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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."
People are always predicting doom for Sun and Apple, and yet both companies manage to hold on. Sun's doing much better than a year ago and is selling LOTS of hardware. They aren't dead yet...
I think you can partially blame sun's (demise?) on their inability to attract younger developers. As a (younger) sysadmin, I didn't touch a sun box until I got into my first job. Even then I am concentrating on migrating everything over to Linux because it is what I know. I think the same applies in a lot of cases, especially with the younger-folk. How many teenagers do you see trying out Solaris? How many do you see trying out Linux? I would imagine that Linux would far exceed Sun.
When my boss asks me to recommend a server, I would most definetely recommend a Linux server over a Solaris box simply because I have far more experience with Linux than with Unix.
- tom -
And just like predictions of Apple's demise over the years, it's a load of crap.
While I've seen some adds for Apple servers, I don't know if that's a market Apple can or will thrive in - SUN just doesn't seem to add much to Apple unless they're looking at expanding their business directions.
-- "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" [Oscar Wilde]
What I've never understood about Sun is why they didn't make it easier to install Java on a client machine. If you tried to do it (on either Windows or Linux) you would find that the process was increadably badly designed. Most members of the normal public wouldn't stand a chance installing it.
Did they do this on purpose, or are they just incompetent? I've just noticed that they've made it much easier, but for years it was very difficult, at least for normal people.
Sun was riding on top of the world during the boom periods. The problem was all its new customers were startups. When the recession happened Sun pretty much lost the bulk of its customers.
Only real lesson I see is if you court customers whose entire business model is based on riding an irrational economic wave, be prepared to lose all their revenue input when the tide comes crashing down.
IBM on the other hand kept playing to its usual customers, other big name and stable companies, so it rode out the recession almost completely un-scathed.
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
Seeing the expression on people who claimed Linux was not ready for the enterprise: Priceless.
Some things money can buy. Piece of mind and a wad in your wallet can only be achieved by cheap hardware and an even cheaper operating system.
This message brought to you by Open Source. Live free!
---
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.
-- Henrik Ibsen
They are probably the worlds most innovative software company....
And they don't know it. Or if they do they don't know how to capitalise on it. Cracking products, cracking ideas that are at the very edge, but very little go-to-market.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
...here's the crux of Sun's problem!...I've never been able to really get Java working with Mozilla on my box. I don't want to rebuild half of my system to do it either!...Why can't I just simply get an RPM that WORKS!....
Since I built my first Linux box (3 years ago), Java has been a TOTAL hassle in every release. I read little snippets about "licensing" type problems here, lib compatability problems there, etc, all while they are still whining about MS.
The article is right. They seem preoccupied with MS and this wrongheaded idea that somehow they will right the wrongs in court or through the media...get your products working, make them easy to install and put them EVERYWHERE and the problem will solve itself.
Yeah, MS thwarted them illegally, keep whining about that and you will be bankrupt like all the others that MS wronged. Now just get over it, pick yourself up and make it as easy for EVERYONE to install JRE and JDK on ANY platform...be damned with the "licensing" bullsh*t. Like any war, you must win "on the ground" in order to be effective. Give MS a little taste of thir own medicine, give your new Java development studio away for cheap. Who cares if you were wronged if nobody can even install your stuff?
Just my two cents.....
p.s. I'm still without any Java on my Mozilla 1.0.1 install.....
Sun reminds me of DEC. DEC had great hardware, impeccable service and Ultrix rocked. However, they couldn't market. Look where it got them.
I see the same thing with Sun. They are too busy trying to be Microsoft, stabbing their partners in the back, and I've seen service that is not of the usual high caliber.
I predict they will be gone in 5 years (bought by someone else, or just plain out of business).
Microsoft is basically using the same strategy with Sun that worked so well against Netscape. Basically they let Sun do a lot of the groundwork and innovating with Java/J2EE, etc. Then MS basically reimplemented it as C#/.NET with a few improvements (ostensibly after learning from Sun's mistakes), and now MS can throw more resources at their version than Sun can ever hope to. As a Java/J2EE and C#/.NET developer I find them very similar, but I just see Microsoft's solution improving at a faster pace than Sun's. From an idealistic standpoint I don't like it, but it's also hard to turn away from better technology. I know Sun isn't all Java, but alot of their solutions incorporate it, and in the late 90s it gave them a real progressive presence that made them a major player in the whole Internet Boom. These days I'm back to thinking of Sun as those guys who make Solaris and those workstations and servers that are kinda slow but still pretty cool.
But only if they play their cards right.
Sun has 1 thing no other big computer-maker has: Complete independence from Microsoft.
If Sun were smart they would slap together cheap parts (may be but don't have to be x86), put KDE (not GNOME) and Linux on it and offer it at a good price.
IBM, HP, Dell etc. can't react that easily because they have to fear retaliation from Microsoft, so Sun could be the only serious Linux workstation maker for quite a few years. Despite all financial problems, Sun has a very good trademark so I have no doubt that Sun could sell a lot of those machines.
Also this wouldn't hurt their server business because those machines would be desktops.
And, in other news...
Microsoft has agreed to play fair...
Apple is dying!!!
SCO now owns the Linux kernel...
and Sun is dying!!!
In all seriousness, any company with 5.5 billion in the bank that is not bleeding money will not be dying any time soon.
Now back to your regularly scheduled program.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Are you living in a cave? One of *the* great things about sun hardware and solaris is jumpstart, the ability to go to the 'ok>' prompt on a sun box (find that on your home PC for me, wouldja boy?), type "boot net - install" and wack, 30 minutes later you've got a box installed that looks exactly like the 200 other boxes ... you just installed.
PuLEASE, if all you want is glitz, don't talk about Linux, solaris, or the *BSDs; what you're really looking for is Fischer-Price.
Where is the "Eat your own dogfood" principle. Sun has put far too much energy into Java, and not nearly enough into staying competitive with Windows and Linux at a server level. Compare Microsoft who is porting all of their userland into managed mode with Sun who has not released any core component of Solaris in Java.
When Sun ships rm6 in Java and it works well, then maybe I will look at their technology with something other then a short critical glance.
Sun is still selling compelling products, but they have always lagged in marketing skills, it seems. Isn't this the reputation they have always had?
For example, the V210/240 is comparable to a dual-CPU 2GHZ Xeon server--but it also comes with FOUR gigabit Ethernet interfaces and U320 SCSI. It would be a clustering monster (think Oracle RAC). Also, only the newer Opteron servers can compare feature-for-feature (me thinks Sun would do well selling Opterons).
The Sun ONE marketing is a bit confusing, at first, but is basically amounts to all the non-operating system software Sun sells. They are also looking to pull an interesting stunt by delivering all software to a customer and unlocking what the customer buys. This is very similar to how high-end CAD/CAM software sells, and it generally works well.
I think Sun is doing a lot of good stuff. I just hope they weather the economy and keep putting the pressure on Microsoft, IBM, and HP. Sun, whether you like them or not, is an important part of keeping the IT industry in check.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Linux uptimes comparable with Solaris on busy sites
Uptime makes for very good anectodal evidence, but it also makes for a poor benchmark, in general. The reason is that uptime is very much a function of a business' own policies regarding patching, maintainence, etc. These policies have much more effect on uptime than software or hardware reliability, unless, of course, you buy a more expensive hot-swap-even-the-damn-kernel server ("midframe" and high-end Sun servers at $100K+).
Regardless, I agree it is not debatable that both Solaris and Linux make damn fine webserver platforms.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Because while KDE improves in leaps and bounds (becoming faster, more integrated) Gnome just took a step backwards by removing configuration options.
Of course offering Gnome doesn't hurt anybody, but if they want to have a chance on the desktop it would be better to load KDE by default.
Actually my opinion is pretty much confirmed by the big inroads KDE/Linux, especially SuSE is making in Europe (already 5%-20% in German non-technical newsgroup posts, Munich, a city of 1.5 million will also switch) while desktop Linux is in a comatose state (less than 5% share in most non-technical newsgroups, no big cities switching) everywhere where RedHat (= Gnome/Linux) is dominating, especially the USA.
The Gnomies can talk all day long how confusing KDE is to the mythical, non-existant "average" user invented by self-proclaimed usability experts, however the *real* users in the *real* world have chosen KDE. Call me crazy, but I consider the needs of real users more important than those of hypothetical ones.
However I feel it would compete with their own OS.. even if it is on its way down. Some company (re: execs) don't like the idea of throwing out their baby.
Actually KDE/Solaris wouldn't be any more expensive than KDE/Linux for Sun, however Solaris doesn't offer anything over Linux on the desktop AFAIK and Linux is better supported (think about consumer hardware), better known and runs on more architectures (Think about Opteron, think about PPC970) so Linux would certainly be the better choice.
That Solaris is doomed in the long term is a fact.
If they didn't do it at that time, I don't know if ever they would. But there IS a good reason, easily worth 2 bucks a share!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."