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

To: alydar who wrote (47218)	2/4/2002 9:59:40 AM
From: alydar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

This does not sound like HP is backing down from the UNIX environment. Any thoughts? HP says new S'pore plant key for network market share By Jennifer Tan SINGAPORE, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co Ltd <HWP.N> on Monday opened its Asia Pacific production centre for Unix servers in Singapore, which the U.S. computer and printer maker sees as key to maintaining its leadership in the network computing market. HP, which is in the process of attempting to merge with Compaq <CPQ.N>, said its Singapore Configure-to-Order (CTO) facility, its third in the world with the other two located in the U.S. and Germany, would result in an improvement of up to 50 percent in delivery times for Asia Pacific customers. "This is an investment undertaken with the goal that we will extend our leadership (in Unix servers) in terms of market share, and we will be able to meet our customers' needs better in the long term," Michael Muller, vice president of HP's server and workstation operations in Asia Pacific, told Reuters. Unix is an open-source operating system, meaning its code is freely available, in contrast to proprietary products such as Microsoft Windows, which keeps its code under lock and key. Muller said the CTO plant was part of HP's plan to invest S$70 million ($38.19 million) in Singapore over a three-year period, but could not specify the cost of the 180,000 square-feet production facility. Muller also said the CTO facility would position HP to take advantage of a rebound in the information technology (IT) market, widely expected by industry analysts in the second half of 2002. "We're looking for a pick up in the U.S. economy in the second half, and see that translating through the Asia Pacific region in terms of server market growth," he added. HP secured a leading 29.7 percent share in the Unix server market in the July-September quarter of 2001 in Asia Pacific, and was also ranked number one by revenue for the April-June quarter, according to International Data Corp (IDC). In the third quarter, HP was neck-and-neck with market leader Sun Microsystems <SUNW.O>, at a 28.5 percent share of the market versus the latter's 28.8 percent. International Business Machines <IBM.N> was in third place at 21 percent, IDC said. Avneesh Saxena, analyst at IDC Asia Pacific, told Reuters HP had moved a step ahead of the competition by cutting its delivery times through the CTO facility. "It's getting very competitive to sell in the Unix space, which requires a high degree of customisation for the client, and HP has been trying very hard to increase its market share, so the shorter (order and delivery) turnaround period will be critical in the scheme of things," Saxena said. ($1=1.833 Singapore Dollar) 06:29 02-04-02 Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

To: alydar who wrote (47218)	2/4/2002 10:10:11 AM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 64865

Rocky - While RAC can ride on various clustering technologies, there was a series of articles about a year ago which said that the reference implementations were developed on Alpha "TruClusters". I have not followed development closely for a while, but the base technology was supplied by Compaq as part of a deal which also committed Oracle to porting Alpha as a "first tier" platform. Another far-sighted agreement by the folks at Compaq - it was only about 4 months later that they announced the sale of Alpha technology to Intel and the eventual EOL of the Alpha products in favor of Itanium. I'm sure that Oracle will eventually get good implementations for Intel and other platforms. My point was that Larry might have been jabbing CPQ rather than Sun.