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

To: Stormweaver who wrote (15684)	4/23/1999 5:11:00 PM
From: Alok Sinha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

I was not checking the SUN thread the last couple of days, and was amazed to find the number of postings related to the debate that you started yesterday. Just a couple of days earlier I complained that the thread was becoming inactive. I am glad that the spirit of the debate has remained healthy inspite of diamterically opposite viewpoints. Just to get my two cents (without any technical jargon). My rather simplistic philosophy is to invest in companies with very strong management teams, that are focused in their strategies, and are able to deliver what they promise (earnings consistency). SUN qualifies on all counts. Given all that the stock valuation is a function of the market and the investing trends. Given its historical multiples, SUN is not cheap today (neither is IBM, MSFT, or CSCO). If the froth in the market will find buyers at 70+, I will gladly get rid of my shares. If fear / anxiety drives the price back in the low 50s , I will be more than eager to buy back (as I recently did). One thing to remember is that there is 13 B in sales and about $1.40 in earnings to support the stock when it falls. The computing trends that you are predicting may or may not materialize; but I am sure Scott and his team are focused on the challenge from NT. In the past 5 years or so they have been able to (aganist a lot of conventional wisdom that swear by the Wintel duopoly) turn computing trends to their advantage (through better products / services / marketing). Till they stumble, why should a SUN investor lose faith in them. You are not being fair when you compare them to SGI. I work for a large bank and I can see the increasing preference of out IT folks for SUN hardware (and OS). NT will flourish on the desktop space for WP/Spreadsheets - but the back end servers and complex appplications are run on non-NT servers in most of the real world. Hardware costs for SUN equipment may be high, but that constitutes a small fraction of the cost of ownership (and lost productivity every time NT goes down). Scalability and reliability as some others have pointed out are very real issues, and MSFT may be able to solve them over time. But SUN's lead in the corporate space will continue to grow during this time. And few people want to give up a tried in tested system for something which comes a little cheaper upfront, but also comes with a baggage (reliability, cost of owbnership, maintenance, security, issue - even if it has been solved). Having said all that, I agree with you that relative to history SUN is overvalued. But we also know that you can hardly drive looking in the rear-view mirror. Regards Alok

To: Stormweaver who wrote (15684)	4/26/1999 7:58:00 AM
From: Jacob S. Rosenberg	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Yes, the UNIX consolidation will help Sun for a while and so will mainframe shops switching to Suns. There is an interesting mixed picture. Sun is trying hard to get stodgy old financial shops to switch to their workstations, but these organizations are very conservative by their nature and I might add prominently, LOW SKILL LEVEL. Consequently, they are a perfect setup for IBM to retain them; even in the sense of selling them IBM RS-6000 workstations. Therefore, I have to agree with your assessment of a bear coming later on. But that's later on. Not for about a year or more. That's why Sun's stock price will improve over the next 6 months.