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New Hopes From Sun's Idea Factory
UltimaGuy writes "While it's way too soon to say Sun is back on track, the return of Bechtolsheim, aggressive improvements in products and a healthy dose of humility among Sun's executives mean the troubled company and its investors have more cause for optimism than they've had in years." Of course, Sun's problems are still out there - dealing with projects like Geronimo for some of their base infrastructure, and of course other companies promoting Linux as the solution.
I dunno if I'd count jumping on the Linux/Open Source bandwagon "back on track" or not...I'd like to see some new ideas from them, but I haven't seen anything original yet, besides, perhaps, using AMD in a big way.
good thing, especially since Sun is not going to fuck with StorageTek, they're going to run it as a separate division of the company and start selling StorageTek storage products with Sun servers and close out Sun's line of storage products (which were just rebranded from Hitachi and other vendors anyway). Sun's storage offerings were overpriced and underwhelming, with StorageTek in house they have a good thing becuase regardless of what platform wins out in the future (Linux, Solaris, Solaris x86, Windoze, Plan 9) people are going to need lots and lots of storage space for their pr0n, warez and MP3, oops, I mean corporate data. Now if Sun can only get rid of the shit ugly purple and grey color scheme they have on the Sparc boxen they might be able to stage a huge comeback.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
They want to be a solutions provider - hardware, software and support. But their Kool-Aid is getting pretty stale. Their own platforms (Solaris and SPARC) are increasingly viewed as legacy stuff.
They need to reinvent themselves as an end-to-end solutions provider for Linux and dump (or at least really heavily de-emphasize) the rest. Forget about OpenSolaris - salvage what little is still worth anything in Solaris, GPL it and help integrate it into Linux. Stop designing, making and selling new SPARC hardware - give the platform to Fujitsu or Toshiba or whoever is stupid enough to want it. Focus entirely on making the best AMD64-based servers money can buy. Become the new high end of the Linux server market. Be the vendor that can sell you the complete package. Have support techs that know more about Red Hat than Red Hat.
But it won't happen, or it'll happen too little too late, because they have too much money, pride and identity invested in the legacy crap. What a waste.
fnord.
the start to great things for Sun. Right now, all they've announced is some small things like buying each other's stuff and including the Google Toolbar with JRE downloads. But if you think about it, who has Google announced a partnership (other than the AOL deal last week which was mainly a defensive move against MS)? So you really have to take this partnership seriously. Now, with Google Wi-Fi rolling out, what's the next thing for Google to offer? Well, what about Sun-Ray's? It might not be possible to offer a Sun-Ray that connects over Google Wi-Fi for free right now, but in 5 - 10 years it will be (Moore's law makes hardware about 30% cheaper every year). I believe Google will wait until the hardware is cheap enough to be funded by advertising and give it away. The question is which hardware will they use. Clearly with this partnership announcement, Sun's Sun-Ray platform has taken the lead.
No Sigs!
I will always have a soft corner in my heart for sun. Sun's java language made it possible for many developers from developing countries to compete in the commercial software market. Free JAVA meant that it was easy to learn the language. No question that the open-source tools like tomcat were the other barrier breakers.
Sun always had been a company with a scoial conscience, dontaing hardware and software to colleges all over the world. It is nice that they have finally accepted the market trends (like x86) and decided to go with them.
Who cares about some "PC technology curve"?
What really is important is the performance, power consumption, and price at which you can accomplish your computing goals. The Operton's have a great balance of all three factors and Sun is packaging, yes PACKAGING, some great hardware at a great price and very low power consumption in their x86 line. Who really cares if Sun has the chip designed/made from scratch when at the end of the day all you really should care about is results and not who made your machine so you can brag about it.
If you really think you need Sparc, you could likely double your power by using Sun's high-quality x86 products in place, such as their amazing quad dual-core Opteron V40z servers.
For the record, I have a Sun W2100z x86 Opteron system but could care less about having Sparc as the current equipment is more than capable and provides excellent performance at a fraction of the cost of Sparc for my use. Sparc certainly is a great product and I welcome it and wished it were the standard instead of x86, but until that is ever realized, I'm simply results oriented.
The apparent x86 motto: "Do more with less" [you define 'less']
The apparent Sparc motto: "Work smarter, not harder" [and anyone/thing smart always costs more]
The google-sun partnership is a lot more than hype. Google buying up a lot of new SUN servers? Most anything that google touches or partners with turns to gold, this is the start of something huge. You think the dot.com revolution started a big rise of hardware purchases? What happens when Google blankets the earth in free wireless and uses SUN servers to make it happen? Great article with a positive slant on this partnership that few others noted. It's from CNN Money - where slashdotters do not roam? http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/14/technology/techinv estor/tech_biz/
Horns are really just a broken halo.