... sold all my SUNW (again) ... and, at this point, I'm going "quiet" with my buys and sells in terms of posts here ...
... I am starting to beta test some software from a local vendor ... (software that is sold typically to institutions) ... I will experiment with trading primarily on input from a new model that was developed on this software by their client...
... as you might guess, the model says SELL (with emphasis) ...
... I will report later on how it works out for me ...
... I'll continue to post SUNW news here ...
... this should be interesting ... I'm still very bullish on SUNW long-term ...
Ken Wilson
PS ... suggest you all check the "short" statistics on S&P futures ... has the largest short position by institutions since the fall of 1996 ...
PS2 ... from Wall Street Journal today ... SUNW's latest server strategy ... (note to Charles Tutt - 'speaking of riffs'
June 8, 2000
Sun Is Making 'Three Big Bets' To Stay Ahead in Server Game
By David P. Hamilton
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Just as Microsoft Corp. faces the prospect of being torn into separate operating-system and software-applications companies, one of its chief rivals is making aggressive plans to bolt those functions more tightly together in its own business.
In an important and potentially far-reaching shift, Sun Microsystems Inc. says it is making "three big bets" that its officials say can extend its dominant position as a maker of Internet servers. Taken together, those bets amount to a wager that Sun can remake itself from a straightforward hardware company into a provider of integrated hardware and software products that deliver specific Internet services -- what Sun Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Scott McNealy has long called "Webtone switches."
The ideas behind Sun's big bets are fairly complicated, and there is no guarantee that the Palo Alto, Calif., computer maker can deliver on its promises. What's more, Sun's ideas -- particularly its plan to merge servers and related software applications into an "integrated stack" -- faces the prospect of tough competition from Microsoft, whose own next-generation software plan is also designed to entrench it in the server market.
Sun, of course, has for years been one of the biggest thorns in Microsoft's side. It has had mixed results taking on Microsoft directly in the workstation market and on the personal computer. Still, Sun has shone brightly in the server market, continues to push its Java software platform forward, and in general has steadfastly refused to roll over in the face of what many once considered an invincible Microsoft juggernaut.
Riffing on a Rival. Indeed, the Redmond, Wash., software powerhouse remains one of Sun's favorite rhetorical targets. Just Tuesday, for instance, Mr. McNealy strolled onstage at the company's JavaOne conference to the strains of "Breaking Up is Hard to Do." Quipped Mr. McNealy: "I really like that Neil Sedaka. What a visionary."
Now, with Microsoft poised to make inroads in the server market with its new, more-reliable Windows 2000 operating system running on standard PC hardware, Sun officials figure they have to change the terms of competitive debate. Instead of arguing over traditional measures such as the price and
performance of specific hardware and software components, where Microsoft-based systems often hold an advantage, Sun plans to shift its marketing emphasis to bundles of mostly Sun-developed hardware, software and services, whose performance and reliability will be guaranteed by Sun
itself.
"Increasingly, people are buying systems just based on the service level," says Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer. "Even our sophisticated customers, who usually want to get in and twiddle with the knobs, are now
telling us, 'You've just got to keep it up and refreshed.'"
The first two components of Sun's "big bets" are fairly straightforward extensions of work it does already. The first, a bet on "massive scale," reflects Sun's efforts to extend server systems both "up" and "out" -- that is, both with bigger and faster single servers and arrays of hundreds or thousands of smaller servers that work well together. Bigger servers are typically used to handle the enormous number of transactions that move in and out of huge databases, while smaller servers usually serve up Web pages or applications over the Internet.
Eliminating Errors. The second, a bet on "continuous real-time computing," is in many ways the most difficult, as it involves the complicated process of eliminating both
technical and human errors from the operation of tremendously complex data systems.
But it is the third, the bet on the "integrated stack," that is potentially the most interesting. Simply put, the idea is to bundle together Sun's server hardware, its Solaris variant of the Unix operating system, Java software, and a variety of higher-level software applications -- including Oracle Corp.'s database -- into one package.
In Sun's vision, it could sell this kind of "Webtone switch" to customers much the way companies like Lucent Technologies Inc. sell telephone switches to phone companies. Sun would guarantee the reliability of the switch, engineering components to work together smoothly. Customers could use such a switch for a variety of Internet services, which Sun will provide through its iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions alliance with America Online Inc.
It's far from clear, though, that even Sun's integrated stack will be a winning gamble. Where Microsoft's software typically operates behind a proprietary wall, Sun pledges that its stack will have "open interfaces." That means that -- in theory, at least -- customers could replace any given Sun component with hardware or software from another vendor, an outcome that could unravel Sun's stack.
Sun, however, is betting that its reliability guarantees would outweigh customers' desires to replace individual components of a Webtone switch.
PS3 ... I am holding all my Abiomed |
