Rotten bits, but not unexpected. Forwarded w/o permission
or attribution. The text below is NOT original with me.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: NY Times takes apart Computer Associates
There's a remarkable article about Computer Associates in the
business section of today's Times. It says that they have in
effect been cooking their books for years, by buying up other
software companies, then firing the support staff and selling the
customers discounted long-term license renewals, which they can
immediately book as income, even though the customers pay over
the life of the license, pumping up CA's reported revenue and
income. Of course, they can only do this once per acquired
company (long term is like ten years, which might as well be
eternity in the computer biz), and they have a big problem:
they've run out of companies to acquire.
The article carefully does not accuse them of doing anything
illegal, but the slime drips from every word. It also says
that CA's mainframe products and support are so awful and the
customers hate them so much that IBM finds that they make it
hard to sell mainframes, so IBM is now building competitive
products specifically targeted to knock off CA's.
It's been a while since I've seen a computer industry article
that's so sweepingly damning.
The online version, which requires registration, is at
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/technology/29COMP.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 29 2001 - 20:26:20 PDT