McPealy,
You need to read the news, boy. SUNW is already red hot
on INTC hardware. They'll make money selling Sparc systems AND
selling Solaris on Intel. INTC, for it's part, is now moving
closer & closer to the SUNW camp, because it has had some bad
luck of its own with PC sales going in the tank. Two bad quarters
in a row & the CEO replaced means INTC is looking for alternatives.
SUNW will provide INTC with the ONLY viable 64-bit OS to run on
Merced, when (if) it first arrives on the market. INTC signed
w/SUNW because they got tired of waiting for Lew Platt to
deliver on his promises, and they aren't even seriously considering
MSFT's NT (now changed from NotThere to NoThreat) for Merced.
Hey, they gotta make money too!! Who are they gonna go to for
high margin servers, MSFT??? No, they're praising SUNW up & down
for Solaris' fab benchmarks on Xeon.
Unlike all the PC hardware vendors around, MSFT can't "leverage"
Intel. INTC needs good software to sell their systems & MSFT
can't cut it in the enterprise, where all the money is for them.
They can still make money selling cheap PC's, but only if the
volume is there. Right now their gross margin on a Pentiums is
around $600/unit, and for the Celerons (& older MMX's) its around
$20/unit. Look for INTC & SUNW to keep the dialog alive
& work together in the future.
It's going to take time for this to sink in for a lot of people:
SUNW is more than a hardware & OS vendor. They are moving into
software & solutions at worp-speed and thus will make BIG money
selling SPARC systems AND selling applications, consulting, and
service.
McNealy's strategy to saw the PC market in half with the NC is
brilliant! Disk drive maker Quantum wouldn't even talk
to SUNW before the sub-$1000 pc & now they're a PRIME licensee
for Jini.
BTW, SUNW is porting Linux to SPARC. |
