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

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (31366)	4/27/2000 6:49:00 PM
From: Robert	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

Cheryl, it's not exactly clear who commoditises whom. The argument that EMC is making is that storage is needed to archive vast amounts of raw data, of which a small amount is useful knowledge computed and distributed by servers. (Eg searching a database for cross references between client and goods ordered). This argument also assumes that computing time is relatively insensitive to data size as the latter increases, so that storage requirements rise relative to computing requirements. This depends to a great deal on the algorithms used. Straight searching is O(log n) which is sublinear in data size, but pattern matching is O(n) for the best algorithm so one needs at least as much CPU cycles proprotional to disk space not to slow down relatively. Worst, multiple simultaneous matches scales as O(n^(k-1)) so CPU cycles quickly outpace data size. If anything I believe that storage will be commoditised relative to CPU cycles than the other way around. Even if EMC has an open API so that any server can use it, storage has to coexist with other network services like backups, routers, mail etc. Either storage has to be smart to coordinate resources, the CPU coordinates resources, or the resources are smart to coordinate themselves. Of those three options, Sun's JIRO technology architects the last two choices and leaves EMC with the uneviable option of having storage run the network. With odds of 2 to 1 in Sun's favour it seems to have the upper hand.

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (31366)	4/28/2000 5:58:00 AM
From: JDN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Dear Cheryl: Well, its easy to make statements, and those statements may actually be correct in and of themselves but they may not MEAN what they appear to mean. That is why I wanted experienced people to address EMC's press release and advise us. For instance, what does it mean to say of total DP costs storage will be 80% vs 20% Servers? Is this in general, or does it relate purely to intensive storage operations requiring a lot of manipulations to the stored data? Does storage require a lot of ongoing personnel costs as compared to server functions? What is the overall cost of a DP operation going to be, is it rising dramatically? What position in this equation is the SUNW storage going to have? I just give Scott Mc. and crew a lot more sense than to think that they may be obsolete in 3-5 years and doing nothing to address it. JDN