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

To: JDN who wrote (34564)	8/19/2000 7:59:10 PM
From: QwikSand	Respond to of 64865

I find this article amazing...though not surprising. It's exactly the same gibberish that Caldera printed in a PR less than a week ago: "merge" UnixGarbageWare and Linux. To me, this article is nothing less than a signed and witnessed public admission of desperation by IBM. Plus another (at this point superfluous) nail in the Itanic coffin. Meanwhile, we have just recently seen that HWP is clearly moving ever closer to dropping all pretense of being anything but a toner company. It's a shame that the Wall Street analysts who cover technology companies are so very limited in their technical and industry understanding. If they could read something like this and actually understand the implications, SUNW would be at $300 today. --QS zdnet.com

To: JDN who wrote (34564)	8/20/2000 1:00:26 AM
From: fuzzymath	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

Is this week's Economist article on SUNW known to people here? Entitled "Sun Microsystems: Bright, Some Clouds". Subheading: "Sun Microsystems' big computers are the hardware of choice for the Internet, but the Silicon Valley firm has powerful enemies." Strangely, the article doesn't seem to be available on the Economist website, even for subscribers. The article starts with history you are all familiar with: the gamble on servers and bandwidth and the Internet, and Java. After that, the article speaks of the dangers of the "renewed emphasis that IBM and HP are putting on Unix ... both have recently produced high-end servers that have outscored Sun's in benchmark tests." But, this is seen only as stabilizing HP's and IBM's market share, not affecting Sun's. Also, "It is the economic argument in favour of running Windows 2000 on Intel's Itanium early next year that undoubtedly poses a threat to Sun at the bottom and the middle bits of its server range. ... UltraSPARC ... is always going to be far dearer than any high-volume chip from Intel." ["dear" as in "expensive"--the Economist is British] Then, the Linux threat is mentioned (if Windows 2000 fails to catch on). "Big computer firms, such as Dell and Compaq, are now installing Linux. ... HP announced that Linux would be one of its strategic operating systems. But the most direct threat to Sun is from IBM, which has declared Linux to be at the center of its server strategy. ... In deciding to fight Linux rather than bend with it, Sun is taking another big gamble. IBM's view is that Linux is a technology almost as disruptive of the existing order as the Internet itself." An IBM guy says that if you studied computer science at a university in the past 10-15 years, you probably trained on Solaris, but today universities have "shifted decisively to Linux, with consequences that are already being felt." The conclusion: "With the power of its installed base, its huge credibility in the market and an ability to execute that few of its rivals can match, Sun will take some beating. But competing against Linux is not like competing against a normal commercial rival, however fearsome. Sun owes its position today to its evangelical fervour and a self-belief that borders on the arrogant. Something different may be needed for dealing with Linux." Of course, the chart accompanying the article shows SUNW up 10-fold since mid-1998, while IBM and HP have merely doubled. Also a cute picture of Scott McNealy with his dog, captioned: "At heart, Scott McNealy is a softie". fuzzymath