Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (34690)	8/26/2000 12:36:44 AM
From: Charles Tutt	Respond to of 64865

The shorts are going wild over this on Yahoo! Combining it with Sun's three point drop today and some press touting Dell's Workstations, I guess they think they'll draw blood. And who knows? They might, at least for a few days. There's often some weakness near the end of the month due to "window dressing," and the Emulex incident seems to have shaken the techs in general today. But don't lose sight of the fact that we're already nearly 2/3 of the way through the quarter. A quarter which, I expect (without having any inside information whatsoever, of course) will give new meaning to the word "breakaway." 50 customers sounds bad, and IS bad, when you're striving for the level of quality Sun is trying to maintain, but as I recall from the most recent quarter's conference call, they sell roughly 1000 servers PER DAY, so keep it in perspective. Am I too bullish for you? JMHO, of course, and not investment advice. Do your own research and form your own conclusions. Disclosure: SUNW accounts for over 70% of my portfolio.

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (34690)	8/26/2000 12:53:41 AM
From: Charles Tutt	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 64865

Upon looking closer, I'm going to have to question the quality of the journalism Computerworld (which is usually pretty good, IMHO) put into this. They say: "One high-profile customer that has had very public problems with Sun hardware is eBay Inc. The online auctioneer has suffered a series of hardware-related outages over the past year, including one this week. It is unclear whether eBay's problems are related to the memory issue, however." That seems (at least to me) to imply that the outage this week could have been due to the memory issue. Here's what eBay says: www2.ebay.com (see the entry for 08/23/00 at 05:45:49 PDT) "The reason for this outage was a failure in one the disk subsystems which stores some of the eBay data. This system has a built-in redundancy designed to kick in without user impact and has in the past successfully done so. When the redundancy of the disk system failed, we attempted to switch to our backup system. The redundancy issue also prevented us from switching to our secondary system. We then started the process of switching to our tertiary back-up system. During this time, our engineers resolved the original issue and brought the site back up." That sounds like a totally unrelated problem to me. JMHO.

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (34690)	8/26/2000 2:16:37 AM
From: chic_hearne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Re: A few months ago, I warned this thread that Sun was desperately looking for quantities of very fast ECC 8Meg SRAM for their servers and that they could not likely ship USIII systems with out it. Well, I guess we now know why. What's even more incredible is that IBM will likely sell it to them. Watson, I've stated on this thread my in-the-field observations of crash prone Sun servers. I always thought it was because Solaris was such a fragile OS, but I guess you know more than me. I didn't see anything in that article about IBM bailing them out, but that would just prove once again that IBM management has their head up their arse. You'd think they would offer no help and advise their sales crew to milk this for all they can. Next thing we'll hear is that IBM is going to fab the US-III on IBM's industry leading copper/SOI process. It seems IBM has Sun right where they want them, but doesn't know how to capitalize if what you say ends up coming true. chic

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (34690)	8/26/2000 3:51:21 AM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

You bring up a good point about the UltraIII delay and the 'quality' issue, however, the quality thing is old news. During the April concall (it may have been Jan) Scott and Ed both (particularly McNealy) spoke at great length to investors with regard to 'quality' going onto the front burner in a big way and how Sun was adopting Six Sigma, etc. It (quality initiative) was no small matter and given as much emphasis as mentions of entire reorgs in previous concalls. --- There was a quality problem. Sun stopped and took that bull by the horns. My guess is that Sun is several steps beyond the inference of that article. --- There was more 'news' to be gleaned from the concall months and months ago from Sun directly than there was from the article you posted. -JCJ

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (34690)	8/26/2000 8:09:37 AM
From: JDN	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

Dear Watson Youth: Seems to me SUNW is doing everything in their power to fix the problem and that the problem does no longer exist in later shipments. In reading the entire article I dont see what else SUNW could be expected to do. If Gartner issues this "warning" or whatever probably will be like when Nader issued his famous Corvair warning 2 years AFTER the problem was fixed. Hey, got him to be famous, maybe Gartner wants the same? JDN

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (34690)	8/26/2000 2:38:46 PM
From: Michael L. Voorhees	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

WATSONYOUTH: If this is true this is a management error pure and simple. Obviously, there was some sort of quality problem. Expose it, fix it, as soon as possible and go on. The approach, that was indicated to have been taken, was the complete antithesis of Six Sigma (which is simply a re-packaged derivative of the Edward Demming Quality Approach used extensively by the Japanese which SUNW has been using for years). SUNW will be punished in the market for this. Hopefully, not to much, however.

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (34690)	8/29/2000 3:03:31 AM
From: uu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Dear chic and The Watsonyouth: It is always amazing how investors go all the way to the extreme to justify their short (or long) position in the stock without looking at the big picture. I have read a few of your posts on this thread regarding the so called Sun's memory problem and how you have tried so eloquently via usage of technical jargons to put a negative spin on Sun’s overall business based on this so called memory problem! Lets assume there is a huge memory problem with Sun's servers as apparently 50 customers have complained to some guy from the Gartner group. Furthermore lets assume Sun has forced other customers to sign an NDA agreement in order to hide the issue from the public. As the Watsonyouth has so eloquently expressed via his hardware knowledge and usage of fancy technical jargons, let us assume this memory problem is a big negative reflection on Sun at this time. Now let me ask you this: Does it matter, and will it have any impact what so ever on Sun's bottom line sale now or in the future? And my answer is an absolute NO! When you are the dominant player and have established the perception of being "the" server company, matters such as memory problem mentioned are like a noise made by a fly in a heavy metal concert! It does not matter! Companies do not stop buying Sun servers because of these types of problems. Sure they may complain, but in the final analysis they know it does not matter! It is sort of Microsoft having a bug in one of its application software, or Intel having a problem with Pentium III processor, etc. It does not matter! Things will be fixed and existing and potential customers are convinced (due to the perception Sun's successful marketing machine has established) that these problems are minor and will be taken care of in due time. I was recently at Exodus and I was amazed as how practically 90% of the .com companies (small and large) are all using and buying Sun servers as if the world is about to end tomorrow and the highest priority matter on the list of things to do is for them to go and buy a Sun server! So relax, and do not use technical fancy jargons (which from an investment point of view are irrelevant to Sun’s overall business) to not only confuse yourself but also others! Nothing - and I mean absolutely nothing - can stop Sun's growth in server revenue for a long long long time to come! Best Regards, Addi Jamshidi