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

To: JDN who wrote (29050)	3/16/2000 5:45:00 AM
From: Steve Lee	Respond to of 64865

The market is quite different in Britain - for a start business costs are much higher including workforce, land and computer equipment. However my business is not limited to Britain. I work mainly with US companies.

To: JDN who wrote (29050)	3/16/2000 6:06:00 AM
From: Steve Lee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Re: >>"every analysts report I have ever read on SUNW in past year or two talks of SUNW being the industry standard"<< That is correct and emphasises the point I was trying to make in a reply I just posted to someone else on this thread a few minutes ago. The expectations for SUNW are soooo hiogh and they will not be met. Look at the PE. Look at the historical growth rate. Then consider that the future growth rate is unlikely to match the historical growth rate due to intense margin pressures. Customers are fed up with paying through the nose for performance, reliabilty and scalability that is on a par with cheaper alternatives. That's why businesses like mine are very happy to go in and do the job more cost effectively :->

To: JDN who wrote (29050)	3/16/2000 3:36:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

JDN - re: From everything I have read all the major internet companies use SUNW equipment. You're falling for the hype again - true but trivial unless you know WHERE they use SUNW gear, and what else they use, and what the spending patterns are. In terms of front end systems on the net, NT has about 43% including 8 of the top 10 volume leaders. Linux is in the mid-30s. SUNW has a commanding presence in the back end but lots of other folks play there also. In transaction processing, the old-line players - IBM, Tandem, Unisys, DEC VAX - still have a big share, SUNW is just starting to make inroads. Part of the reason I like SUNW, and I think part of the reason the street has liked them, is that they are defining architectures for eBusiness which use big high-margin SUNW products in the back end and are relatively agnostic about mid tier and front end. SUNW can then make the argument that the management of the mid-tier is more important than the capital costs, therefore Solaris is the right choice. The customer makes his best choice for price-performance on the front end, and that segment has been big for MSFT and for Linux. As the eBusiness segment grows, this provides a large growth opportunity for SUNW in their highest margin segment, and presents a significant barrier to entry for the old-line guys. re: every analysts report I have ever read on SUNW in past year or two talks of SUNW being the industry standard. That is certainly what SUNW is aiming at - but the "industry" has to be pretty narrowly defined for SUNW to be the "standard". iPlanet and related initiatives are designed to help lock in the new market - while IBM's WebSphere and similar initiatives from other companies are designed to break that lock. But in today's web environment, it is easy for any of the big players to define a segment and claim 80% or 90%... the trick is to sort through the BS and look at what those claims mean in terms of future business. SUNW has the best "mindshare" position and a good technical story but no one has an "across the board" standard or anything close to it at the moment. SUNW will win or lose depending on momentum in the market and how they play their cards over the next few years. If the whole "eBusiess" thing turns out to be more smoke than fire, SUNW will have bet on the wrong horse.