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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (17592)	7/3/1999 6:48:00 PM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

"So until someone tell me what to call it, I'll call it a new personal computer device for my home. Or PCD." M, I don't think anyone can tell you what to call it, because I don't think anyone knows, including Compaq. I found the article very interesting, and very good...for Sun. For CPQ shareholders, I would say, "look out below". Compaq has been into Unix for a long time; they do approximately $1B per year in hardware that runs SCO Unix (that's an old number so confirm it if you want). These SCO boxes are not personal computers. They're low-end servers for small businesses like dentists' offices, and so-called "replicated sites" like Taco Bell restaurants. Usually they involve old-style character-based applications on dumb character terminals (real ones, not the James Nicoll-style ones). Compaq has more recently jumped onto the groaning Linux bandwagon along with every other company that ever built a computer. The article that Xy Zhao posted fairly shouts out that Compaq is in deep trouble. Their executives are leaving, they're abandoning their partners, (in this case SCO, Intel and IBM, but it's nothing new), and they're thrashing strategically. Why? Because they realize that their core business, the PC which has sustained them richly from the beginning, is becoming nonviable for all the reasons that have been discussed recently on this thread. It's the same fear that made Mike Dell order his PR firm to get his face on the cover of Barron's a couple weeks back. CPQ's solution: Turn up the heat on their longstanding--but fruitless--enterprise server wannabee strategy. Use the DEC asset that maybe poor ol' Eckhardt Pfeiffer was right about acquiring after all. They're a distant also-ran in this business, with Sun way ahead of them and even weak-sister HP in a better position, so it will take a bunch of new investment and new programs and new partners to even start to catch up, right at the time CPQ can least afford it because their core business sucks. There's also the minor cultural assimilation issue: most of the people who made Tru64 DEC Unix "#1" in all those customer-sat categories are probably gone too. To me, this article was a snapshot of the panicky remaining crew in Compaq's turbulent cockpit screaming "Don't just sit there, DO SOMETHING!!!!" as they watch an increasing number of golden parachutes opening in the stormy sky below. Buy SUNW. Regards, --QwikSand