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Tech Companies That Won't Survive 2009
buzzardsbay writes "Fresh off their annual market survey, eWEEK channel folks have compiled the list of tech vendors their readers think will fail, falter, or be sold off in 2009. It's important to note that these aren't the opinions of the magazine or its editors. The list comes from folks who work in IT, mostly technology resellers, who are out in the field selling, installing and maintaining this stuff. If there were ever canaries in the tech coal mine, they'd be these service and solution providers who live and die by the slightest shift in the markets. Some of the companies on this list, like Sun and AMD, are shocking because of their size. Others, like CA and Symantec, not so surprising." What other companies are headed for implosion, or should be if all were right with the universe?
Here's the list for those who are too lazy to read TFA or allow Flash:
1) Novell
2) NetApp
3) Checkpoint
4) McAfee (let's hope so!)
5) Salesforce.com
6) Juniper, CA, and AMD are tied for sixth place.
7) Sun, no surprise there
8) Citrix
9) Symantec (again, let's hope so!)
10) VMware
Fresh off their annual market survey, eWEEK channel folks have compiled the list of tech vendors their readers think will fail, falter, or be sold off in 2009.
Wrong. Everyone falters at some point. You could probably make a claim that 60% of companies will "falter" this year and be able to point to some debacle, low quarter or misstep to claim you were accurate. Hell, in one of the many fields it's in, Microsoft will falter in 2009--I guarantee it. From the actual article:
In the Channel Insider 2009 Market Pulse Survey, we asked solution providers which vendors they thought would go out of business or be acquired in 2009.
So you're underscoring just how stupid the people that filled out this survey are. Because to say that Sun, AMD or even Novell will be acquired or out of business by December 31st, 2009 is like betting on your favorite American Football team to win the Super Bowl in 2025.
The Channel Insider Prediction at the bottom of these reveals just how unlikely every single one of these predictions comes across as. They predominately disagree with every single reader prediction.
It means that not only are we, the readers, being presented with completely contradictory statements on every page but every single statement is unfounded and backed up by nothing. No market saturation analysis or even talk of operations and profits. Market cap and revenue are good indicators but they don't mean everything.
Others, like CA and Symantec, not so surprising.
"Not so surprising?" Tell me, what has changed so dramatically for 2009 that makes you say that these companies will be acquired or go under?
So tell me, what is a list of reader predictions dealing with the finances and markets of tech companies doing on a 'news for nerds' site?
What other companies are headed for implosion, or should be if all were right with the universe?
Ah, the coup de grÃce for this article ... I'm certain that the Slashdot community will proffer only on the most unbiased and strongly founded suggestions for this objective question.
My work here is dung.
This is the same sort of stuff we hear on Slashdot every day. The actual evaluation at the end of nearly every entry says, "Not very likely".
Though I do think that Sun needs to expand their product strategy or face extinction. Their current high-end market may be lucrative, but it's continually being eaten away at by cheaper and cheaper equipment.
Personally, I think Sun would do well to enter the desktop market. Their Mad Hatter system was a good first try, but they abandoned it before it had a chance to mature! (Speaking as one of Sun's customers who paid money for the software just to be left out in the cold.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How would you feel if you were the owner or a shareholder of one of companies so prominently set to fail? Self-fulfilling prophecies all around. Given how sensitive to subjective perception these things are, it's by now probably enough for a company's name to be mentioned in the same sentence as the word "bankrupt" for it to really do so.
-- Sig down
We'll just release 2010 ahead of schedule.
Have gnu, will travel.
So THIS is where I find out I'm being downsized?
More music, fewer hits
Both EMC/VMWare and Sun Microsystems (VirtualBox) are on the list. Does anybody honestly think that Microsoft will rule the virtual machine market? I think it's one or the other.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Why the fuck is this presented in Flash? It has NO added value and makes the material harder to digest.
My Babylon
10. VMWare
9. Symantec
8. Citrix
7. Sun
6. AMD
6. CA
5. Salesforce.com
4. McAfee
3. Checkpoint
2. NetApp
1. Novell
Why is this in Flash? Why did that page need javascript?
I usually RTFA but in this case there doesn't appear to be an article. There's a bit of an intro but no list of companies that I can see.
The scumbags who make the popups that tell you that your computer's been infected and needs to buy their product or OMG you'll lose all your family photos and pr0n! Such low-life tactics should be amptly rewarded with a swift chapter eleven - or should be, at least in my opinion.
Pats.
"Pats?" I haven't heard of them ... are they like a team of sexually indeterminable players?
My work here is dung.
Sites that code cluelessly and need javascript and flash to display a simple list will die first (hopefully, I am not so sure). Topping the list is http://www.channelinsider.com/
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
How can you expect a list based on reader predictions to be accurate? Moreover, how can you expect the list to be taken seriously when the "Insiders" contradict the majority of the reader predictions?
While people can be quite intelligent, allowing the mob to make investment picks based on rumours they read on Blogspot is simply ridiculous. If many analysts couldn't see the collapse of Bear Sterns coming before the last week, I doubt that these readers have the technical skills to predict the collapse of these companies a year in advance.
Web Hosting: Unlimited storage and bandwidth: $5/month
SCO!
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
would they take ati with them, or would ati be sold off. And if AMD went under what would that mean for intel in terms of monopoly rules, and to nvidia if ati went with them
Watching CA and Symantec die would be kind of satisfying, if only from a "revenge for all the problems your shitty fucking products have given me over the years" perspective.
Doubt it, though.
Creative Labs.
Have they released a good product in this millenium?
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Sox
Why make a list of companies that will "go out of business", then hedge by saying they might be bought up, then finish with, well we don't think much of this is likely.
Reminds me of a skit I saw once.
Interviewer: You have an facinating new book called, "Was Hitler Welsh?" Well was he?
Author: After exhaustive study, I can confidently say, no he wasn't.
OK, here goes:
10)HP :D
9)eBay
8)Nintendo
7)Adobe
6)Red Hat
5)Amazom.com
4)IBM
3)Microsoft
2)Apple
1)Google
Those who read the article will see that the survey hedges in every way possible and that the above list is _not_ a list of companies that people expect to see disappear. It's a list of companies that people discussed, looked up the turnover of and then wrote noncommittal "analysis" next to.
Please Anonymous, if you're going to try and summarize the article for those too lazy to click on a link, at least make sure you get it right. This is rubbish.
Why would anyone want to include Mac OS X as a guest? Apple goes out of their way to make it not run on things that aren't Macs. Why would someone then adopt it as a virtualized guest?
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Apple? They've been going out of business for YEARS!!!
And why isn't SCO on that list? Isn't it about time they die already?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If you actually go through the list, the comments on all of the companies listed state they're not going out of business in 2009.
What was the point of this again?
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Slide decks should not go on the web. That is just sick and way too time consuming.
NetApp going down, would surprise me.
Think Deeply.
I recently spoke to a director of sales.
His sales pipeline is double the one he had last year, because customers have decided to stop fooling around with start ups that will probably be out of business next year, and go with known brand names.
I'm not giving any more details because I'm not very familiar with insider trading laws, and don't want to get in trouble. But anyone who thinks that larger companies that sell into the IT marketspace are in trouble, clearly have no clue about what's really going on.
I'm sorry, but how did this make to the front page? The selections on the list are wrong or obvious, but the list itself is a freaking flash slideshow with only 1 item per slide! The editors need to do their jobs.
Not because they don't deserve to rot in hell for the bloat that is NAV, but because they just bought Messagelabs.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/amd-10-bagger-pick-2009/story.aspx?guid=D82F39D6-90CC-442A-AECF-FC1C7CE9BD1C&dist=SecMostCommented Which means he thinks the stock could sell for $20 in 2009 (10x current share price, which was ~2 when the article was written). I'm not saying this is a realistic prediction (I hope it is since I'm a shareholder), but just goes to show how meaningless these stupid predictions are. Just like this summer when nearly everyone was predicting $200+/barrel oil.
The NetApp vs Sun lawsuit over ZFS isn't going the way NetApp would like it to ...
http://www.sun.com/lawsuit/zfs/index.jsp
To the contrary, NetApp may end up like SCO vs Novell, where the initial complainant ends up owing the respondent. Sun could very well end up both pwning AND owning NetApp.
As for the antivirus companies - I wish, but there will always be *some* "useful fools" around, and people whose financial self-interest aligns with enabling them to stay dumb and foolish.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Hell, Via is still muddling through in both of those markets, and they're much smaller than AMD.
This is the worst post ever. Even according to the article itself the most likely percentage is 25? How does that qualify as "Won't Survive 2009?" Waste of time.
Just got a mini this weekend, first mac ever. Everything I touch always seems to die so I predict they'll be gone before we pop the corks on '10.
I've tried using this power for good by giving Bush a hug but the Secret Service wouldn't let me through the rope line.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Or are they counting it as already gone (since it seems to be a zombie now...)?
If you actually read closely, the article discusses companies that could go out of business. So it's a list of major tech companies whose businesses are being buffeted by some force and for whom 2009 is going to be a rough year, one that they might not live through if they're careless. The "insider predictions" are all confident that the companies will live, and even the "reader predictions" predict at best a 20% chance in failure. So one can assume that only one, maybe two, of these companies (at most) will actually go under this year.
C'mon, folks. You've been watching the news in the last, say, two decades and you're asking "why flash"?
Didn't you notice, the less content one has to present, the more you have to put into the presentation to cover it up.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Big companies with real products and a user base can hang on for a long time. Unisys is still around. NCR (National Cash Register), amazingly, is still around, and still selling cash registers (now "Point of Sale Workstations"). Most of the names on the list, like CA, Sun, VMware, and Novell, still have an installed base to service. They can shrink and remain profitable.
I'd look for collapses in advertising-funded companies. We'll probably see some of the social networks go bust. Companies that get most of their revenue from Google ads are at risk. Marchex (the people with "www.90210.com" and hundreds of thousands of similar junk domains) have had their stock drop from 25 to 5. Expect to see free hosting sites, free mail services, and free blog services shut down.
I did a list like this back in the dot-com area, based strictly on cash-flow analysis. That was quite accurate. It's easy to do this analysis for money-losing startups. The definition of "dead" used was "stock dropped 90%". From a stockholder perspective, that's "dead", even if some vestige of the company hangs on. That's was quite common with overfunded startups, by the way. Some of them succeeded, some of them went bust, but many of them become what VCs call "zombies"; they could generate enough revenue to cover their costs, but they couldn't pay back the money invested in them.
For having the most annoying way to read a story. Honestly, after reading this story who would go back to that website. I do give them credit for going against the grain and not making judgments based on the history of the companies or sound logic.
Several of the names on that list crop up every time the doomsters gather for another round. In any case, there's nothing wrong with being "sold off". Sometimes that's the making of a company which now has access to capital and markets it would never have had on its own. The only thing one can say for certain is that no one know what's going to happen, and one can say with some degree of likelihood that if some big names do falter in the next two or three years then among them will be some names that have never been on a a Doomsday list because everyone thought were fine. There'll be a lot of execs out there sitting on some awkward secrets (read: big holes appearing in the balance sheet and the banks unwilling to refinance) or some awkward legal claims (read: massive damages for corporate IT scams the victims have so far kept secret for fear of affecting their sales and stock price).
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
And Cisco (I think they deserved to be named since Juniper is mentioned specifically).
Revs
Hey, unlike the Sox, at least they actually play football, even if not the American variety.
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
Are you really that dim or are you just having a bad day?
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
AMD can't go down as that will give intel to much power. Just look at core i7 LOCKED in to intel chipsets. Do you really want to have $300 low end cpus with $250 - $300 low end MB?
When credit dries up. Only companies which are overly dependent on credit, collapse.
Deleted
More likely than any other on the list.
Bad day or not, what's the real benefit of running OS X as a guest? Sure, it's good for some people on the desktop, and if that's your use, you probably have a Mac already.
Virtualization is mostly used for servers. What "server" tasks can OS X do that Linux/Solaris/Windows can't do better?
Not to nitpick, but VMWare Fusion runs on the Mac OS host, and as of version 2.0, Fusion now supports Mac OS X Server as a guest operating system. Your VMWare knowledge is about 6 months stale.
What Pepsi is to Coca-Cola. And vice versa.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
and Intel
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
I don't know why, but company buy-out/sale isn't a demise of the company, to start out.
And to end, IMHO, all of those companies will be ok thru 2009... Unless they blunder naturally, but that no company is full-proofed...
Anything you can do, Mac can do better. Mac can do anything better than you.
What
What is
What is with
What is with the
What is with the infinite
What is with the infinite refresh?
???
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Ummm I would say bad headline, but it really is the article that does not follow it's own headline.
Of the 10 companies listed there is only one they note as possibly selling in 2009 (Novell) and they say it highly unlikely they will just go under. So then this is really just a bad end of year lazy editor story. Move along.
On another note, I have only ever taken the pains of looking at one other story from CI (Ad's are bad, Flash is worse.) and it was just as bad as this one.
Maybe not today, maybe not tommorow, but some times and soon...
Someone will notice that Intel has beccome a full-scale monopoly that does indeed prevent other competitors from entering the market and competing.
With AMD, Intel has a nice biopoly which it can easily and truthfully claim competition(not fair market competition mind you). AMD is all too happy to allow this and even lend a helping hand sometimes.
If AMD goes then someone will pick up the pieces, and if they don't eventually you'll get back to monopoly litigation. Might not happen within the year, but it will eventually happen. That sort of litigation can force Intel to split and worse.
It can "look and feel" better....
Filesharing to Macs?
Netbooting?
Portable home directories for Macs?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Running OS X as a guest would be perfect for a linux- or windows-based web developer who wants to test out how their client-side code runs on a mac.
Or for a mac software developer who wants to maintain multiple versions and configurations of OS X to test their software against.
Or for windows users who want to try out OS X on their existing expensive hardware, without having to lay waste to their existing installation, or fork out a sizeable chunk of money for more hardware.
I've read some racist comments on Slashdot before, but you get points (figurative points) for sheer animus.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
No it can't.
Bad day or not, what's the real benefit of running OS X as a guest?
The same reason that running Windows XP as a guest is a useful thing: serving (and controlling) virtualized desktops.
VMware's version is View. <rant>When will companies remember that they need to give their products a "Googleable" name?</rant>
and Adobe
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It won't. Don't worry.
factor 966971: 966971
Good thing parent wasn't talking about VMWare. Granted, the information is interesting, but it has little to do with the parent's statement.
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
none of the companies mentioned are predicted to 'fail' -- one possible and one plausible
some monkey should be spanked for generating spurious traffic.
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
Go through the list - most of the companies they say they expect WILL survive.
Yes it can!
Welcome to Microtel Gooscobe, Inc. How may I help you?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
The same reason that running Windows XP as a guest is a useful thing: serving (and controlling) virtualized desktops.
VMware's version is View. <rant>When will companies remember that they need to give their products a "Googleable" name?</rant>
Probably as soon as Microsoft changes the name of Word to something else. In other words, you search for VMware View the same way you search for Microsoft Word.
Did I mis-sunderstand the thread of the conversation? Ah well. You win some, you loose some.
Interesting (Okay, just plain odd)that they went to the trouble of polling their readers, but said they disagreed with every prediction.
Either their readers don't know what they're talking about, or they don't - {G}.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
it lacks online cheking, so it's great {...} only {...} for full system scans.
Don't forget the plugins, etc.
You can also use clamav to check typical "arrival points" :
- most downloading software (peer-2-peer clients, etc.) offer the possibility to run a specified command once a download has arrived. Thus you can check your torrents with clamav upon completion.
- several plugins for FireFox like Safe Download, Download Scan, Download Statusbar, etc.. all offer "scan upon download completion" too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Now there would be the ultimate in scary zombie companies of they would ever merge.
and the headline is completely wrong - the article lists ONE company that MIGHT go out of business or be acquired and also speculates that Novell MIGHT be acquired (by whom? Who knows?)
Total garbage. Don't waste your time.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
...and that's an insult to the hog!
Some of these companies you may not like; some you'd hope they would just go away. Wishing isn't going to make it so. I see at least two firms whose booked orders for 2009 are such that they'll have no trouble surviving ... and one of those would drag at least two other, not listed, major firms down.
This is just gross incompetence and/or somebody who's desperate to make some cash on a "put."
If you look at 2 equivalently priced systems side by side, AMD may have a little less power, but a whole lot less heat as compared to an Intel system.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
bias: I use to work for Symantec 3 years ago.
I always love this one. I was at Symantec for almost 7 years. I never even saw Norton products. Yes they use to be crap (have gotten aLOT better recently but I still don't run them) but Symantec has a huge stake in the Enterprise networks. I guess most people who bother to respond think their network of 500 users is big. This past year as a consultant working with Symantec products the average network I was in was 70,000+ seats.
John Thompson was smart. 9 years ago he realized the consumer AV space was going to get crowded. The merger with Veritas took longer than was hoped for but now things are going gang busters and most of the Symantec partners have more work than they now what to do with. Sym has dozens of key pieces of software all over the security spectrum. You may not like Norton but don't count them out.
Anyone else look at this and think "Gee, someone should start Fuckedcompany.com about ten years ago?"
Wish it was still around...
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Would you like a 5 minute argument or the full course of eight.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
"Despite"? I think they misspelled "Because of". note to the entire industry: getting in bed with Microsoft will kill you! there's simply no protection strong enough for whatever they're carrying.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Yes it can, yes it caaaaaaan!
Who compiled this garbage?? What are they trying to do, spook the market??
All these companies will power through 2009 and 2010 like nothing happened.
After that however.....
VMWare - vm systems are giving way to container based systems, unless they can get hardware companies fully on board.
All spyware firms - as MS Crashware is removed gradually from the market and everyone's laptops run embedded linux or are Apple OSX based, we wont need this crap.
The rest of them.... who knows. Sun always survive somehow, somebody somewhere always needs big servers.
I'd be somewhat concerned about Apple though - their server software is a disaster (it is, don't bother arguing for the sake of it). Their laptops are great, but they'd better keep going down that pricing curve or the little embedded jobbies are going to leave them for dead. They brought out a phone about 3-5 years too late for it to matter and are about to get/are getting stomped in that market. Nobody cares about mp3 players anymore, they are cheap commodity items and anyone who pays over $250 for one is an idiot. So, whats that leave them with?
I am very disapointed to see Juniper on that list, not as though that list really means shit. Juniper is finally releasing products that I can actually use in the environments that I work. Personally I'd rather work with their equipment over Cisco's equipment any day of the week. It's still on the expensive side, but you get more bang for your buck when you compare their products next to Cisco... One thing I wish they would come out with is a line of switches that's just a step down from the EX line --- They are nice, but I really don't need 20 layer 3 switches in a network of 20 switches. JUNOS rocks.
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
People saying Sun does not have expertise writing user friendly GUIs don't know what they are talking about.
There is not such a thing as an user friendly GUI, what we have is commonly used GUIs, being popular means people have less reluctance to use something, no matter how hideous or complicated it is.
Sun uses GNOME in Open Solaris which is a modern, flexible, usable GUI. There is no reason for a computing literate person to be unable to use it.
If you have been using something else for years then this will not seem "user friendly", if this is your first experience with a desktop environment you could not care less and will use Open Solaris productively.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Oh, beleive me. My main PC has been running Linux (Slackware, then Ubuntu) for the past 7 years. But I keep a Windows partition around for games, and that's the one I'm trying to protect (and since I'm gaming, "features" that break that are deal-breakers: Nortion/AVG dragging the system through concrete, Antivir popping up the stupid focus-snatching nag screen in the middle of Ranger-spiking Jade Quarry, etc...)
To answer your question specifically: I have a 2 core linux box with 8 G ram. But Mac+iTUnes is the best way to work with my iPod.
I run a copy of WinXP in VirtualBox just so that I can run two applications: Whizfolders -- an outliner tool that has no real equivalent in unix -- and IMatch a photo management tool that has features that I can't find in a unix tool.
Anyone who is writing software for multiple OS's needs an easy way to test that code on those same multiple OS's
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Microsoft
Oh, wait, this is about TECH companies. My bad.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Check your sig. It just MIGHT have something to do with it....
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
But, my sig is not my comment.
Also, my sig is completely accurate.
So, once again, why are people modding my comments as trolls?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Check your assumptions. You'll find that at least one of them is wrong.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
OK, I'll check:
My sig is not my commment. That's true.
When I masturbate, I usually think about GW Bush. That's true as well.
So, Mr. Firewall, please tell me what is wrong according to your fantasy world.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Check ALL of your assumptions. You've missed quite a number of them.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
And it is not even on the list :)
Pick me, I'm clean
Oh wait, I assumed that the people reading my post weren't giant cocksuckers. That must be the trouble.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
And you can't figure out why you're getting modded as a troll. Breathtaking, absolutely breathtaking.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
I considered it possible that you're a complete moron who can't tell when he's getting fucked with. It's still a viable theory.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!