JC -
You have caught the heart of my argument. The reasons for SUNW's success, and the reason for their ongoing influence (which I have characterized as architectural dominance) is based on a whole culture and history, and on the ongoing energy and savvy of the management and engineering teams.
If MSFT somehow came up with a PERFECT OS which was twice as efficient as Solaris and 10 times as reliable, it still wouldn't make any difference - my whole point in this discussion is that the technology of the OS is not what this is about. MSFT would still not have the rest of the parts, and they do not have the culture, community or business direction to get them any time soon. I believe that Win2K will be good for current MSFT customers - it is way better than Win2K and somewhat better than NT4. Customers who are already committed to that path, and some new customers who are developing requirements, will benefit. But it does not change the balance of power in the industry...
Your opinion not withstanding, a great number of people have learned to equate Microsoft with Crap.
True - and based on DOS and the Win9X products, as well as many of the applications, that opinion is well deserved.
But anyone investing in SUNW because they think that there is something magic about the technology in Solaris which gave SUNW an edge, or that Solaris is years ahead of other OS technology, is investing for the wrong reasons - it just ain't so.
If that were true, Solaris would be vulnerable to Linux... it's not, for the same reasons that it's not particularly vulnerable to NT. It's not a technology issue, at least in the sense of OS technology. As I said in a previous post, Solaris is the best of the high end Unix variants, which pretty much makes it the best Unix, but that is not a competitive differentiator or long term business advantage - it is a hygiene factor, something SUNW needs to maintain on an ongoing basis while they build advantage on top of that base. They will certainly do that...
The reason I took the time to put out those posts is that some of the investors on this thread are people I correspond with frequently, and I don't want them mislead as to the reasons why I believe SUNW is a good investment at these levels - which I do believe...
This is GOOD for SUNW - the flip side of the points I have been making is that Linux, NT or whatever the next "big new thing" is in the OS space will not put SUNW at risk.
I started investing in SUNW in 1989, so I am not a johnny-come-lately to the stock or the company. |
