Sun proclaims it is No. 1
By Jim Davis
January 30, 1998, 12:55 p.m. PT
news analysis Sun Microsystems (SUNW) fired back
today, responding to a report from a major marketing
research firm stating that Hewlett-Packard (HWP) was
the No. 1 one overall workstation vendor for 1997.
Sun wants to make clear that it was the No. 1 Unix
workstation vendor, though this claim may
increasingly lose meaning as the makeup of the sector
changes from a Unix-centric environment to one
dominated by Microsoft-Intel machines.
Sun held on to the No. 1 position in Unix workstations
by a wide margin, according to a report to be
published next week by International Data
Corporation (IDC). (See related story) In 1997, Sun
shipped nearly three times as many as Unix
workstations as HP.
However, IDC is the same marketing research firm
that stated earlier this week in a preliminary report
that Hewlett-Packard was now the No. 1 overall
workstation vendor, taking some of the sting out of
the Sun response. The earlier report said that when
both Unix and Windows NT-based workstations are
counted together, HP surpassed to become the No. 1
workstation vendor in 1997.
Personal workstations based on Intel processors and
the Windows NT operating system have challenged
traditional workstations using a variety of Unix and
RISC processors. This year, some analysts predict that
three times as many Microsoft-Intel personal
workstations will be sold compared to their Unix
counterparts.
In response to this phenomenon, Sun appears to be
talking out of both sides of its mouth. On the one
hand, it is saying that Microsoft-Intel workstations
aren't really workstations but simply fast PCs. But at
the same time it is touting its low-cost workstations,
which are being marketed in response to the
Microsoft-Intel threat.
"When an industry manufacturer wants to control the
definition of a category to make its market share
figures look pumped up, then you know they are
being encroached upon with significant impact," says
Richard Zwetchkenbaum, an industry analyst.
"We believe that the advent of our low-price,
high-powered systems will prompt an identity crisis
for the trumped-up PCs that our competitors in the
Wintel camp call personal workstations," said Anil
Gadre, vice president of marketing for Sun in a
prepared statement.
Sun says that the Unix systems will continue to offer
better performance and that with the advent of its new
low-cost UItra workstations released earlier this
month, the price advantage PC systems had enjoyed
will evaporate.
While Sun is busy deriding NT-based personal
workstations, the market and customers are defining
what it thinks a workstation is--and increasingly the
PC architecture--appears to be the system of choice.
Customers have typically associated workstations with
engineering, financial, and scientific uses where those
systems didn't have office productivity applications,
according to Dr. John Latta, president of Fourth
Wave, a consultancy specializing in multimedia and
graphics market research. But that definition is
changing because of the sales volume currently
enjoyed by the PC platform.
"The vast majority of Unix applications are moving to
NT. In some [market segments], 90 to 100 percent of
the applications are moving over. There are so many
flavors of Unix--developers have to customize their
programs for each flavor of Unix" if they want to
target HP, Sun, and SGI, he said. "What happens with
NT is they are insulated from those problems."
With developers targeting the NT platform with new
software, customers may find fewer and fewer
reasons to choose a Unix system in the years to come,
especially as analysts believe the performance
advantage of Unix workstations will diminish over
time. |
