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

To: techtonicbull who wrote (31949)	5/15/2000 12:46:00 PM
From: Rob Young	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

techno-bull, "Rumor shoomer". Sure Sun sells more but it is their space to lose. And in most major RFPs today (i.e. 2, 3 , 5+ million) companies generally look at vendors , decide on a vendor and associated hardware. If vendor's hardware runs on multiple hardware platforms (not uncommon as very few vendors are myopic enough to only offer their app on a single platform) , vendor may shift recommended hardware platform (happens all the time) from hardware vendor X to hardware vendor Y. With that said, Bill Heil's boast today to Dow Jones is that Wildfire has twice to performance of UE10000 (for what it is worth, a very vacuous statement but is interesting as it does that with half the CPUs) and UE10000 gets a refresh with Sarenspaghetti, however a totally new machine, i.e. box switchout. You're mistaken about being backwards compatible I believe. I have read otherwise. In other words, you won't be popping USIII into UE10000s, right? Regarding USIII and Alpha not competing. I believe the USIII starts at about the performance levels of a 667 MHz 21264 (21264 is over 2 years old) with 1 GHz 21264 by year-end. It is pretty clear that the UltraSparc isn't a competitive CPU architecture. However, their servers more than make up for "weak" CPUs. (Weak? You bet. Wildfire with 32 CPUs will smoke 64 CPUs in a UE10000, what else could we call them?) Rob

To: techtonicbull who wrote (31949)	5/15/2000 1:06:00 PM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

I hope Sun's management doesn't share your complacency. This Compaq announcement is nothing to sneeze at. Sun's sales have grown tremendously. But in terms of new products for the last couple of years, they have almost stood still as both Compaq and IBM have had time to begin to reorganize themselves out of the holes that they dug themselves into. And now, we see that competitive flavors of Unix, not NT, may be the issue after all. Did Sun management piss away valuable time and focus flying to Washington to testify against M$, vogueing on Java and Jini, and working lawyers to craft "openish" source licenses, the equivalent of the hare taking a snooze, while IBM and Compaq, two companies that had literally nearly self-destructed, had time to absorb acquisitions, heal, and get back in the game? I hope not but that's what I fear. You can call me a nervous nellie, and maybe I am. Maybe "those guys" know better than I do when to release these new products. Maybe it will play out that Sun comes out with beautiful launches of hot new products that steal the thunder of Compaq and IBM at just the right time. I fervently hope so. But from my point of view, the time to launch the new product line was yesterday. --QS