| William H. Magill on 4 Apr 2004 06:29:02 -0000 |
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On 02 Apr, 2004, at 14:45, Chip Salzenberg wrote: According to William H. Magill:The analysts on CNBC have been saying this is part and parcel of Sun's Sun has been SERIOUSLY dying now for something like the past 9 quarters -- the last time they showed a profit (when they made their FIRST round of layoffs.) I don't remember when Sun's stock was last above $6. (I don't think it made it to $6 in the euphoric rise following the layoff announcement. Didn't look.) If you want to know how quickly a company can implode, just look at Compaq. If I remember correctly, it took about three months from the announcement that they were selling off Alpha to Intel to the announcement that they were being bought by HP! (It might have only been 3 weeks, it seemed so fast.) Like Digital/Compaq/HP, Sun has a large installed base. But that has no relationship to the future of the company. My guess is that Sun is now formally "in play," (as they say in the M&A biz), and that one of the Intel based players looking to buy a share of the server market will snap them up. Most likely candidate -- Dell. Lets face it, SPARC customers will be "migrated" over to the IA-64 just as HP-UX and Tru64 customers are being migrated over. Yes, I mean Solaris running on the IA-64. If Sun doesn't make that commitment, then it is going to leave all of its SPARC customers high and dry. Then once you have the Solaris Base running on IA-64 you can begin to seriously do what HP is doing with Tru64 -- "merging the 'significant' features of Tru64 into HP-UX." Up until two months ago, Windows was strictly a 32 bit operating system. When Intel finally admitted that they screwed up and would provide a 64 bit chip for the desktop, the end of 32 bit Windows was decreed. Once there is no 32 bit Windows, the distinction between Windows on the Desktop and Windows in the DataCenter vanishes and it becomes time to merge the features of Solaris into Windows. ... Oh. That was what Sun and Microsoft just announced wasn't it? [Remember, Microsoft's Clustering came from Digital when Digital tried to do the same kind of deal. The fact that the deal was screwed up by Digital doesn't matter. Microsoft did so well that they eventually created NT from it by hiring the designer of VMS.] Face it. Sun as we have known it in the past is already long dead. What Sun's future will look like is yet to be defined. Note that, these are all Forward Looking Statements for which management takes no responsibility if you believe them or not. I've been through this game several times now since the days of IBM and the BUNCH -- Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, and HP. (RCA, Univac, Digital, Compaq, Data General, ATT, and a half dozen others I don't remember off hand.) Interestingly, HP was one of the first plucked from the Bunch, only to re-emerge again later. Maybe it won't be Dell that buys Sun, maybe it will be the "Power of 2" that becomes the "Power of 3." I don't see it being HP because they haven't digested Compaq yet. But if Carley thinks she did well, she might tack sun on as another division the way Tandem is attached. ... naw, I still think it will be Dell buying Market Share. Michael is discovering that it's hard to grow a big company. T.T.F.N. William H. Magill # Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg # Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg # PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a # XP1000 - [Alpha EV6] magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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