To: tiquer who wrote (18693 ) 8/19/1999 12:32:00 PM From: Mephisto Respond to of 64865
Hi, tiquer, I liked the Red Herring article because Perkins explains JAVA's importance. (Last night I looked at Sun's 1998 Annual Report. It's borring . Accountants must have put it together!)Excerpts from "The Red Eye" by Tony Perkins The Red Eye basks in the Sun By Tony Perkins Redherring.com August 19, 1999 "Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) has capitalized on the Internet opportunity better than any of the other established computer systems companies. And Sun's investors have reaped the rewards -- the company's stock has risen 1,091 percent since Bill Joy introduced the Java technology story to Red Herring magazine back in 1995. It has been, of course, the Java software phenomenon that has helped brand Sun as one of the great innovators of the Internet. As chief scientist Bill Joy likes to brag, Java developers can work twice as fast as those writing in C++, and in five years this edge will ten times as fast. Three-quarters of the top 20 Internet service providers use Sun hardware to operate their back-end operations, as do most of the dot-com startups. Interestingly, even Mr. McNealy admits that Sun's Java technology, which spread like wildfire throughout the Internet developer community (now a million strong), came literally out of nowhere, following two previous failed attempts to implement the technology for other applications. But whether it was luck or not, Bill Joy and his band of happy hackers have turned Java technology into the centerpiece of Sun's product strategy. A year ago, Mr. Joy introduced Jini , which leverages Java to connect disparate devices such as television sets, telephones, cameras, and printers. The idea behind Jini is that users will easily be able to identify what devices are on the network, and how each device can work together. MAJC POWER Last week Sun also announced its latest Java-related innovation, a new superchip called MAJC (for microprocessor architecture for Java computing, pronounced "magic"). "We hope MAJC will become the standard architecture for the post-PC era," said Mr. Joy, a man who has always claimed that PCs are largely low quality and uninteresting. These comments, of course, aren't the first salvo Mr. Joy has hurled at Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), the chipmaking king of the PC business. Mr. Joy was also the codesigner of the SPARC microprocessor that has powered Sun's workstations and servers for several years running. The value of the new MAJC technology is that it turns a single chip into a parallel-processing computer that can handle huge audio and video data streams at speeds that would short-circuit even Intel's high-end microprocessors. Its modular design also means it's scalable from the cheapest Internet device to Sun's fastest server. One of Sun's great challenges is that it fights its battles alone. It has its own operating system, chips, and development software. And the company has not been overly successful at licensing any of these technologies to other large vendors. Perhaps the Java revolution will change all of that. But whether Sun can make this happen or not, its own installed base is growing enough to keep this innovator in good financial shape." ************************************************************ tiquer, and to complement my morning latte experience, I had a good laugh when I read that Mr. Joy is a man who has always claimed that PCs are largely low quality and uninteresting! PCs are low quality, but only a few people, like Mr. Joy, would find them uninteresting! <g> Best wishes, Mephisto