, the game console companies that survived the previous Great Depression of the game industry shifted their product development direction to 16-bit home TV game consoles. Although the second-generation Xiaobawang game consoles have taken the lead in this field, there is still room big enough.

In addition, after repeated trials by ea, the recovery trend of the North American market has become more and more obvious. Those who have seen all this early on are afraid of missing the opportunity and will not be able to grab the slot. They are even more enthusiastic about product development. whip.

The fastest is nec. After the pc-9800 series was eliminated by Fangyuan PC in the field of personal computers, it has not given up on video game consoles. listed.

I have to say that this name more or less reflects the deep resentment that nec has been beaten by Fangyuan PC in the personal computer market.

Sega also revealed its own 16-bit home video game console development plan - megadrive, but it will not be released until the first half of next year.

As for Nintendo, it is a bit mysterious, but judging from its actions of selling iron and raising funds, it must not be idle.

In this situation where the rain is about to come and the building is full of wind, EA launched the 1986 version of the second-generation Xiaobawang game console, which can disrupt the rhythm of the layout of competitors.

In terms of software, in addition to carefully introducing the masterpieces of video games that the US market has missed in the past few years, EA has also grandly launched two new masterpieces of the sports game type-nbalive1986 and fifa1986.

It can be guessed from the name alone that these two new games are officially authorized by nba and fifa, otherwise, even if ea is a big brother in the video game industry, it will inevitably cause trouble.

This is indeed the case, and because sports games are a relatively new type and have their particularities, EA even set up a subsidiary company specifically for this purpose—easports to be responsible for specialized operations.

EA launched the Major League Rugby series and the Major League Baseball series earlier, especially the latter, which has achieved great success in Japan, where baseball is very popular.

On this basis, all aspects of the development of the nbalive project are progressing very smoothly, and its game background is also placed in the playoffs. After all, the current mainstream game storage medium is a cassette, and the size of the content has a certain limit .

It is conceivable that although they are still unable to really challenge the current strong NBA teams such as the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, the Golden State Warriors, which have already entered the playoffs steadily, are still favored unconsciously, including Players including Michael Jordan, in addition to participating in real-life marketing, also have certain unique skills in the game. And then talked about by the players.

In comparison, the launch process of fifa is a bit tortuous.

Because the popularity of football in the United States is much lower than that of basketball, the real market target of fifa is outside the United States, and then divided into versions corresponding to Serie A, League One, La Liga, European Championships, World Cup, etc., so that the corresponding Licensing negotiations have been wrangling for a long time.

At the same time, fifa had competitors early on, such as matchday in the UK-Match Day.

Although the running hardware platforms are slightly different, this game, which won the British Golden Handle Award as soon as it emerged, is a true peer-to-peer relationship with fifa.

EA CEO Trip Hawkins once planned to take advantage of the upsurge of the World Cup in Mexico to launch FIFA1986 to seize the market in one fell swoop and defeat competitors, but the R\u0026D team of easports suddenly discovered a serious AI problem and insisted on delaying the game. Posted later.

Trip Hawkins was very annoyed by his subordinates' skipping tickets, but Tang Huan appreciated this performance of excellence, so he said with relief: The business opportunities of the World Cup can't catch up, so let's wait for the Christmas business opportunities at the end of the year, and such as Diego Maradona and other spokespersons can play a greater role in publicity and promotion. ⑧☆miào⑧☆bi(.*)gé⑧☆.$.

It can be said that fifa1986 in EA's homecoming action is a bit of a sham. The game cg has been released, which can be described as exciting, but it only accepts reservations within the scope of EA player clubs.

Generally speaking, although there are still many home video game console manufacturers that have survived the Great Depression of the American game industry, and are gearing up to make a big splash on the 16-bit console platform, the pattern is quite different from the original time and space. Just the model of selling hardware at a loss and bringing profitable software can eliminate many ambitious people at once; and then they will have to face the stumbling block of 2D acceleration technology.

In short, this wave of video game gold rush has a gratifying momentum of revival, but the barriers to entry have been greatly raised. It is almost impossible for food companies to dare to parachute to snatch food like before.

At this stage of competition, game consoles are only one aspect. The real success depends on whether there are Tetris, Pac-Man, Mario, Monopoly, Three Kingdoms, etc. like EA. And other iconic signs to attract people, as well as a wider range of ecological circles.

For example, Tang Huan's Hollywood has been getting closer and closer to EA. The most recent example is the movie Top Gun released on May 16 - Top Gun, which was a big hit at the North American box office and broke through 100 million on a rampage. The US dollar mark made the video game of the same name unnecessary to promote. Once it was launched, it was a great success, and the sales volume easily exceeded 1 million copies. According to the summary and evaluation of various data, it is not a problem for this year's market to reach 2.2 million copies.

The hot sale of the video game Top Gun undoubtedly gave EA a good start in counterattacking the North American market. In Redwood City, Silicon Valley, the location of the EA headquarters and the EA campus, the flow of people coming and going has increased significantly, and there are many young entrants who are full of vigor and dreams.

Now that the North American market has been revived, how could EA be willing to let the younger brother of PeopleSoft ride on his neck as soon as he raised his leg-no matter how tall your enterprise application is, it will not work!