Doren,
I believe Apple can build an excellent Rhapsody server, like
Sun's, but Apple's marketing is a lot weaker than Sun's, and
HP's. Most of the key COTS products have been ported to Sun's
and HP's, which drove GOTS(Government Of The Shelf) software to
be ported on these machines. The market share of RS-6000 is a
lot weaker than Sun/HP in Federal and enterprise. It takes time
to penetrate into such markets for Rhapsody, but is highly
possible as long as they work harder to catch up. Can Apple
survive and succeed if it only concentrates on media and education
markets? I think it is not enough. They have to enter Federal/
enterprise markets where there is big $ for servers. Can they
also push Rhapsody into consumer market is also a significant
attribution to future's income?
Oracle will be ported to Rhapsody sooner or later. But, Ellison
has his plan on NC that drives him to make a connection with
Apple. His recent Oracle-8's object-oriented version with
capability of generating C++ code as well as security protection,
didn't boost sales. I think probably lots of users using COBOL
for business application cannot take much advantage of object-
oriented approach, and hence didn't upgrade to Oracle-8. Well,
Asian financial crisis is part of reason maybe. What I would
like to see is that Ellison helps Apple to get into Federal/enterprise
markets without mentioning any NC development with Apple, which will
be able to show his sincerity to assist in helping Apple in such
markets since he is a board member.
Phil |
