“”This was without a doubt a blow-out quarter,” Sun CFO Michael
E. Lehman said during a conference call today. Sun stole market
share from IBM and Hewlett-Packard during the period, with orders
rising 41%. Sun added 730 new startup companies as customers,
Lehman said.”
“The company’s competitors stepped up efforts to unseat
Sun’s Solaris platform. Archrival Microsoft shipped its Windows
2000 operating system in February, and the Linux system is growing
in popularity. In response, Sun made some of its source code
available to developers during the quarter. But Windows 2000
wasn’t a factor last quarter from Sun’s perspective, says Laura
Conigliaro, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. “You can see from the
numbers that Windows 2000 may be something that gains some steam
going forward, but it hasn’t been a factor in any of Sun’s markets
otherwise.”