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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: etchmeister who wrote (14847)	5/9/2005 2:38:06 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 25522

Provocateur predicts 'end of corporate computing' Published: May 5, 2005, 3:11 PM PDT By Stephen Shankland Staff Writer, CNET News.com Nicholas Carr, the former Harvard Business Review editor who agitated the information technology industry with his article "IT Doesn't Matter," has published a sequel that predicts another, even more disruptive change. "The history of the commercial application of IT has been characterized by astounding leaps, but nothing that has come before--not even the introduction of the personal computer or the opening of the Internet--will match the upheaval that lies just over the horizon," Carr predicts in a summary of his next work, "The End of Corporate Computing." The article appears in the spring 2005 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review. Carr's previous work made the case not that computing technology was unimportant, but that it's no longer a route for one company to gain competitive advantages over others. Carr riled many in the computing industry; Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett was among those to deride the position. This time around, Carr argues most companies will stop messing with information technology altogether, instead tapping into the resources of gigantic centralized computing utilities. "Information technology is undergoing an inexorable shift from being an asset that companies own--in the form of computers, software and myriad related components--to being a service that they purchase from utility providers," Carr argues. "IT's shift from an in-house capital asset to a centralized utility service will overturn strategic and operating assumptions, alter industrial economics, upset markets and pose daunting challenges to every user and vendor." Carr's latest position jibes better with prevailing computing industry thinking. Many computing companies are embracing the idea of utility computing in varying degrees. In particular, Sun Microsystems rents out the use of its own grid of computers for calculation tasks; in the future, Sun expects chiefly to supply plumbing to business partners that actually sell the service to the ultimate customers. Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy said the shift is slow in coming, though. "They don't seem to have any problem buying electricity on that basis, but when it comes to computers, they freak," McNealy said this week at a product launch. "It's more of an anthropological issue than a technological or business model issue."

To: etchmeister who wrote (14847)	5/9/2005 3:24:49 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

Not quite sure how this is "news": Volatility seen in NAND-based flash market EE Times (05/06/2005 1:44 PM EDT) SAN JOSE, Calif. — The NAND-based flash-memory market is projected to experience a price slide in 2005 due to overcapacity and the emergence of new competitors in the sector, according to Semico Research Corp. Then, the market will peak at $38.9 billion in 2008 before a price collapse in 2009, according to Semico (Phoenix, Ariz.) "Since its inception NAND has consistently enjoyed an annual megabyte growth greater than 100 percent, the highest of any memory technology in history," said Jim Handy, an analyst at Semico. "This growth has been fueled by the digital camera market, camera phones, USB flash drives, and MP3 players. When this extreme megabyte growth encounters periods of stable pricing revenues explode."