Observing that tomorrow’s corporate IT departments are going to look very much like today’s ISPs, brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co kicks off its 1999 technology investment forecast by trumpeting vendors selling the kit that supports this model of computing. It expects stocks such as Sun, IBM, Xerox, Lexmark, Dell, Unisys and EMC to continue their strong progress through the year. Notably Hewlett-Packard Co isn’t on the list, given that server hardware was the second best performing tech sector in 1998, exceeded only by the internet. And for those who might have been on Mars, it reminds us that Big Iron is back. It recalls that even Sun CEO Scott McNealy said six years ago that users would never again have to buy a computer costing more than $200,000. Now Sun’s most important business is its Starfires server products, which sell from $1m-up.
