As if anyone could calculate this; but for the fun of it; what.
This is a good question. I think the 2-years-out scenario is very different from the 5- and 10-year stories.
The 2-year picture is probably a pretty basic extrapolation of the current business with (pick some number) 20-25-30% growth rate from selling computers, storage, services, software, in other words the business as currently configured. The role Java plays is to keep the industry open by providing a workable alternative application platform to Microsoft Windows. Java won't be a giant revenue enhancer itself to SUNW (in terms of license revenues), but it will keep the server side growing by ensuring diversification in the industry. The accretion to revenue will be minor within 2 years even though Java continues to grow in popularity (which it is doing despite the dribblings of the Microsoft pocket press). The goal: by the time the 32-bit Windows 2000 ships in something resembling a usable form (i.e., 2001), it's confronted by an increasingly Java-oriented 64-bit server infrastructure in which Sun plays a large and growing role.
For five and especially ten years, the game is going to be so different that it's hard to even guess. There will be acquisitions and new business areas and partnerships aplenty. Who knows; maybe SUNW will be acquired itself by a telco; maybe it will be an ISP; maybe it will be concentrating on storage; maybe it will be making different kinds of information appliances. This is the challenge for SUNW management to solve. The industry ten years out won't resemble today's industry at all. The gap between 2010 and 2000 will be greater than the gap between 2000 and 1990 because the combination of bandwidth, compute power, and size of infrastructure will cross a critical line in the next ten years, enabling major structural changes involving appliances, satellites, ubiquity of information, new kinds of data flows, etc. etc.
That's why something like the Barron's Dell article is downright idiotic. Michael Dell's "vision", it's almost a travesty to use the word, is simply that the status quo continues forever into the future. What's gonna happen? Well, everything's gonna be just like it is today, only more so! That's not a "vision", that's next year's budget.
So, Len, I hope the guys running Sun have at least the beginnings of an answer to your question, but I'll bet they don't, not yet.
Any other thoughts?
Regards,
--QwikSand |
