Moore is wrong IMHO...
Can SUN be developping into either a strong KING or maybe even some Simian characteristics ?
Look at results this last quarter, with Hp & IBM having better rpocessor/processor boards than SUN !
IBM's Copper chips are better than SUN US-II's
HP's new processors are better than SUN US-II's
SUN's US-III's are coming out only for high-end systems in the next 6 months only....
And SUN is going to grow OVER 42-45% (Company guidance) in the next quarter, what seems like Hypergrowth to me in the UNIX field... while HP is growing 13% (!!) and IBM is high -teens as well (if that)...
Value Chain for SUN? : You decide..
1- JAVA, EJB, CORBA efforts & it's now massive developper community (Looks like Microsoft no ?). It is impossible to hire JAVA programmers now anywhere, to give you and idea of the amont of work being developped on it now.
2- SUN's Office Suite, called StarOffice for x86/Solaris & Linux (see above comment). Not dominant, but getting better, with an excellent open-source price (free)
3- SUN's server family, unified architecture from single processor to 64 (for now) processors.. Has capabilities that no other vendor can provide yet, with Dynamic Partitioning & Dynamic Domains...
4- The move, worldwide toward CENTRALIZATION, where distributed computing is seen as the manageability disaster it is, and IT Departmentents are re-centralizing. The Internet, decentralized like it is, still needs massive datastores, a la Amazon, eBay, stc, etc..
A Tornado-like effort worlwide that SUN is seen as the leader is happening, sort of like the distributed computing tornado, but in reverse.
As a side note, STORAGE is centralizing helping SUN, but more likely, EMC, and maybe NTAP.
5- Is Solaris, like windows, developping some kind of dominance at the SERVER level, against bit-players in the Unix world. You decide but know this
a) SCO is dead, so's UnixWare
b) Netware is dying, an distant offshoot of UNIX
c) LINUX is taking off, but seems limited compared to Solaris
d) Ultix (CPQ), IRIX (SGI), AIX, are dying a slow death.
HP-UX, while strong, is diminishing in POWER since HP server/unix sales are so disappointing, even with the best hardware release in YEARS !
EndGame: Solaris, JAVA widespread deployment + Software Alliances & bundling, like Checkpoint FW-1, Cisco software etc are creating a semi-dominant , emerging Value-Chain in the commercial UNIX world. Unix is still fragmented, but a dominant force is emerging.. And Linux, while strong, lacks too much now to take it on, technically at least.
The Mindshare advantage that they are starting to get, and take advantage of, is mind-boggling now, compared to it's 2 closest, unfocused competitors (IBM & HP)
Put it all together, and while it looks like a strong KING, it's more than that, and less than a full-blown gorilla. A semi-simian KING....
Gorilla watch alert...
I guess I could be rambling, but I am groping for the truth here, and I do say that Moore is WRONG.
I cannot help but thinking that things have changed, and that the Microsoft, Intel duspoloy/distributed computing model is in decline...
That a new , decentralized (internet) but also centralized (massive internet & corporate sites) is emerging. It's emerging leader seems to be SUN, a bizarre agglomeration of hardware & software offerings like the OLD IBM actually...
It sells Hardware mainly but uses it's software efforts (compared to MSFT which is all software & Intel all hardware) to sell more hardware & it's architecture. Some sort of hybrid organization.
No one can deny that something is happening to this company, where it's competitors in some cases have better hardware but still get outsold & outflanked by SUN's
"full environment solution"
I think it should at least be added as a KING in the G&K portfolio, as the UNIX "King" with an eye towards gorillaness is it continues on the path of dominance ( a la IBM S/360-S/370 in the 60's).
What say you ? Mike, can yyou help me here in maybe starting some kind of discussion on evaluating SUN maybe in amore rigorous fashion than I can ?
Take care
Jean |
