SPARC History

View from the Hill

A Tale of 2 Markets Affected by the September 11th Atrocity - Sun and Storage

As stated in Sun's conference call, October 5, 2001, the effects of September 11th had a major impact on Sun's business which no-one could have forseen.

As a web publisher involved in both the Sun and storage markets, I thought it might be interesting to share with you information about how we think these markets have been affected. Your analysis and conclusions may be entirely different. But if you're involved in making choices in these markets, these are difficult times, and any information might be useful.

Our Sun publication saw a 20% month to month decline in pageviews comparing August to September. In the 4 years previously, we'd seen a 20% increase. That 40% gap between expectation and actuality correlates with Sun's 38% projected revenue decline this quarter. Looking at what happened after:- in the first week of October we saw a 14% rise in daily pageviews. So there is a recovery coming for Sun. But it's not as good as in other markets. As a publisher we've been tracking the Sun market for 10 years. This was the first time we had ever seen a decline in buyer activity moving from August to September. (Before 1996 we measured buyer/market activity by the sales of our directory, and sales of Sun mailing lists targeting end-users. Both stopped when we switched to our web format in 1996 .)

Sun's own analysis of the outlook prompted their announcement to lay off 9% of the workforce to reduce thir burn rate.

I think that the storage market most likely has seen a net gain from the tragedy, due to general reporting by all media of the plight of companeis which did not have data backup strategies. We've seen this confirmed in early comments from backup software and tape library comnpanies who are reporting financial results for this period. So the August-September transition for STORAGEsearch pageviews was a mere 7% decline, followed in October by a staggering 60% increase.

Historically, the reader activity levels on our sites have always predicted buying behaviour (revenue) as reported later by market research companies like IDC, or seen in the company results in specific product sectors. So there is a recovery coming for Sun, but it's still going to lag last year's revenue performance by about 30% and that's why they needed to reduce costs. You can also see most people in the wider market don't take Sun seriously as a storage company, otherwise their results would be a lot better.

Enhancements to NATO's E-3 AWACS include:

• State-of-the-art flat panel situation displays with a Windows-like environment to support the interaction between operators and sensor systems increasing the operator's situational awareness. Multi-Sensor Integration will improve the reliability and accuracy of the tracking process and target identification.

• A new mission computing system with an open-system architecture, supporting cost-effective, future upgrades to hardware and software.

• Digital communications systems to improve crew access to available radio links and provide automatic record and replay of communication and display data. Satellite communications will be integrated into the mission system, offering a wider range and improved over-the horizon communication via satellite links.

• Broad-spectrum VHF radios that will support increased operations with Eastern European nations' air and ground forces. Improved transponders will be compatible with emerging international air traffic control systems requirements.

• Upgraded aircraft navigation that takes advantage of the new Global Positioning System (GPS).

• 3U rackmount
• UltraSPARC-IIe® 500MHz processor
• 512MBytes ECC-protected SDRAM
• Multiple storage options—18GByte hard disk drive, floppy and DVD
• Four 10/100 Mbit Ethernet interfaces
• Four RS-232 interfaces with hardware handshake capability
• Four USB and two Wide Ultra3 SCSI (LVD) interfaces
• One PCI mezzanine card (PMC) slot
• Full Hot Swap specification compliance (PICMG 2.1, R2.0)