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Sun Banks On Open Source For Its Survival
CWmike writes "In moving to cut its current workforce by between 15% and 18% today, Sun is trying to stay ahead of a falling knife. And today's announcement made it clear that Sun officials are banking on the company's open-source strategy to help it pull through. A cut of up to 6,000 employees at Sun will hurt, but CEO Jonathan Schwartz contends users will be more inclined to try open-source products such as MySQL, OpenSolaris and Sun's GlassFish application server during a time of economic stress."
Reader Barence also pointed out that Sun will begin to auction "branding space" in OpenOffice.
If they want to stay afloat, they want the support of businesses. And from the position of a business owner, there is no way -- I mean NO WAY -- that I will accept advertising on my business documents. If somebody tried this STUPID move I would not only stop using their free product, I would refuse to use their commercial version. The idea is ASININE.
Schwartz needs to stop believing in the Mel Brooks idea of "the Schwartz be with you". This is not a Mel Brooks movie.
Sun needs market share. And they will never get it if this is the way they want to roll.
Much as I like open source, giving stuff away is really not what a business that need some cash needs right now.
Suns long term (5-10 year) prospects just don't look good. Their core of products are all up against strong competition. The Sparc architecture is not significantly better than x86-64 to justify the additional cost and "non-standard" architecture to buyers, Solaris has some nice features but is up against both Linux & itself on x86-64 & IA32, where Linux continues to eat into the market share of traditional UNIX systems, and their x86-64 servers are commodity boxes which you can (& do) buy from someone else. Oh and of course Java and OpenOffice are established products that they have no way to capitalise on, essentially making them money-sinks on the balance sheet.
Sun has to find a way to create a sustainable revenue stream, and it doesn't have much to work with.
I'm not a software guy, so maybe I'm missing something. But paying $1 billion for MySQL (less than 1 year ago!) didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Wasn't a lot of the code GPL?
As of yesterday the stock market values the equity at $3 billion. And actually values the company at only $1.6 billion (they have $2.6 billion in cash but also have $1.3 billion in debt).
Maybe a company that throws money around so freely deserves to go out of business. Even in 2008, a billion US dollars is still a *lot* of money.
Opensolaris is substantially more stable than Linux, along with having some unique features of its own. But more than anything it provides a platform that is all Sun's, complete with backwards compatibility going back over ten years even in the drivers (compare with linux where I struggle to compile modules from six months ago against new releases). You're right that hardware support is currently lacking, but there's still time for that to come - and architecturally Opensolaris has the potential to be a much better OS than Linux. It is not at all redundant.
I am trolling
Solaris on SPARC hardware is the gold standard of reliability and quality. So if need the best reliability and you've got money to burn (i.e. banks), that's what Sun should be able to persuade you to buy. If you own the best OS in the world, and you can't make money, you've got big problems.
Does Star Office having plans on "branding"? I wouldn't mind paying to turn this off, but if Sun forces me to look at McDonalds & Starbucks logos all day - forget it.
From my perspective (I've used and bought Suns for decades), Sun is heading full tilt down a path towards the cliff edge. What they're doing is 100% wrong.
Their interest in open source is fine, but it's not a good strategy for business profits unless they want to become another RedHat providing Linux services and support --- a role in which they would be coming up from behind very slowly. It's a role for which they're not cut out, because their reputation in the open source world is marginal at best because they've always been half-hearted about it.
Sun needs to stop thinking of open source as a business strategy, because for them it's merely what's referred to as a hygiene factor in social sciences --- it's not a benefit when it's exercised, but it's a severe demerit when it's not exercised. In other words, yes, be fully open with software, but not because it's a source of profits, but because you'll be shunned without it.
For profits, capitalize on what you have: awesome hardware and competent Professional Services. Invest more in your CPU division with its great Niagara processors, so that when Intel is offering 16-core CPUs and talking about 64, you can be offering 256-core and talking about 4096. Take on nVidia and AMD on the SIMD front, so that while they're toying with noddy graphics cards for GPGPU, you can offer 64k SIMD stream processors far more tightly coupled to your host cores.
We've recently entered the Age of Multicore, and you (Sun) have a good reputation in that area, and you know how to build good hardware (nobody has ever marked you down for that). Why not capitalize on your existing skills, resources and reputation in this area, instead of chasing rainbows?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Or maybe Solaris on SPARC isn't as fantastic as you think. Back in the day when SPARC hardware actually mattered, the Linux SPARC port was rather successful. People actually chose to run Linux even though Solaris came free with the hardware and had perfect driver compatibility.
I don't see a future for Sun, no matter which part of their business they focus on, except possibly MySQL. Sun can't live off of MySQL unless they turn themselves into MySQL AB, and then what was the point?
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
What a piece of crap these things are. There are two big problems:
1. Build quality. They have a small power switch and LED board mounted near the left front that is activated by a pen. Invariably, people press it too hard and destroy the switch, which results in a nonbooting server. But the boards are service parts (they probably are worth 10 or 15 bucks tops) and cannot be purchased in bulk. I mean, i'd be ok with this if we could buy 20 or 50 of them and keep them on hand. They're not so hard to replace. But WTF. I mean, people with little physical strength can render the server inoperable.
The front panels fall off regularly, the optical drive bezels might as well be scotch taped on. Video hardware is chancy and may not work in some cases. I have over 50 of these things so I know whereof I speak, bought in several waves. I mean, if this was Dell i'd understand, their stuff is cheap. But this server is not cheap!
Anyway Sun warranty service is also pretty slow to respond to us, though they do eventually fix the problems, at the cost of devices being out of action for significant stretches of time.
2. Poor integration and poor choices for third party parts. For instance, PXE booting on all four included NICs must execute during bootup. No disabling this is possible. Dell used to do this shit too, but at least Dell was cheap. The x4100 is expensive for an x86 server of its meager specifications.
In addition, the RAID controller is an utter piece of garbage. Most RAID controllers - think Dell PERCs, or HP/Compaq Smart controllers, will treat the disk array as a set of disks that can be transported between servers as a unit, and will be read by the controller as the same unit regardless of the system it is put in. Not so the Sun DPT controller. It apparently stores the RAID config in flash on the card or something, so when you move the disks between systems it basically refuses to recognize the array as a unit. You pretty much have to perform a recovery on the first disk of a RAID 1 set and then reintegrate the second drive, which is a scary prospect when you have data you care about and time is of the essence.
Why DPT of all vendors, anyway? And why did DPT screw the pooch so bad with this one? They have perfectly workable RAID controllers that do not have this flaw. Oh and the controller is dog slow too.
Anyway, they got the contract for a particular large government agency's servers for a particularly large program, so that's why I have the things and they keep getting airdropped on me. I'd like to shitcan them all but I have to make the ones that aren't broken at any given time work until they finally get EOL'd. Hopefully soon.
But yeah, i'll never even look at Sun gear again.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
OpenSolaris has all the advantages of Solaris 10 and more. So you're looking at things such as ZFS, DTrace, Containers, etc..., that are already in Solaris, as well as entirely new things not yet in Solaris, such as a much improved and more user friendly installation system.
OpenSolaris is basically to Solaris what Fedora is to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's the cutting edge of Solaris development, with numerous Solaris devs contributing to it; it's an incubation ground. As the features mature and the bugs are ironed out, key features are then moved into Solaris, which is expected to be deployed on servers, mission critical systems, mainframes, and so on. Only recently did Solaris gain the ability to boot off a ZFS root fs for instance, but OpenSolaris has had that capability for quite some time.
If you're interested in Solaris, OpenSolaris is the way to go, as you're less likely to be worried about some minor bugs and more interested in seeing everything it has to offer, including the cutting edge. I'd recommend you review the Solaris and OpenSolaris wikipedia pages for a good overview, which can link to more in-depth information on some of the specific features I mentioned above.
I work for Sun, and I suspect that you do, too. I'm an "individual contributor" and I have nothing to do with management. Nor do I own any Sun stock.
Since I can't give you the Flamebait mod you deserve - since you should and do know better - I'll point out a couple of things for the benefit of those playing along at home.
The cuts are not likely to come from "vital groups that provide support and engineering for major customer contracts". That would be suicidal; Schwartz, Green, and others at the upper levels have said as much. They are more likely to come from areas that are consistently failing to meet targets or provide cashflow. Software, support, and allied services currently stand the best chance of generating near-term revenue.
And I'm sorry you're so upset that you won't be getting a pay rise this year. Guess what? I won't, either! But you don't see me bitching about it. WTF do you expect? "We're having a major downturn, here's your hefty salary increase"?
If you want to keep your job, you'd better quit whingeing about how you're not getting rich as quickly as you might like and that you're not going to be able to expense quite so many lattÃs as you've been, quit worrying about what Jonathan Schwartz' ponytail is having for breakfast, and start doing something to generate value for the company and customers, because if you can't show that you are, you're going to walk.
Here's a tip: If you're not doing something relating to software or support, get your arse over there and start doing something with a demonstrable benefit to the firm's bottom line ASAP.
Sun's approval rating drops by 15% - 18% today.
"but CEO Jonathan Schwartz contends users will be more inclined to try open-source products such as MySQL, OpenSolaris and Sun's GlassFish application server during a time of economic stress."
So, during a time of economic stress people will just be crawling over themselves to pay for MySQL, OpenSolaris, and GlassFish when the reason they would use those during such a time would be that they are free?
Way to miss the parent's point. He wasn't complaining that there are no raises this year. His complaint was that a guy whose only contribution was to do a reverse stock split cosmetic alteration that resulted in more layoffs and massive reduction in value of the stock to pre-split prices did NOT get a raise freeze.
I used to work at Sun too and it was typical that someone would be laid off and hired back. If you're not going to maintain staff cuts then all you're doing is making press today and eating layoff charges tomorrow. I left because I was tired of being painfully understaffed. I DID work in software at Sun for a decade and in the last few years saw a lot of people laid off with no way to arrange staffing to fill their vacancy. There are no sacred cows at Sun. Even if you don't have enough staff to meet obligations.
WTF do you expect? "We're having a major downturn, here's your hefty salary increase"?
$11 million sounds like quite a large bonus - that's gotta be a smack in the face for all Sun employees if the company is saying they can't afford to give them an inflationary pay increase. I bet there are people working harder at Sun than the CEO, the myth that managers work harder/deserve more money than others needs to die. You can't blame an employee for being angry at that.
Incidentally share holders couldn't care less (on the whole) about "value". They care about short-term monetary profit, nothing else. If you're an uber coder that produces great products it doesn't matter - you can probably be forced to work faster and produce poorer code that will still sell.
Why they won't apply these principles to the executives I don't know.
But they do make money from Java. In FY2008, Sun made $220M from Java, $208M from MySQL, and $216M from Solaris and Virtualization.
In addition to that, they made a little over $4B from hardware and software support.
There software business is up 27% from FY2008 Q1 to FY2009 Q1. Compare that to their systems business that is down 17% over the same time frame.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Couple of data points:
1. My kids go to school in the Bay Area. Both have an impressive wardrobe of Sun-logo'd t-shirts (the designs are much better that your average "slap-a-logo-on-a-white-T"). While I'm not complaining, why is Sun clothing my children while laying off 5,000 staff?
2. I've been in the computer business for ~25 years. I've done work with Sun in the past (~15 years ago). I can tell you what business Microsoft is in. I can tell you what business HP is in. Ditto Oracle. Heck I even think I could tell you what business IBM is in these days. I have *no* idea what business Sun is in. Oh I know they own some Open Source apps and once upon a time they made computers around the SPARC processor - but what do they do now? How do they intend to make money and return a profit for their shareholders?
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
I attribute that to bias, laziness, and fear of the unknown. Was the system still under support when they did that? People who do that are less familiar with Solaris since they couldn't run it at home for free. They've been running Linux so long that they can't seem to bother to learn a new OS, or the idiosyncracies of a slighty different OS. They'd rather install something familiar. I doubt that it was necessarily the better OS for the system.
I see this with students in the university all the time. The majority of undergrads come to the system with Windows at home and won't bother learning anything but very basic unix to do their CS work. They learn just enough to get by and pass the classes. Very few even want to use the Macs, much less the unix systems, unless they have to. Lower division Undergrad classes are required to use Unix for their coursework, which is the only reason they use it. By the time they reach upper division, most are back on windows, using their own laptops or crowding the Windows labs. They've never sat down and run man on /bin and /sbin commands. They're always having basic problems with finding out how to get things done.
A similar thing happens with the grad students, except that they're using linux or Mac and don't like other flavors of Unix unless they're required to use it. Everyone wants what's familiar. They develope a bias towards the familiar and against the unfamiliar.
I've worked on several varieties of Unix and Linux as well as Windows and Macs so I've had no problems adapting. However the majority of users choose what is familiar to them due to laziness and/or fear. I've hacked my way through Novell's Netware. I've worked through VMS. I've programmed for Mac/Unix/Windows and the hardest part was always the initial transition of learning the new systems. I've supported Various Unix system, and the hardest part was learning the idiosyncracies of each. They're always annoying initially while you figure out how it's done differently.
There's always some fear of the unknown, but that should be overcome if you want to do your job well. You use the system that suits the job. You don't cram linux into everything just because you can't handle learning the OS. However, with that said, sometimes linux is the best OS for the job at hand. If that's the case don't buy solaris sparc hardware. That's just wasting money. It's stupid.
I don't know what portion of the OpenOffice developers work for Sun, but I'll bet it's a lot. And that's got to change. This is a worthwhile project -- without it, the Linux desktop basically ceases to exist (sorry KOffice fans, it's a great project, but it isn't even close to OpenOffice in terms of being usable as a true MS Office replacement).
Red Hat? Novell? CANONICAL?? You've got to saturate this project with developers. Without it, desktop Linux is dead in the water. And yes, desktop Linux is real, today, despite what detractors say. Take that away and Linux slowly sinks in other areas too.
And I agree with whoever suggested that they need to get the product out in front of more Joe Sixpak types. Press a bunch of CD's and hand them out like candy. It worked for AOL back in the day. We've got to get to a point where everyone's got "one of those OpenOffice CD's" lying around, so when they need to get a document together in the middle of the night and they don't have the time, inclination, or source media to get an MS Office install together, the little light bulb comes on over their head, they toss in the OpenOffice CD, and we have one more user.
And of course the preload market needs to be saturated with OpenOffice. Every new PC needs to have a copy of OpenOffice preloaded. As the price of computers continues to come down, this could be the key to keeping that price point down. I'm sure Microsoft is really going to turn the screws on this one, but if a few PC manufacturers are bold enough to do it, this could be the pivotal moment for that.
For 90% of the users out there, OpenOffice is MS Office's equal. It's time to really push push push to get it out in front of them.
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Giving stuff away happens when things are "Free" as in beer.
Making things available happens when things are "Free" as in Freedom.
Java has been free like beer for ages. Coincidentally, SUNW/JAVA stock values were higher than they are today.
Free stuff attracts people. Microsoft wins developer mindshare with free or ridiculously low-cost software development tools. College students learn what they can afford to learn.
Free stuff up front with paid support to be delivered in the future is the way things seem to be going.
"Here's this thing.. Have fun with it! If you need help, it will cost you. Good luck!"
Opensolaris is substantially more stable than Linux
Bullshit. The last two times I tried opensolaris, the installation was catastrophically destroyed the first time that I upgraded it. System wouldn't even fucking boot.
It might be stable if you never touch it, but so is linux, so the difference can't be that great. Besides, an admin is expected to, at the very least, perform security upgrades on a regular basis. Their packaging system is *beyond* broken and smf is a horrible piece of trash that makes you long for the simplicity of rc.d scripts.