QwikSand, Charles Tutt, cheryl williamson, twister, JC Jaros, and others
SUNW thread,
First off, I'd like to say I've been following your thread for a while, but haven't got into a pissing contest of who's server kick who's servers ass. I'd also like to add, I'm not recommending IBM (the stock) even though IBM (the company) is set up for some very good times.
Message 13637399
But since the 5 of you took notice of me today, I thought I'd offer up my 2 cents.
I only invest in semi stocks, which right now happens to be only AMD. From doing research, I find out the status of all companies processor efforts. Personally, I find SUNW's current execution a complete joke.
A few years ago, SUNW had processors that helped SUNW's system kick anyones ass in sight. This has lead to the huge growth of the past few years.
UltraSparcIII will be late by 2 years. This has become common with semiconductors. INTC's Itanium was due out in 1997. CPQ's Wildfire servers are 18 months late. IBM's copper based servers that will be released tommorrow will be 18 months late.
The difference is, IBM has made the move to copper. As someone that follows semi stocks I cannot stress just how important this is. IMHO, IBM will have no problem meeting their target upgrade dates. One is scheduled for the 2nd half of this year, the other when the POWER4 is released next year. Al interconnects will be limiting processors from getting any faster. IBM and AMD are the only companies that really have their house in order. They have stable copper based silicon, therefore process shrinks, etc., should be much easier than their competitors.
A fully configured 24-way SP80 destroys a fully configured 64-way E10000 in every concievable benchmark. You can't argue this, otherwise provide a recent link.
Solaris is a terrible OS. This has been documented many times by 3rd party reviews. For the 6th year running, AIX was the top UNIX OS of the year.
The one problem I see is IBM's marketing and sales. IF IBM had SUNW's sales staff, SUNW would be in some very serious trouble. The gap is widening so far, I think even IBM's sales can pull this one off. We have 2 serious upgrades planned for the near term, so in a short time a system far smaller than a 24-way will be destroying a 64-way E10000.
Who knows? If you look at the recent IBM, I can see why you're long SUNW. If you know servers and see what IBM has created, I don't think you'd own this stock too much longer. Like I said in the "cool post", I think SUNW can hit their numbers in the near term, but the seeds of failure have already been planted.
chic |
