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 : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Night Writer who wrote (88796)	1/11/2001 4:08:56 PM
From: PCSS	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 97611

HWP WARNS duck ! Michael

To: Night Writer who wrote (88796)	1/11/2001 7:14:09 PM
From: hlpinout	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 97611

HP fights criticism of Superdome A prominent financial analyst calls Superdome Unix server performance 'tepid.' Hewlett-Packard fires back. By Stephen Shankland, Special to ZDNet January 11, 2001 7:00 AM PT Hewlett-Packard disputed unflattering remarks made by a prominent financial analyst regarding HP's new Superdome Unix server, the spearhead of HP's effort to win back the No. 1 Unix server ranking from Sun Microsystems. Performance-measuring benchmarks showed Superdome to be "tepid," Thomas Kraemer of Merrill Lynch said in a research note Wednesday. Superdome: Mother of all computers? "It did not beat the high-end servers that IBM (NYSE: IBM) introduced a year ago and it was more expensive than Sun's (Nasdaq: SUNW) on a price-performance basis," Kraemer wrote of Superdome, which HP (NYSE: HWP) began shipping in December. "As such, we do not think that this product will be a strong catalyst to produce a turn in HP's Unix business." HP acknowledged losing out to IBM on the Transaction Performance Council's TPC-C benchmark--a widely watched measurement of database transaction performance. IBM's performance was higher, with 221,000 transactions per second to Superdome's 197,000 and a cost per transaction 71 percent of HP's price. However, HP beat Sun and IBM on a real-world benchmark running SAP's business software, and HP expects its TPC-C benchmark will increase to about 300,000 this summer, said Mark Hudson, marketing manager for HP's Unix servers. Benchmarks often improve as companies tune the hardware and software, Hudson said, and the Superdome benchmark was set using only 48 processors; the computer accommodates as many as 64. For example, when IBM's S80 was introduced, its TPC-C benchmark was about 105,000, less than half its current 221,000. "I don't think (Kraemer) grasped the amount of tuning and learning that goes on" when measuring benchmarks, Hudson said. Over the course of Superdome's life, HP expects to quadruple its TPC-C score, Hudson said. Unix market booming The Unix server market has been booming with the arrival of the Internet, the increasing computerization of Old Economy companies and the slower-than-expected growth of Windows into higher-end servers. Sun is the top Unix server seller, with HP in second place, IBM in third and Compaq in fourth, according to IDC. Sun's power in the Unix server market has led it to loft over HP and Compaq to reach second place in the total server market, which also includes mainframes, Windows systems and other models. But corporate spending for servers appears to be scaling back. Sun and HP both are concerned about declining revenues due to reduced corporate spending. In December, each company sent cautionary memos to employees about fiscal austerity measures to adjust to the harder times. Buckingham Research Group analyst Jay Stevens predicted Tuesday that IBM, HP and Sun will aggressively cut prices in an attempt to win as much market share as possible. Also on Wednesday, IBM made a little progress in its effort to dislodge Sun, announcing that it persuaded Ultramar Diamond Shamrock to switch the computers at the center of its oil and convenience store business from Sun to IBM. The company bought two top-end IBM S80 12-processor servers and eight M80 four-processor servers, IBM said. In addition, Ultramar Diamond Shamrock will use IBM's relatively new Shark storage systems, Big Blue said. Kraemer also had rosier news for HP on the storage side of its business, where customers don't appear to be slowing down spending.

To: Night Writer who wrote (88796)	1/11/2001 8:02:39 PM
From: hlpinout	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 97611

Compaq invests to boost Windows 2000 server plans By: Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com 1/10/01 12:27:00 PM Source: News.com Compaq Computer has taken a major, new step in its effort to make Intel-based servers bigger and better, investing in Stratus Technologies and signing a deal to sell computers based on Stratus' high-end designs. Intel and DB Capital Partners, a part of Deutsche Bank, joined Compaq in the $115 million funding round, Stratus chief executive Stephen C. Kiely said Wednesday. The company, which Kiely described as "very profitable," said the deal increased Stratus' valuation and moves it a step toward an initial public offering. Maynard, Mass.-based Stratus isn't the only company to benefit from interest in more powerful or less crash-prone Intel servers, which for most of their history have been consigned to lower-end tasks than more expensive Unix servers and mainframes. Compaq also signed a deal to sell high-end 32-processor Intel servers designed by Unisys. Hewlett-Packard, one of Compaq's biggest competitors, also is working to strengthen its Intel servers. It struck a deal to sell Unisys' 32-processor ES7000 systems and licensed a high-end server design from Stratus competitor Marathon Technologies. Stratus builds computers that have redundant internal components such as memory, network cards and CPUs. If the primary component fails, its backup immediately takes over and operates until a replacement part is installed. Stratus' high-end machines currently use Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC CPUs, but the company is adding a new product based on Intel chips and Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system. The new Intel system will be cheaper, appeal to new customers, and sell in higher volume, the company said. Eventually the new systems will become the most important part of its product line. The systems are being tested and will become generally available in March or April, Kiely said. Compaq doesn't plan to sell Stratus-built computers with a Compaq logo glued to the outside but rather will incorporate Stratus technology into its own computer designs, said Vince Gayman, director of high-availability server marketing at Compaq. Those new Compaq systems likely won't arrive until 2002, he said. A key part of Stratus' switch to "Wintel" designs is licensing its hardware to other, better-known companies. That effort began in June, when the company signed a deal with NEC. The deal with Compaq is a two-way exchange, as Stratus will get access to some of Compaq's technology as well, Kiely said. Though Compaq and Stratus haven't yet decided what that technology might be, Stratus is interested in having access to Compaq's broad range of hardware such as network cards and stand-alone storage systems, he added. Because most of the Stratus fault-tolerant architecture works through specialized hardware, it's not too difficult to accommodate various operating systems such as Linux or Solaris, Kiely said. But for now, the company will stick with Windows 2000 for the Intel-based servers. "In the short term, there's a huge opportunity with Windows 2000," he said. "For us it would be somewhat defocusing to look beyond the Windows 2000 environment." Curiously, Stratus' biggest competitor is Compaq, which makes a high-end Tandem server line that uses redundant hardware components to achieve fault-tolerance. But while the Tandem design competes with Stratus' products, the new Intel-based Stratus servers are in a lower-end class, the companies said. Given the breadth of computer corporations' product lines, "It's difficult to cooperate in our industry" on one product without competing with another, Kiely said. "We don't see it as an issue," Gayman said. "We don't anticipate this being any kind of conflict or overlap."