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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Angela B. who wrote (9802)	4/7/1999 8:12:00 AM
From: Angela B.	Respond to of 41369

ow Jones Newswires Sun Microsystems Sees AOL Tie-Up Boosting Indus Position Dow Jones Newswires SINGAPORE -- U.S.-based Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) sees its strategic alliance with America Online Inc. (AOL) bolstering its position as a leading player in the growing electronic commerce industry, a senior company official said Wednesday. In Singapore on Wednesday, Sun's chief strategic officer, William Raduchel, told Dow Jones Newswires that the collaboration, referred to as the Sun-Netscape alliance, will allow Sun and AOL to offer customers a "one-stop answer to all their e-commerce needs." "This is a very compelling proposition to people," he said. The alliance will offer customers' enabling software for their electronic commerce systems, while AOL will provide content and Sun will provide a platform and support services. But Raduchel said consumers, however, won't be obliged to use products and services from all three entities, but can choose to use any combination of the three. He said electronic commerce is expected to represent 80% of total commercial transactions by the year 2010. The official described the alliance, which was announced last year, as a "virtual company," in which more than 2,000 people from Sun and AOL will dedicate their time to the alliance. But he said that although the alliance has no equity interest, Sun has agreed to pay AOL a guaranteed amount "in excess of US$300 million" and fees for each of the three years of the alliance. He declined to give overall revenue or profit targets for the alliance, saying only that Sun expected the alliance to be "commercially successful." He also said AOL stands to lower its costs from the alliance since some research and development expenditures for new products would now be borne by the alliance. Sun Microsystems sells hardware, software and services for establishing Intranets and expanding the Internet.