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

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (34692)	8/26/2000 1:09:14 AM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Though the usual crowd will try to make something out of it, the whole thing is a non-issue except for the almost unbelievably stupid thing about getting customers to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Regardless of the quality of journalism in the CW article, which I'm sure sucks, if there's any truth to that allegation it makes Sun management look like idiots. --QS

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (34692)	8/26/2000 2:21:46 AM
From: chic_hearne	Respond to of 64865

Charles, I remember all the problems ebay had last summer. I believe I remember reading an article that said Sun sent 40 engineers to ebay for a week and determined that the problem was ebays fault. Something about ebay not having qualified people to deal with their website, a problem completely unrelated to Sun servers. Maybe there was more to the story that Sun gave ebay a sweet deal on their new servers this spring than any of us were lead to believe. chic

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (34692)	8/26/2000 3:18:39 AM
From: mozek	Respond to of 64865

Charles, Interesting quote from the article: "This has been a watershed event for Sun," Shoemaker said, adding that the company has moved from the back of the class to class leader with respect to quality. ..., but that would mean that by Sun's own admission, their QC was really bad relative to most competitors as recently as a year ago. Later in the article, they state: According to Shoemaker, Sun hasn't been able to narrow the problem to any one specific cause. That's not a good sign for present customers, IMHO. Finally, in response to your question about the journalism, if Sun admits to putting a gag order on their customers in exchange for fixing the problem more quickly (which they haven't yet done), I think it's reasonable to characterize any explanation from one of their highest-profile, flagship customers as "unclear". Of course, JMHO.

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (34692)	8/26/2000 9:06:08 AM
From: Lynn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Dear Charles: Add this to the quality of journalism and/or research that went into this article: "Sun customers who have been affected by the problem are unwilling to speak openly about it because Sun has persuaded many of them to sign nondisclosure agreements, said Tom Henkel, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn. The nondisclosure agreements were apparently offered with a claim that signing them would bolster Sun's commitment to resolving the problem quickly, Henkel said. [snip] Shoemaker [SUNW Executive Vice President] this week acknowledged that it may have been a bad idea for Sun to get its users to sign nondisclosure agreements... He added that Sun has stopped requiring such agreements." Wait a minute. The author of this article has not contacted any of the companies who experienced the memory problem and signed the agreement for comment. Whether these companies are or are not willing to discuss their memory problem is totally unknown. The author has one analyst, whose information is definitely dated, speak for _all_ SUNW's customer's? It is the analyst, according to this article, who says none of the companies will talk about their problem. My read is that the author did not even attempt to speak with one of the agreement signing companies. This must be made clear. There is currently nothing to stop any of the unnamed companies who signed the agreement [which has been discarded] from talking about their problem should they feel like it. One question I have is who the heck is that analyst Henkel? I _think_ I have heard the name of the group he works for somewhere in the past [Gartner Group], but have never heard his name before. I have never, however, heard of the Meta Group and it's analyst, Brian Richardson, before. Interesting how both the Gartner and Meta groups are both in Stanford, CT. I have to question Henkel's motives in talking to, or even taking the initiative and contacting _Computerworld_. I'm leaning (very heavily) towards the idea of Henkel trying to make a name for himself. In the process, his buddy Richardson get's him name put out there, too. This is conjecture on my part, but that's all I see. Wiat a minute! I just reread the article. One paragraph I had skimmed over earlier jumped out at me this time: "Gartner plans soon to release an advisory on the memory component issue, updating one released in November, because of continued and 'frequent client complaints of persistent downtime" caused by the problem.'" This article is a big, free, advertisement for the Gartner Group! It should have, "Free advertisement," surrounding it. They are using _Computerworld_. Getting someone to write an article for _Computerworld_ gets them far more publicity, makes people much more interested in reading their upcoming advisory [and other reports] than any ad they could release over the wires. Also, it's free. Take a look at the _Computerworld_ article again. There are links in it to go directly to the Gartner and Meta groups web sites: computerworld.com I am disgusted. SUNW should hire me to research and write a report on the memory issue with it's clients--then on the Gartner Group. Regards, Lynn

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (34692)	8/28/2000 10:53:57 AM
From: Rob Young	Respond to of 64865

Re: Disk subsystem problem "That sounds like a totally unrelated problem to me." That's right. But eBay has been very creative in trimming their dirty laundry. Someone with a closer eye on things would have noticed the following. So what you have is 4 hardware failures inside a month. Note they don't say what the other 3 are. But what is left? CPUs? Nah! Not having problems with them STILL are they? ;-) Rob User: aw@ebay.com Date: 08/09/00 Time: 21:24:33 PDT * TECH MESSAGE * Recently we have experienced several issues that have impacted eBay's availability. We want to take a moment to update you about our situation and the things that we're doing to address the issues. First, over the last few weeks, we have been making a number of "headroom" improvements to the entire system to ensure the scalability of the site for the future. Normally, making these improvements should be invisible to you. Unfortunately, this was not the case. These changes resulted in availability issues with My eBay and Seller Search during high traffic periods. There were a number of fine-tunes that had to be made, as well as code issues that had to be addressed, to resolve this problem. We believe these issues have been resolved. To be sure, though, we will continue monitoring the system through a few more "prime times" (hours when traffic of the site is at its heaviest). Second, we have experienced three hardware failures in the last 10 days that have resulted in system downtimes, including the one tonight. During each failure, we have migrated to our backup system as quickly as possible to restore system availability. Later tonight and during our regularly scheduled maintenance on Friday morning, we plan to make additional improvements to the system to help address the hardware issues. System stability is still our number one priority. We appreciate your support. Regards, eBay User: aw@ebay.com Date: 08/09/00 Time: 19:57:52 PDT * SYSTEM STATUS * The eBay system is currently available. At 19:15 PT, we experienced a hardware failure on our main server. We migrated to our backup system, and the site became available at 19:57 PT. Please accept our apologies. We will continue to carefully monitor the system and will inform you of any changes in its status. Regards, eBay