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: cheryl williamson who wrote (42310)	3/23/2001 8:58:41 PM
From: Tom C	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

To take the analogy a little further, the TV is just the thin client. Ok, I can agree with this. Sun sells thin clients but they also sell the fat servers that drive them. There is a lot a tension between centralization and decentralization. In the beginning there was the mainframe and the MIS department but people revolted against this model preferring their own printers and computers to run their spread sheets without having to schedule it with the IS department. As computing power was given to the end user the IS department focused on the network (the network is the computer) trying to reign in this phenomenon. It’s all about control. To me the idea of FAT servers is like communism, a decent idea but horrible in practice. Democracy dictates a distributed computing environment. Are you a SysAdmin? Tom

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (42310)	3/24/2001 2:27:10 AM
From: uu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Cheryl: > It's good for Sun because successful content providers are going to need lots & lots of servers & storage. They're going to be buying the vast majority of their equipment from 2 companies: Sun & IBM. This is true. However in order to buy servers from Sun (or IBM or whoever) the buyers must have money (US dollars preferably). How on earth are these buyers going to find the money if their underlying business models do not make them enough money to pay for their existing operations?! No longer they can rely on free money coming from the VCs or their parent non-cyberspace company! They have to make their own money, and regretfully with their existing Internet business model there is not a chance now or ever for them to make a dime - and if they do make a dime it will never add up to a dollar and will always be in pennies and dimes! There will of course be a very few successful internet based businesses (ebay for example). However these very few businesses can not possibly deliver the exponential growth rate that so many continue to assume companies such as Sun and to some extend EMC would have.

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (42310)	3/24/2001 7:32:24 AM
From: Bill Fischofer	Respond to of 64865

Re: TV analogy I think your analogy is quite apt. Unfortunately it is exactly this analogy which seems to be the source of most concern about SUNW and other boxmakers. To extend the analogy to radio, SUNW may well have been the RCA of the server world, but RCA never regained the position it saw in the 1920s after that bubble burst. The stock eventually recovered, but by the time it did the world had changed and even with the boost from television RCA had permanently left its glory days behind it. The initial profits may have been made by the equipment suppliers, but the real profits in radio and television were made by the networks that were built with that equipment. The internet will likely follow this same path. Internet Phase I is over, but Internet Phase II is swiftly arriving and now is the time to position for it rather than longing for the heady days of Phase I. My personal belief is that next-stage networks like GX will see 65, 75, and 85 long before companies like SUNW, INTC, and CSCO recover their former heights, and I have repositioned accordingly. A lot of people have lost a lot of money over the past year. The way to make it back is identify the new leadership which will emerge from the rubble. I'm not saying the old leadership represent bad companies, but I do believe that investors must be alert to new leadership as it emerges. History tells us that the leadership of one stage of growth seldom plays a central role in the next stage. Perhaps SUNW will be the happy exception. Certainly MSFT has been trying to avoid this fate, but it's unclear whether either will. There are a lot of smart people on SI. I'd hope to see them working together so that all can profit rather than squaring off into tedious pro/anti camps over individual stocks. One thing this past year should have burned into investor's brains is that it's less important how you make money than that you do make it and keep it.