Slashdot Mirror
Sun's Last Stand
non writes "Wired has an article by Gary Revlin in the July edition about the current state of affairs at Sun. He attributes half of Sun's problems to failure to recognize the emergence of Linux, and the other half to their failure to make up with Microsoft, and finishes up with a server price comparison. An interesting read."
That summary is only half correct. The article attributes the preoccupation with microsoft as one of their problems... not with making up with them (which they still haven't)
Sun has tried to sell me some servers before (this is education, remember)...but in an age of white boxes that do the same thing for a fraction of the cost, I can't really justify it for a small district. They did send me an evaluation of StarOffice (read the article yesterday)...and I might switch some machines over from MS Office...but servers, no way.
In fact, the V480 has a 3 year warranty, if you add AIX license, 3 year warranty, 8+ GB RAM, the p630 id far more expensive than the V480... it's always easy to cheat... No one runs Linux under Power4, since you loose functionality (dynamic LPARs) compared to AIX.
The Dell machine is far less powerfull (SPECrate comparison) and doesn't include 3 year warranty.
Those prices are plain wrong!
I always wander why Slashdot ops. hate Sun so much and loves IBM... will never get it.
In fact, Sun's is the single company that has donated more lines code in the world (OpenOffice, JXTA, GridEngine, NetBeans, etc.).
The main thing sun has going for themselves over anyone supplying linux and white box hardware, is stability, scallability, support and availability.
With a Sun package (hardware and software) you have the ability to upgrade both system software components, and hardware (including memory and cpu's) without downing the machine, and in many cases without even rebooting the machine. Whatever it is serving, is always available, even after upgrades (granted, we are talking their high end machines, but for... say financial institutions, downtime is a no no, even a few min can cost ungodly amounts of money). Kernel updates, and software updates can also be made (not in all cases) without even rebooting the system.
There are no linux, or even bsd boxes that can do that to my knowledge, and certainly no windows systems.
The reason Apple and Sun hardware/software combinations are superiour in stability, is due to the fact that they are made to support each other, unlike in a windows enviroment, where you have a mix and match of hardware, and software drivers that bring in many inknowns sometimes.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Sun's current "low-end" tactic of trying to replace Linux with Sun on x86 is going to win a lot of converts.
I disagree.
Solaris/x86 is too much of a niche OS, doesn't get the attention from commercial and FOSS providers that Linux or even the BSDs do.
Migrating to Solaris/x86 is taking a needles baby step across a relatively small stream for long time Solaris users that are conservative and nervous about Linux.
I've used Suns workstations since the mid 1980s and they've been great in their time. But in the last several years, the only market remaining for Suns was in big 64-way servers full of disks, inas much as their market at the lower end has been eaten up by cheaper x86 hardware that is not only performing "good enough" for the low end, but better in a lot of cases.
And so while we still run Sun servers for high capacity network-based storage (and Hitachi does their SANs), our new single-purpose servers are increasingly Lintel based. It's only a matter of time before iSCSI and Gigabit Ethernet eat into the network storage market, too.
Sun's contributed a lot to UNIX over the years (RPC, NFS, NIS, OpenOffice) and I'd like to see them stick around because I think they have a lot of talented people that could contribute a lot more. But they need to move on into different markets because the old markets are disappearing into commoditized Lintel boxes.
My view is that Sun should focus on providing software and services for enterprise wide LAN management and integration since this is one area where Linux needs some help. Desktop Linux deployments are increasing and they need to be managed efficiently and integrated effectively into heterogeneous corporate environments. Sun could do this if they decided they wanted to.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Sun Fire V480
Four 900-MHz UltraSparc III Cu processors,16
Gbytes RAM, Solaris 8: $46,995
IBM eServer pSeries 630 Model 6C4
2 x 2-way 1.2-GHz Power4+ processor, 8 Gbytes RAM,
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8: $35,944
Dell PowerEdge 6650
Four 1.5-GHz Intel Xeon processors, 16 Gbytes RAM,
Red Hat Linux 8 Professional: $24,421
Please do not deceive yourself into thinking that the Dell system has equivalent processing power to the Sun/IBM offering...
The issue of support is not addressed in this price comparison. My group managed approximately UNIX servers (70% Solaris, 30% AIX) and it is really difficult to get management to take Linux seriously in this environment. Hardware cost is not really an issue, because hardware is a one-time-cost which can be depreciated over a few years. BTW - for the class of server we purchase, Sun hardware is significantly cheaper than equivalent IBM hardware.
The real concern management has with Linux is support. If there is a hardware or software problem, we can call Sun/IBM 24x7 and they will work on the problem and if necessary call in people with specific expertise to resolve the issue. Those maintenance contracts cost a lot of money, but that is part of the cost of doing business when you have SLAs to maintain. I cannot get that kind of support for Linux. Checking Google for a fix is simply not an alternative.
The other issue that the article does not consider is that some of the applications we use do not run on Linux, and that really limits the possibilities for Linux in future deployments.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
# cd
# ln -s
Oh come on, Apple survived because it got Jobs back and he understood the Apple product was about marketing to consumers, not technical excellence. Its a brand name, like Mercedes Benz, but face it, most people will buy their Toyota Camrys (or SUVs) and be quite happy pocketing the difference.
Sun is screwed. Marketing is important, but the bottom dollar and technical capability is more important. Much of their target server applications will be taken by linux, and if the Fortune 100 client needs handholding, they can hire IBM for the 24x7.
No, Sun is not going to disappear tomorrow, but its definitely headed towards the Niche Zone. I think its simple. If you think their projected products will draw corporate customers back to Sun, then they will prosper. If not, they're the next UNISYS.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon