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Available To The Right Buyer: Sun Microsystems
antediluvian writes "The Seattle Times reports Sun Microsystems shares surged forward on speculation the computer maker may be bought by a rival company. Prospective buyers could include Dell, IBM or Hewlett-Packard. Computer sales of rival companies have been outpacing sales of Sun's machines. Over the past three years Sun's stock has declined 92 percent."
I really, really like Sun hardware, and I'd hate to see it all go the way of the Alpha. Plus, what would happen to Java, I wonder?
Over the past three years Sun's stock has declined 92 percent
Gee, do the stock prices of three years ago mean anything? Yahoo and Amazon must also be bought!
To be honest, I'm not sure why anyone would want Sun. Don't get me wrong, they have some great technology and are a good company. But they remind me a little of Digital pre-Compaq buyout, great technology which became irrelevant. The move is towards x86 technology, and with 64 bit x86 become more and more viable, there is simply less and less need for the premium price paid for Sun products.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they'll be dead in a year, just I can't see their sales growing much, and quite possible slowly reversing. There are still some very high end applications where Sun products may well be the best product for the job, but they are painting themselves into a corner - that niche is getting smaller and smaller as x86 gets better and better.
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I should imagine IBM are after their Java division. They're probably not interested in the servers. Whether they'd just leave them as Sun, or buy the whole lot and wind the server business down over a period of years I don't know. If they do get the servers, expect to see a lot of work go into Linux on Sparc. Mark
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
Sun's stock fell 92% in the past three years? Jesus.
Oh wait. Everyone's stock fell around 92% in the past three years.
[insert witty quote here]
All the anti-Sun FUD that keeps getting posted to Slashdot reminds me of the anti-Apple FUD that was all over the media a few years ago.
Speculation about IBM or HP buying Sun now is probably just as groundless as speculation about Sony or Disney (or Sun) buying Apple five years ago. Yeah, they're not doing as well as they used to, but the whole industry isn't, either.
I think Sun's main problem right now is the same problem that Apple has right now: getting hardware that customers will perceive as being equal or superior to x86 in price/performance. It looks like SPARC will get there eventually, but not soon enough; I imagine they'd either have to use Opteron/Hammer on their low-end machines, or somehow make very inexpensive 1-4 processor workstations and servers to leverage SPARC's scalability (it is, after all, the Scalable Processor ARChitecture) and Solaris's superior SMP support.
I'll admit that I have many reasons to Want To Believe that Sun will still be a strong presence in the industry when I graduate from college, but I do seriously think that rumor's of Sun's imminent death are greatly exaggerated.
Ubi dubium, ibi libertas.
No, that's not the only reason people whine about it. I learned C++ and Java at almost the same time (C++ about a year earlier) and I, like a lot of other programmers, can honestly say that IMO C++ is just a better language than Java. It's more compact, easier and more pleasant to write, etc.
You had me right up until "easier". There is a reason C++ journals have sections devoted to obscure sections of the standard and how code might not compile the way you would expect it to. It's because C++ is not simple. Powerul? Yes. Easy? No. Not to mention the differing implementations by different compilers. Ugh. No thanks. I'd rather spend my time working on solutions instead of fighting the language.
Really? Funny that. Banking is one of the industries that has adopted Java the most. The application server market (what transaction processing systems have evolved into today) are split about 80%/20% between Java (BEA, IBM, and others) and Microsoft. Java dominates transaction processing systems for all new development. It is also a very common choice for legacy software integration.
--Be human.
sun is a technology company. dell is a reseller. for a fortune 500 company, they have one of the lowest r&d budgets. all their r&d is done by intel, microsoft, and the OSS community. all they have perfected is the most efficient way to build a pc and ship it to you, oh yeah, and make cool ads, dude.
sun is a true tech company. so is ibm, and so is apple. you might hate/love each of them, but you can't deny they innovate. dell wouldn't know what to do with java anymore than microsoft would. of course, figuring how much gates' ass mikey dell kisses, guess we know what dell would do to java. and sparc. and solaris. and...
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Because Sun has $12Bn in market capitalization and $5.5Bn in cash on hand, I think the question isn't who's going to buy Sun, but rather who should Sun buy?
I have maintained for some time that Sun should purchase RedHat (current market cap. approx. $1Bn if my sources are correct), go whole hog into promoting Linux, move the advanced features from Solaris into Linux, and turn their hardware into the best darned high-end Linux servers and desktops you ever saw.
First of all, IBM is already trying to do this to Sun with high-end servers. New action is needed to defend that ground.
Second, putting the weight of Sun and the open source devotees behind Linux application development together can help cut into Microsoft's server market share and potentially even make some more desktop inroads.
There's probably no getting Sun out of the hardware business. But unless they harness a mass movement behind the software needed for their systems, they face the prospect of being the Apple of the UNIX server world: well-regarded but largely unused.
"Java sucks ass", Insightful gush /. moderators
/. moderation we've all come to love. And when I say expert and love I am of course using those words in the negative sense.
"Java is very powerful on the server-side" Flaimbait
Another shining example of the expert
Java is a huge server-side force because it is so powerful. Many very high end sites run on Java. JBoss is constantly in the top 10 downloads from sourceforge, and that's not likely because it "sucks ass."
Ahh, this should be interesting...
Hrm.
Hrm?
Hrm?!
HRRMMM!
So let me get this straight. You start with a woefully maintained box, left behind by another administrator who didn't maintain it properly, you have zero experience with UNIX (demonstrated by your inability to move user accounts), you are in a self-confessed non-Solaris shop, you don't even have a test environment for a production system, you expect free training from the support desk to do simple tasks (rather than reading a book or doing the Solaris admin course), and then when you don't get everything your way you have a temper tantrum and migrate to... HP/UX?!?!?!?!
You're a freaking idiot.