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

To: Michael F. Donadio who wrote (34645)	8/24/2000 12:23:46 AM
From: Prognosticator	Respond to of 64865

"If Microsoft .NET wins, Microsoft will take over the Internet." Tautology Alert! Tautology Alert! As much as I respect Marco for his StarOffice vision, he just proved Samuel Johnsons : 'Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.' P.

To: Michael F. Donadio who wrote (34645)	8/24/2000 4:32:55 AM
From: QwikSand	Respond to of 64865

Michael: I would never dare to match my understanding of such things against Addi's profound perspectives, but I will humbly state my own half-formed opinion on this issue. Microsoft will spend a lot of money and will probably lose; but the battle will be unnerving and Sun faces some critical challenges that it can't afford to delay facing vigorously. I use the following rule of thumb, which has proved inaccurate so far only in relatively trivial cases (such as a little Office volume on Apple computers): Microsoft's only successful major initiatives leverage its original 1981 MSDOS/PC monopoly and the ensuing associated illegal acts. Anytime they try to compete from scratch, they lose because they are basically a bunch of crooks and marketeers (the difference is subtle), not technical visionaries or good engineers. Gates' .NET "vision" is just another Microsoft copy of somebody else's concept (in this case multiple somebodies), as is obvious just from its name. But again, it will IMHO not be easy for Sun. Microsoft can and will ignore slow-moving legal processes and attempt to leverage the PC monopoly into a .NET advantage, as the article you quoted mentioned, by any means necessary legal or not. They do have infinite cash and will start releasing illegally bundled garbage in whatever state, while their armies toil to make it work. Sun, on the other hand, has had an absolutely dreadful history of sloppy execution on software projects that don't directly lead to server sales (look at Java), because the political imbalance inside the company so heavily favors the box builder divisions. Star Office is given away for free because it's such a piece of crap that nobody would pay for it. The idea of depending on the "Open Source Community" to turn it into a product versus Microsoft's underpaid kiddie chain gangs is a little like expecting an armada of volunteer rowboats and rafts to outrace one of those roman galleys with 500 slaves chained to synchronized oars. The slaves may not be in very good shape, but they're in a big boat and they're a lot better organized. My mistrust of the "Open Source Community's" ability to get anything done in a predictable amount of time equals, or perhaps exceeds, my mistrust of Microsoft's ethics. Sun has a lot of execution challenges facing them and the risk is they will for one reason or another be forced to misprioritize them. The USIII shows up in the numbers for next quarter and the quarter after that so you know they're paying attention. But Star Office and related stuff may get pushed down the priority queue until Microsoft suddenly pops up with a semi-coherent FUD screen, at which time it may be too late: a Microsoft FUD screen can only be defeated with real products, something Sun has so far failed to produce with Star Office after talking about it for well over a year. And though Microsoft will bully the boxmakers, they have other sentiments beside intimidation working in their favor: common fear and hatred of Sun as shown by Craig Barrett's recent wild-eyed psychotic rant; anxiety in the face of changing paradigms; the need to shift volume to appliances; and so forth. Microsoft still maintains the advantage of not being the boxmakers' competitor, while Sun is a competitor. This is, and always has been, a major strike against big Sun software initiatives, which are viewed, possibly with some justification, as trojan horses by Wintel OEM's. I remain majorly disappointed that Star Office has so far been a big cipher everywhere it counts. I hope Ms. Sueltz and the rest of the Sun software crew can get its act together. In general I thought that article you cited is pretty right on. Sun can win; but they have to execute in a manner better than they have before on pure software. Sorry for overly long response. --QS

To: Michael F. Donadio who wrote (34645)	8/24/2000 4:43:15 PM
From: uu	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 64865

Hi Michael: Re: Microsoft .NET Remember about 3 ½ years ago in February/March of 1997 we were talking about the future of computing as Sun was defining it and how things would be done in the future? At the time not too many people believed this would happen, but time sure has indeed changed. Message 909994 Message 825427 Well, this Microsoft .NET is a step in that direction! (Note: what we were referring to as NCs in 1996-1997 is now called Internet Devices). The end result would not be for Microsoft to win the Internet as some have suggested, but for server makers (such as Sun, HP, Compaq - and who knows maybe even the failures such as Auspex!) to make a ton of money, and for software makers (in particular Microsoft) to retain their domination in the software market and continue to make a lot of money at even higher growth rate! The computing model as discussed by Microsoft .NET is exactly what Sun wanted to happen from the very beginning when it introduced its Java technology, that is to have a server centric model in which it can sell lots and lots and lots of servers. Sun is not into the software business, it can never be and it will never be able to make a dime from its software offerings. They are making a lot of noise but it is all noise and nothing more in order to get people’s attention. Their main notion has been and will always be to sell their servers and hardware. Sun's noise about software offerings is simply the "hints" they give to Companies such as Microsoft so they would implement such ideas for them (Sun) to make money on the hardware side of the business! As for StarOffice it will never be able to replace Microsoft Office. The de facto standard for office products is what Microsoft has defined. The rest are irrelevant. Sun’s marketing machine may make a lot of noise about StarOffice but in the final analysis (IMHO) they just have made a lot of empty loud noise and nothing more! As for StarOffice in particular all you have to do is to go to slashdot.org and read a few of the posts made about the usage and functionality of the product as deployed by StarOffice users. It is definitely not a product you want your secretary or accountant to use for his/her daily work (especially if your secretary or accountant uses a PC rather than a UNIX machine such as a Workstation!!!) Regards, Addi Jamshidi