Chapter 739: This Is the Ultimate PC Battle

The California high-speed rail is a large project costing more than 30 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 Tang can bring us the strongest good news." Alden Clausen laughed and looked around the crowd.

...

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

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

...

"Thank you for your respect." Tang Huan waved his hands with a smile amidst the compliments.

Can the sweet talk 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 was completely silent, and the Bank of America began to think about Tang Huan's cooperation plan for launching an agent.

"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 become a partner with Bank of America, we will undoubtedly achieve many successes in one fell swoop." 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 business of finance so quickly after he switched from American Express to the IT field in frustration. It seems that the boss is right, there are infinite possibilities in the future!

...

In addition to the hostile takeover of First Intercontinental Bank, Bank of America can be said to be at a time of life and death. The group of people who were concerned with vital interests naturally did not dare to slack off in the slightest, and the meeting lasted 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's command are not unknown people, and the reporters can recognize them at a glance. They couldn't help wondering, what is the Chairman of the Board of PeopleSoft doing 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, when these reporters left the press conference in a daze, they got the latest news that Bank of America had launched countermeasures.

As soon as the New York Stock Exchange opened, it began to repurchase its own stocks on a large scale. The momentum was unusually decisive. Obviously, it received Austrian aid and its confidence 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 has a very gambling nature. You must know that Bank of America has a big plate, and a random price increase will cause obvious cost pressures on the acquirer.

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

Almost all the calibers are: Bank of America really got lucky and found a cash cow with a lot of milk. PeopleSoft, which has just been successfully listed this year, is holding a lot of cash in its hands.

Of course, this is a very superficial analysis.

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 was just out of reach, 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.

The company, which operates telecommunications equipment, was listed on Nasdaq in early October. Relying on ADSL, cable modem and other technologies, it has become a very popular newcomer in the telecommunications equipment industry full of great 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 36.6 billion U.S. dollars will definitely rise Longer.

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

"The competition in this field has not really started yet." Tang Huangang sighed, and Zhou Mi called from Xiangjiang and said: "HSBC secretly played tricks and sent people to propose to the Hong Kong government to take back the exclusive right of Xiangjiang Telecom and release the license. Let more people share this cake."

Heung Kong Telecom's local telephone franchise period is 1995, and the long-distance telephone franchise period will have to wait until the beginning of the next century. The period is by no means short, and no one can casually give up the opportunity to enjoy this delicious cake , Tang Huan is no exception.

"Shen Bi, this old guy really knows how to pick the weak point." Tang Huan sneered, "It just so happens that 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 personal computer personalsystem/2, or 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 the previous ibm-pc series, and draws on the success of the Fangyuan personal computer to carry out 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 the current ibm- PC compatible machine manufacturers are killed, which can be seen from the fact that they have announced more than a dozen product models aimed at this direction.

Of course, IBM will not forget Intel's latest generation of microprocessor intel80386. PS/2 has a model using this CPU. Although it is late compared to competitors such as Fangyuan personal computer and IBM-pc compatible machine, it is also more advanced because of this. 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 took off and landed occasionally.

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 so it is, in the huge cupertino central conference room, hundreds of attendees are looking at the slides and listening to the analysis of the current market situation, especially the new products of the main rival ibm.

...

"IBM not only launched a series of new products, but also established a new personal computer standard. The micro-channel architecture adopted by ps/2 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 Replacing the pc-dos previously developed by Microsoft for the ibm-pc, that is, ms-dos."

"What we need to pay special attention to is that with the launch of ps/2 this time, ibm also introduced an ambitious plan called - system application architecture or saa."

"As we all know, we have launched a series of application programming interfaces (APIs) in the fields of low-level system calls, network communications, and video acceleration, which have received excellent responses and are very popular, and have won the support and support of a large number of third-party manufacturers. Our products occupy more market share. Played a pivotal role.”

"ibm's saa, similar to our api, would provide a mainframe interface on the pc platform. that wouldn't make much sense for a purely personal computer, but it would be different for a business computer. we know that ibm still reigns today leading the mainframe market."

"The mainframe system/360 launched by ibm in the 1960s is so successful because all hardware platforms have consistent software interfaces." ⑧☆miào⑧☆bi(.*)gé⑧☆.$.

"Now, IBM plans 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 the idea of ​​ibm in advance to a certain extent. But don't forget that our Fangyuan personal computer, Fangyuan workstation, Fangyuan server, and Fangyuan supercomputer are brand new products in the 1980s. They were originally designed Taking into account the need for the same interface, and then leaving space."

"After enjoying the huge profits brought by mainframes for decades, ibm also bears a heavy burden virtually. Saa wants to integrate all old-fashioned products and latest products into a unified architecture, just like It is almost impossible to pursue 100% 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 said slowly, "Everyone should feel that the elephant is really angry."

Amidst the roar of laughter, Tang Huan's face became more serious, "You should be able to imagine how cruel the market competition will be in the future. This will be the ultimate battle of personal computer standards. In the next 18 months, we will be able to separate The result will come."