IndoBoy kwam ons vertellen dat Ashok Kumar, een vrij invloedrijke analyst die niet bepaald bekend staat om zijn voorkeur voor Intel, denkt dat Sun Microsystems in de komende twee tot drie jaar flink wat marktaandeel gaat verliezen door de Itanium. Sun is namelijk de laatste grote naam op het gebied van Unix servers die weigert processors van derden te gebruiken. Dat beginnen de klanten steeds meer aan hun budget te voelen. Het prijskaartje van een Dell PowerEdge 7150 met vier 800MHz Itanium processors zal bijvoorbeeld minder dan de helft zijn dan die van een Sun Enterprise 3500 kast met vier 400MHz UltraSPARC processors. Sun zelf gooit het op betrouwbaarheid; het Solaris operating systeem zou beter draaien op de SPARC architectuur:
In his report, Kumar, often one of Intel's biggest critics, suggests Sun should give up its resistance to using third-party processors. "The major loser in this transition is Sun. Sun is the only major server vendor that's continuing to use a single-track strategy, offering only its proprietary SPARC platforms and its proprietary operating system," Kumar says. For their part, Sun officials say the tight integration between SPARC chips and the company's Solaris OS adds up to better reliability and value. "You have to look beyond the price of the box and consider total cost of ownership, which is where we excel," says Chris Kruell, group marketing manager for computer systems at Sun.
Sun said Tuesday that it expects fiscal fourth-quarter revenue to fall between $3.8 billion and $4 billion, compared with $5 billion in same period last year and $4.1 billion in the third quarter. Sun also said it now expects earnings per share for the quarter, ending June 30, of 2 cents to 4 cents, excluding one-time events. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call had been expecting per-share earnings of 6 cents. Sun blames much of the shortfall on weak sales in Europe.