Sonki: I know that you are in love with MSFT but I know that you have a little bit of Sun. I saw this article this morning. Since you are an info junkie I am sure you have already seen it. I thought it was interesting. MSFT looks like it is in a good position to continue domination.
JT
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Tuesday May 27 5:34 PM EDT
Company Press Release
Source: coursey.com
Will Sun Be the Next Apple? #1 Ranked Industry Newsletter Predicts Hard Times For Sun Microsystems With Java Sowing the Seeds of Its Parent's Doom
SAN MATEO, Calif., May 27 /PRNewswire/ -- coursey.com, the newsletter from industry analyst David Coursey, predicted in today's cover story that hard times lie ahead for high-flying Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq:SUNW).
In a lengthy cover story titled, ``As the Sun Sets'', coursey.com editor & publisher David Coursey points to ``the rich irony'' that at the very moment Sun Microsystems seems to have reached the zenith of its power, it has also become obvious that Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) has nothing to fear from Sun.
``The question isn't whether Sun can beat Microsoft, but whether it's the next Apple or Novell,'' Coursey writes. ``Worse, Sun's own child prodigy, Java is sowing the very seeds of its parent's doom.''
In his in-depth analysis of the company's strategic missteps, Coursey provides a list of the factors he believes support his prediction that Sun is on the brink of serious troubles. Sun, he says, faces a rough path in its bid to rival Microsoft as a software powerhouse and declining market share in its core hardware business, too. Coursey lays the blame for the impending problems at Sun on two factors: corporate culture and mismanagement of Java, the popular software language that once looked like a money machine for Sun Microsystems.
``Ownership of Java is much different from controlling it,'' Coursey points out. ``I'll go out on a limb and say that Microsoft already has control of Java -- from a customer perspective at least -- and is likely to pull away from Sun and its cronies. The reason for this is simple: Microsoft writes better and more useful code. Further, Sun is still a Unix-geek shop, meaning it can never get as charged up about a market opportunity as Microsoft does every day before lunch...
``All this is especially sad because Sun is a truly great company. Really. Its people are smart and the company has really carved out a niche and created some forward-thinking technology. But isn't that the same thing we said about Apple, DEC and (maybe) Novell before each suffered a big fall?''
Coursey does offer an alternative to the doom-and-gloom he foresees for Sun: abandon the idea of a freely portable server-side Java. ``This may be the only time you'll hear me promoting a closed standard as an architectural virtue for customers,'' Coursey says. ``It is obvious that Java client applications need to be portable. But what is really lost if server applications used vendor-specific extensions -- in hardware and software -- to improve performance or add features?
``Microsoft appears to be doing something like this in software. Why shouldn't Sun do the same to maintain the value of its platform?'' It is very hard, Coursey noted, to turn a hardware company into a software company, and Sun must maintain its position as a hardware vendor to avoid the financial free-fall Apple suffered when its hardware margins began shrinking.
The complete text of the six-page analysis of Sun and its challenges in the market appears in the current issue (Volume 1, issue 14) of the coursey.com newsletter. coursey.com was ranked as the most influential newsletter in the computer industry by Marketing Computers Magazine (June 1, 1997), and David Coursey was named the most influential newsletter editor for the second year in a row by the same publication.
For a three-issue free trial subscription beginning with the current issue, send e-mail to sarah@coursey.com, or visit the company's web site (updated quarterly) at www.coursey.com.
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SOURCE: coursey.com
Contact: Deb McAlister of Holland McAlister Public Relations, Inc., 800-878-1128, or deb@hmpr.com, for coursey.com; or David Coursey of coursey.com, Inc., 415-577-2545, or david@coursey.com
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More news for referenced ticker symbols: AAPL, MSFT, SUNW, and related industries: Computer-Hardware, Software, internet.
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