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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems

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To: alydar who wrote (17650)	7/6/1999 5:01:00 PM
From: Stormweaver	Read Replies (2) of 64865

Have you ever considered that SUN will reduce the pricing on its existing line of servers when INTC/MSFT get their act together. By then, SUNW should have extended it's technology lead with better products and thus have sustainable margins. I'm not convinced that there is a much of a tech gap on the server side if we talk 4-8 way. If you look at desktop-time-to market it has a longer cycle since it is actually more complex. The OS, and UI of MSFT has a huge inertia due to the vast number of software/hardware vendors that have been supporting it. The server market is relatively easier to penetrate and get products to market since the applications written for it are back-end, processing type and can be more readily ported (no UI) AND server market share is tilting toward half UNIX and NT so there is some motivation for vendors to port. As a result we see server type software propagate between platforms quite readily. Desktop software does not propagate easy since it's difficult (or expensive for UNIX MFC license) to change an application UI from Win32 to X AND currently MSFT holds about 80-85% of the desktop so there is little reason for vendors to support another OS. If Sun could convince all vendors to re-write their apps in Java then that would break the MSFT desktop hold. That's a long term strategy since doing that could take years. A shorter term strategy for fighting MSFT would be to convince the DOJ to make Win32/MFC a freely useable API. That may level the playing field in the short term since vendors could in theory just re-compile and make their apps available immediately on other operating systems; without paying runtime licenses. INTC/MSFT will make the current server series of SUN a commodity product on the low end and SUN will be forced to reduce pricing. Hey thats business. If you had a choice of buying a low end SUN system vs. a new/untested MSFT/INTC product at the same price, which would you choose. I think most people will choose scalability and reliability. Okay, how about if Sun shops buy n-way intel box to run Solaris x86? A lot of Sun shops could be thinking of that scenario for future purchases I'm sure. It gives them the flexibility of running NT/Linux/QNX/SCO... or others in the future. All IMHO of course. Cheers James

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