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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.
A good stock price and progressive growth can mean a company is "back" to investors. Good support of its user base and new products and services help to show users that a company is "back". I think the second area is where Sun is/was lacking, and I believe that's what this article was making reference to. :)
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.
Does this include Scott McNealy or has he hired a CHO (Chief Humility Officer) to be humble for him? Maybe I need to start following Sun again, I gave them up for dead a couple of years ago.
No, positive cash flow, debt reduction and PROFITS, as well as MANAGED growth mean a company is back on track to investors. You can have great growth and lousy financials, or vice versa so one area alone does not mean a company is "back". There are several different theories and models to determine based on the financials what the "target" stock price should be fora firm with given performance in a specific market. A "good stock price" is a result of the investors willing to buy/sell at higher prices due to thier models (or gut feeling) telling them the data indicates the price will increase due to the firm making (more) profits, the market growing, or the firm capturing more market share. Ideally, all of these occur at once and the stock "breaks-out" and the price goes up rapidly.
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.
I'm pretty sure the DoD singlehandedly props up Sun.
Then you'd be wrong. Sun's biggest customers (and thus their bread and butter) are the Telecom companies. Sun makes no secret of this.
As a developer I find Sun/Solaris a complete paint-in-the-ass to work with.
Really?
Impossible to find binary versions for most packages
I assume you're referring to the Open Source Software that Sun Freeware provides binaries for, and not the commercial software? Because I can't say I see much Solaris software in binary form.
endless back-and-forth dealing with version dependencies
You mean patch levels? Bah, that's easy. Sun tells you which patches you need for a package up front, then provides you with all of them. Try keeping an RPM system up to date sometime. Now THAT is pain and anguish.
and ordering a server that didn't come with a CD drive, DVD drive or video card?
Whoever ordered that server must have explicitly not wanted a drive. AFAIK, all Sun servers have CD or DVD drives by default. Otherwise you'd have a hard time installing all that software that Sun sends with the machine.
Then the admins blindly install Sun updates and we all get to be Sun's gunieapigs learning side-effects.
This differs from MSCEs, how again?
I'm a long time Sun user from sparc1 thru my current F15s, and I think its over. Sun is starting the long decline so familiar to the workstation vendors. Think HP PA-RISC and SGI. Basically, I bought SUN to stay 5 years ahead of the PC technology curve.
Sadly, Sun could not maintain the technology lead and as they move to x86 servers, the argument that low cost x86 systems are 90% as good for half the price starts to be felt. I pay a premium to be ahead of the curve.
OSS is going to canibalize Sun on the software side unless they become a services and integration company of OSS stacks.
As a developer I find the complete opposite. I would much rather work with Solaris (or BSD) in a server environment than any other OS. I've had no problems finding binary versions of any packages and even if I did it's not like compiling from source is a problem.... Dependency problems happen no where near as often as they do in Linux and generally they can be resolved very easily if you know what you're doing. As to your admins blindly installing Sun updates, this speaks more about the quality of your admins than it says anything about Sun. No updates for any OS are perfect especially when you're admins just "blindly install" them.
It's interesting how you didn't touch on any of the good aspects of Solaris that can't be found in any other OS. Perhaps, if you look at some of the internals of Solaris you would see why the DoD is using it.
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
AFAIK, the banks and telecom companies are still buying mad quantities of Solaris on SPARC. Why in their right minds, would sun switch their primary platform, and thus alienate all their loyal customers, who would then be put in the position of having to choose a new platform (which might or might not be provided by Sun).
Plus sun has some pretty revolutionary SPARC stuff coming out in the near future, Niagara and Rock being the two best examples. I have a funny feeling SPARC is here to stay for quite some time.
Plus did I mention that sun has about 40% of the Unix server market, which if I'm not mistaken is about four times the size of the Linux server market?
They are trying to take on Dell in the lower end, thru to the SMP "big iron" machines as well.
You're doing your bi-annual disaster recovery drill. Do you:
1. run a script to restore your configurations.
2. spend two days clicking checkboxes and updating text fields.
I know which one I prefer...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
1) ROCK solid hardware. I've literally seen a Sun machine (A rather big and heavy SunBlade 2000) be dropped down a flight of stairs, and still boot up and run no problem. I've also seen 10+ year old Sun sparc32 systems still in use today with almost clear maintinance logs all the way back.
... Sun to the rescue..
.... take that for what it's worth .... .. just off the top of my head .. I'm sure I'll think of half a dozen more in the time it takes slashdot to post this comment ...
2) Very good vendor-side support in terms of faulty hardware or spare parts. Can be expensive at times, but you get more than what you pay for.
3) With Sun's hardware/software stack (stuff like ALOM, for example) you can do neat stuff you simply cannot do with any other platform. Might not be the easiest to click your way through installing, but once its up and running nothing can compete.
4) Need to take that hard drive out of your 1 CPU e250 server and shove it into a big 64CPU e10k and have it boot/work? Need to hot swap some CPUs? Need the speed of internal FC-AL hard disks? Cant live without that 24gb of ram?
5) Sun is one of the VERY few vendors to provide a software stack certified for use "in the operation of a nuclear facility"
ordering a server that didn't come with a CD drive, DVD drive or video card? Puhhleeeze.
Video card? Buh. Serial consoles. Dragging a keyboard, monitor, and mouse around the datacenter sucks.
Great, we'll just lose some more operating system and (especially) platform diversity. OpenSolaris is the best thing that can happen to Solaris, and I would like to see more competition between Solaris, Linux, and BSD (because competition leads to more innovation between the three OSes). There are many nice things and advantages to the Solaris platform that Linux could learn from. Besides, Solaris is a real Unix (based off AT&T Unix System V), whereas Linux is just a clone. Why would Sun drop something based on the real thing for an imitation? If Sun were to drop anything, I'd rather Sun adopt Plan 9 rather than Linux. At least Plan 9 is unique and different.
And with the SPARC platform, why would Sun drop that elegant platform for the inferior x86-64 architecture? (Don't get me wrong, I like the AMD64 a lot, but it is still based on that hideous x86 architecture, and the SPARC is much better designed). Over the past few years, we have lost a few well-designed platforms (Alpha, PA-RISC, PowerPC) to the x86, and the SPARC is the last holdout. I do not want to see an x86 monopoly on computing, but it looks like were heading for that. And when we're stuck with the x86 as our only platform, then innovation will slow down, and we might not see better platforms again.
Sun should continue what it has been doing; be a Unix company selling a Unix variant and workstations, and promoting Java (let's not forget that important part of Sun). We don't need another Linux PC manufacturer. If Sun degenerated to just selling Linux PCs, then Sun would die faster than you can say a BSD or Apple troll.
Their strongest products?
Sun Fire x2100 - dirt cheap 64bit 1U server
Sun Fire x4100 - cheap enterprise class dual socket 64bit server
Sun Fire x4200 - slightly more expensive, more expandable dual socket 64bit server
The 3 servers above are some of the best rackmount servers in the x86 industry.
Of course Sun have decent SPARC products as well, Dual Core UltraSPARC-IV+ (72 CPU sockets, 144 processor cores) at the high end and cheap 1U's at the low.
Then there are upcoming products: Niagra (32 threads of execution on a 1.4Ghz chip, rumoured to under test by eBay and Google), Rock (multi-thread high end chip being developed with Fujitsu), Honeycomb (storage device), Linux Application Environment (run linux apps on Solaris x86 with no special command).
And... Solaris. It's been Suns best product for a long time.
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.
Your solution, however, would end up positioning them as yet another Linux X86 harware integrator in a commodity market, with little or no competitive advantage. And as much as Linux would like to think it's up to Solaris standards... it's not.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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.