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Technology Stocks : IBM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (5965)	11/19/1999 2:25:00 PM
From: art slott	Respond to of 8220

Soundview making positive comments on IBM today. Analyst Dan Thomas(who met with a top PC exec) says IBM PC division should be profitable this qtr. Netfinity servers growing by 80%, Thinkpads doing well etc.

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (5965)	11/19/1999 2:32:00 PM
From: art slott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8220

Charles, I'd say the news was in the stock. Low pe, server workforce reduction of 6% etc. They will just have to do better in that segment.

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (5965)	11/19/1999 4:46:00 PM
From: Don Hurst	Respond to of 8220

Charles, I read the article you posted and it always seems to me that when a money mag like Forbes highlights an article like that it is old news. That is one of the reasons I did not renew my subscription. Steve Forbes and Cap Weinberger's inane editorials contributed to my decision also. I digress... I liked the Hancock quotes. She is probably still mad at Gerstner for dumping her and the article did not mention all the Sun/Exodus/EBAY outages which got such wide spread media coverage. I don't doubt Sun's success in the server world but just as in the early 90s it probably is just much too soon to bury OS/390. In addition with Palmisano in charge of the server world my comfort level increases further. When you reread that article like I just did you find some other strange comments: E-Loan is used as an example of Sun vs 390 ...HUH ...... E_Loan as an example of a potential 390 customer????? Sun servers in the million plus range increased 3 points to 9% in the first 6 mos and IBM increased only a "few points" (is that greater than 3??) to 43% but the IDC guy says that IBM's share at YE will probably drop. My question...Why would those customers buying million plus systems buy more Sun at YE. It would seem to me that Sun did just the same thing that IBM did in the first 6mos of 99 to avoid the now clear large customer YE big system install freezes....try to sell as many big systems as they could before the freeze. No wonder IBM jumped 5 + points today. Maybe we can get Forbes to publish another article on Monday. Regards, Don

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (5965)	11/19/1999 6:10:00 PM
From: J. P.	Respond to of 8220

There is room in the world for companies other than SUNW. Not to say SUNW isn't a great company, even if their CEO does talk like Porky Pig.

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (5965)	11/20/1999 11:59:00 AM
From: Arrow Hd.	Respond to of 8220

Charles, thanks for posting the article. Don't have the time to comment much but bottom line this was a Sun cheerleading article. Certainly Sun has earned the accolades but Sun and IBM are two very different companies. The only comparison that has a large validity factor is Sun versus IBM Risc 6000 where Sun is winning hands down. The references to Y2K and mainframes is irrelevant. These same consulting firms published data that showed in one case that by mid year over 47% of corporate data centers would be frozen for Y2K purposes. These are the mission critical applications having to do with IBM mainframes (which includes the highly profitable software and maintenance businesses). Though E@Commerce and Dot.Com businesses are mission critical too, currently compared to the world's traditional data processing functions this sector is still small and in development mode. To add Sun or any other hardware now during development is not going to bump into Y2K initiatives since since it is Y2K compliant already. The article had many valid points such as the fact that the mainframe sector still provides a big chunk of IBM's profits but is still going through extreme price attrition. Combine price attrition with Y2K and you have a period slowdown that is difficult to overcome. Mr. Gerstner said this would happen during the January CC. Now that it has everyone wants to take a shot. I find it interesting that folks like Ruettgers at EMC take every opportunity to whine. The post on IBM's new Shark line is where his focus should be. Shark will either eat his lunch or force him into price attrition. No single point of failure and a three year warranty (multi year warranties are actually a bad business case since they forego maintenance revenue for two years with usually no hardware pricing advantage) for marketing sizzle. I have heard that IBM has actually had to bid "delivery guarantees" to insure 4Q delivery. I have seen "performance guarantees" and "reliability guarantees" but a "delivery guarantee"?. Because of the huge customer demand and resulting potential for commodity shortages one of the META Group analysts was pushing this. So some of these competitors should be watching their backside instead of mouthing off. That said though, Sun does have a good model going forward. I proposed on this thread a few years ago that the one large acquisition IBM should make is to take out Sun in a hostile just as they did with Lotus. I was reminded about how expensive that would have been but in hindsight, maybe it was too expensive not too.