Slashdot Mirror
Sun Buys Cobalt
An anonymous reader was the first to note that Sun acquired
Cobalt. The press release is full of all sorts of PR-speak to basically say that sun wants to enter the low-end server market, and this is how they intend to get into the market.
I'm a bit cynical because I work for a company that does a excellent job of selling high end devices. (ie mainframe) Several times we have bought or built a product that could have sold well in the low end market, but our sales force was unable to sell it. When they look at the ability to make 6 figgures when only closing 4 sales a year, and compare that with the amount of work they need to get any commission on a $1000 box they don't care about the small boxes.
In other words, I'm not really surprized that sun did well with the high end products, but I'm not convinced they can make the low end work.
The embedded server market is really taking off, and Sun have been developing several things in this area for many years. I remember reading last week that they're expected to announce quite a few embedded/applicance server things in the coming months, and I guess this is one of them.
Here's an interesting quote from the PR:
- ``Today we're acquiring Cobalt to establish ourselves in low-end server appliances and immediately jump into the marketplace with a proven,
world class product offering. This move is similar to our entry into the high-end server arena, which we did through our acquisition of Starfire
server technology from Cray. Just as that product line has become one of our most successful product lines to date, we think the demand for
these high-volume, turnkey devices will explode in the next couple of years. Cobalt is our bet for the future,'' said Ed Zander, President and Chief
Operating Officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Only a week ago Sun announced the UltraSPARC-IIe - UltraSPARC-II for low-end embedded applications. It has 256Kb on-die L2, and pretty much the whole chipset on-die too and can use PC100 SDRAM, apparantly. The 400MHz part is $145 in volume and the 500MHz part is $225 in volume. They're pretty power efficient too - 8W max for 400, 13W max for 500.- Sun has unfortunately missed out on the whole low-end server game over the last few years, most likely because of their focus on Solaris and other "big iron" type products.
Erm, Sun have made about $1-3Bn/year on the low end for the last several years. Their whole Netra range is embedded/low-end. Their 1U Netra t1 launched last year has been a big success etc. Their low-end sales have been very strong recently - growing 60-80% in the last year.- Whilst they had recognised the potential for webservers, they seem to
have totally missed out on the idea that people would want to run them from home, and this is why Linux has taken off - it
may not be as good as Solaris, but it runs on your home PC.
Sun have always sold to business, not to the public. (while some people do buy them for private/personal use, Sun certainly aren't in the home computer business)- Now they're trying to get back into the low-end market through buy-outs rather than repositioning, because they're just
not flexible enough to do so - just look at Java for an example of Sun's cluelessness when it comes to the market. Buying
Cobalt may given them a portion of the market, but it will hardly path the way for them to gain any appreciable amount of
market share.
Sun started serious development, both hardware and software for the embedded and low-end server market several years ago. They already have a strong presence in the "soft switches" networking market and so on. The embedded/appliance style server market is just taking off, and have a strong reputating in the market, so it seems rather silly to write them off.Btw, most Java developers seem to me to be pretty happy with the Java licencing situation. You also don't seem to realise that Sun have relaxed the license fairly recently too - JCP 2.0, for example...
- To be honest, I don't really see much of a future for Sun. All of their recent moves seem to be those of desparation - giving
away Solaris, trying to keep Java proprietary and now buying Cobalt. Between Microsoft and Linux, they're fast becoming
a non-entity in the computing world.
Making Solaris 'free' has certainly been a sucess - especially on x86/Intel - about 200-300,000 installs in since it was released. That's more than on SPARC...Sun are growing faster than Microsoft, IBM, HP, Dell, Compaq, Intel. They're now the biggest server company (revenue wise) I think, and that's just before they're about to completely revamp their entire product line... (UltraSPARC-III finally coming next week.)
Cobalt isn't in the same business. Cobalt makes preconfigured, browser-managed server appliances for vertical markets, with a focus on easy deployment and easy, GUI-based management.
VA makes high-performance general-purpose servers with nothing but a raw OS installed on them.
You might as well say eMachines and SGI are competitors because they both make desktops that run Windows.
Sun already makes low-end 1U servers. This isn't about buying Cobalt's mediocre hardware like faulty serial consoles, power supply issues, and slow IDE drives. It's about software.
Cobalt makes plug-and-go server appliances. Although you can telnet/SSH into a Cobalt and you can install your own software on them, that's not their selling point. The selling point is that they're web-hosting/email/caching/etc. appliances that can be set up in about ten minutes and managed both by admins and customers almost entirely through slick web interfaces.
This is why ISPs and hosting providers love Cobalt. For instance, the latest Raq models come preconfigured to run as hosting servers for Apache with MySQL, PHP, ASP (thanks to their Chilisoft acquisition), POP and IMAP mail, FTP, log reporting and so forth. With 24/7 phone support for the whole shebang available. And at a price not much different from a vanilla 1U server, that makes them a bargain if you're a hosting provider.
They have competitors, none of whom have gotten it right. Plain servers aren't really competition at all. The Whistler InterJet competes with the Qubes, but it's too rigid and locked down. The Netwinders suffer from awful marketing and a so-so web inetrface.
Cobalt is a brand ISPs trust, and small development shops that build sites on hosted space like the consistency across Cobalt-based hosting providers.
I expect you'll see Sun continue to sell $1200 x86-based, single-processor Raqs and start offering higher-end machines with SCSI and fiber channel, multiple processors, redundancy and so forth, all with Cobalt's well-thought-out browser-based administration rolled in for customers that prefer a few large machines for hosting over racks full of small ones.
And owning ChiliASP can't hurt the iPlanet server line. That's the Cobalt-owned, complete, COM-aware, VBScript and JScript-running Active Server Pages environment for Unix and Linux. Don't be surprised if you see that engine's backend translated into Java and made available on the iPlanet Application Server, for a massively-scalable way to run existing ASP-based applications alongside JSP/servlet/EJB apps.
Jupiter buys Potassium, and Venus is investigating a Sillicon purchase...
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Wow spread of 14 and change! Wish I could have heard about this yestarday.
I dont think this is a move to shut cobalt down. Companies usualy pay cahs if they want to do that. This is a big value added play for sun. They tend to make wise business decisions and I dont see how they would benefit from killing someone who isnt a direct competitor. Especialy considering that they had to dilute by $2B to do it.
Sun is one of my favorite companies in the tech sector. No they arnt as smart as microsoft and no they arnt as cool as apple but I think sun is the best of both worlds.
BTW: If you dont know what a spread or dilution is, please read a book on M&A (mergers and aquisitions) before you moderate me down for not making any sense.
UltraSPARC-IIe for low-end embedded applications. It has 256Kb on-die L2, and pretty much the whole chipset on-die too and can use PC100 SDRAM, apparantly. The 400MHz part is $145 in volume and the 500MHz part is $225 in volume. They're pretty power efficient too - 8W max for 400, 13W max for 500.
Now, I wouldn't claim that that's particularly power efficient. compare to:
- A PowerPC (MPC750@400Mhz) MAX 5.8W
- Digital's StrongArm (SA110@233) MAX 1W
- [I couldn't find MIPS R4000 info]
Granted the Intel Chips use a lot of power, but I'm not sure the USparcIIe is actually applicable to something like a laptop. -DanielCan't you see the obvious...This is a direct assault against EMC's storage market. Here's the facts. Sun has indicated in the last few months their desire to get into the server appliance market. Here's the chronology:
06/12: Ed Zander details Sun's "Storage for the Net Economy".
07/14: Sun announced "Purple", Codename for it's StorEdge T3 Disk Arrays.
07/14: Sun announced deal w/VERITAS to integrate Jiro and VERITAS V3 SAN Access technology.
08/15: Sun announces a deal w/LinuxCare to offer support for StorEdge disk-array servers in Linux.
I think we're about to see an explosion of low-cost Sun servers based on Cobalt technology. Sun will more than likely co-brand the line, similar to the Forte brand of software tools.