ShadowRAM: August 16, 2004

The vendor last week proudly pointed out that the site was getting 200,000 page views and about 1.3 million hits daily going into the games. One only hopes Vignette won't suffer the same embarrassment IBM did over the "Glitch Games" eight years ago in Atlanta. Vignette's relying on its own Olympic team of sorts: The local solution provider behind the site is The Greek Geeks. I'm not kidding.

Speaking of marquee events, Wall Street remains agog about the Google IPO (well, maybe not as agog as it was a month ago). For perspective, you might look back at another highly anticipated IPO, that of Salesforce.com. Its shares hit the New York Stock Exchange this summer at $11, rising to $17. For awhile, that is. The stock, trading under the CRM ticker symbol, was back to $11 or thereabouts last week.

Is Google really worth an order of magnitude difference in stock price? After all, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is also into good causes. His new book, "Compassionate Capitalism," calls on corporations to take a larger role for the greater good. But Benioff's personal efforts are separate from Salesforce's, as fiscal responsibility to shareholders dictates. Google, on the other hand, has told prospective shareholders it will spend on a new world order. Granted, this is a company that reported $1.35 billion in revenue in the first half. But isn't it Google's responsibility to take care of shareholders first? At $110 to $135 a share, it had better be.

Recycling is good, right? Lotus must think so. The code name of its proposed collaboration tool for the Eclipse IDE is "Jazz." Some of us who have been around the block a few times remember another Lotus Jazz, an ill-fated integrated applications package for the Macintosh that debuted (hoo-boy) in 1985!

Overheard in a cocktail lounge: The Lexmark-Dell honeymoon is over. Lexmark is going the extra mile to help VARs beat Dell in the field. What's more, it's looking at a solution provider product line that is differentiated from the Dell offering.

This may be music to HP's Carly Fiorina. She predicted a Dell-Lexmark divorce last year when she met with analysts in New York.

Speaking of Lexmark, the printer-maker took its barnstorming, five-city reseller road show to a new level when Bruce Petersen, director of sales for Comservco USA, a New York solution provider, took advantage of the Long Island stop to take Lexmark on an impromptu sales call to Hofstra University. Petersen says he's pitching its offerings in accounts he would never have considered as Lexmark opportunities before the tour.