Stocks: (CRAY)(IBM)(SUNW)
Sun Microsystems had a mixed bag of news recently. According to research firms Gartner and IDC, its server sales were up sharply in the third quarter cementing it place as the No. 4 provider behind IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard.
But, in Sun’s bid to be part of the Pentagon’s new initiative to build out its supercomputer capacity, the company rolled snake eyes. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded $500 million worth of contracts to IBM and Cray. The plan it to build a supercomuter that is several times faster that the most advanced products available today.
Cray is a much smaller company than Sun. Its market capitalization is only $250 million. Cray’s revenues last year were only $200 million.
For Sun, that has to hurt.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.