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

To: alydar who wrote (63513)	12/2/2005 11:04:38 PM
From: MJ	Respond to of 64865

It's unfortunate that there is thinking in the direction of making the internet a utility. The internet has done for the world what no utility can do----creating a free flow of ideas amongst people. Treating it like a utility business and regulating it will certainly deter many people from using it. SUNW is giving away software----by the same token I believe the internet should never be a utility and be freely available to all people. jmho mj

To: alydar who wrote (63513)	12/3/2005 1:43:33 AM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Sun is not and never has been in a monopoly position. It bears no similarity in any important respect to the companies you mention, except in your dreams. Gillette is known for having perfected the razor-and-blade business model through marketing innovation. Marketing innovation...what does that have to do with Sun? IBM was a gigantic and rather ruthless monopoly that grew to be bigger than all its competitors combined before it was embroiled in antitrust litigation. What does that have to do with Sun? AT&T was a government-sanctioned monopoly so unwieldy and ineffectual that it became the butt of jokes, a synonym for behemoth bureaucracies with no competition, before it was broken up and turned to crap. What does that have to do with Sun? The Register author whom you term "extremely confused" (which, you'll excuse me, I find a little ironic) is simply pointing out that Sun, which has been on a downward spiral for years, is trying yet another hail-mary strategy that isn't terribly likely to work. A business model that depends on giving away more and more stuff to build up "volume" that can be "monetized" doesn't just happen. The confused Register author is simply pointing out a fact that appears to escape you: you can offer all the free stuff you want, but it doesn't do you any good unless people take it and use it in large numbers, and maybe not even then. Even if you do manage to give away a lot of copies of general-purpose software, there's still the minor factor of restoring confidence. Not everyone will enter into services contracts with a company that gives every sign of following the path of SGI (which just announced an exciting new Itanium-based muliprocessor supercomputer that SGI fundamentalists think is really bitchin'...it took their minds off that unpleasant de-listing thing). To be an effective service organization you have to stop laying people off, since service organizations are very people-intensive. Sun has, among other things, a couple of fairly major chicken-and-egg problems to solve. I know...you're not wrong about SUNW, just early. Pay no attention to the revenue chart behind the curtain. I'll watch intently for your first "I told you so" post after Sun reports three quarters in a row of significantly increased revenue based on services. I pray that we all live that long. (I personally think they have a better chance of pulling off a successful services move based on hardware, and that's a long shot too.) --QS