Sun Microsystems, a CEO's Last Stand? 257
pillageplunder writes "Businessweek's cover article is a sharp look at Sun Microsystems. The gist of the article? That its fall can be laid at the Feet of its CEO, Scott McNealy. Overall, a balanced read, one that does a good recap of the the high and the very low low's that Sun has reached under McNealy."
How do I apply for his position? (Score:5, Funny)
No, you need experience. (Score:5, Insightful)
On a serious note, why is it that CEOs are rewarded very handsomely for poor performance and failure when the rest of us get fired when we don't get the job done, or even are perceived as not being value for money?
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:5, Funny)
So, you're saying that Darl McBride might still have career opportunities after SCO? Damn.
Then again, SCO isn't a major corporation and was already scrabbling in the industry detritus when he took over, so there's still hope.
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:4, Informative)
His busy schedule of making bizarre unsubstantiated claims also earned him over a million dollars last year [forbes.com].
A couple of years of that, and many people would stop worrying about future career opportunities completely....
--Bruce Fields
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:5, Insightful)
I always figured that if you were at the top of the heap, and you were surrounded by friends, you could do pretty much anything you want.
In theory, to get to the top, you should know what's best for the business, how to implement what's best for the business, and be trustworthy to do so. However, anymore, it seems like an ivy league degree and some friends in high places are what it takes to get to the top. People aren't made into leaders just because they have that little slip of paper. Sure, it helps cultivate people who already have the talent, but just forcing your way through school won't make you a leader if you didn't have the skills to begin with.
OTOH, people like us are viewed as "resources". Therefore, we can be replaced, upgraded, downgraded, or simply pitched out like used up garbage. We have the skills, but not the connections. The people who have the connections frequently don't have the skills to evaluate OUR skills because they were hired, again, because of their little piece of paper rather than promoted because of what they proved they knew.
It really is a scary deformation of the way things are supposed to be. I'm sure management has a different view of things, but that's how I see it, and, from talking to other people, I don't seem to be alone in having that view.
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, you're right in that management views you as a resource that is somewhat replaceable. To expand on this though, you're not as easily replaceable as the fry cook at McDonalds so a little more strategy is involved. In order to accomodate for this, the MBA program teaches classes in "Leadership" and "Organizational Behavior". These classes veil themsleves as "making the employees happy an productive" but the reality is that they are courses in how to manipulate people into doing what you want, possibly to their detriment, while still thinking things are great.
Someone skilled in these management tools can keep you thinking you're work environment is awesome right up till you get your pink slip.
Bottom line: always look out for yourself and never trust the management
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:2, Funny)
to compensate for a little penis, as always.
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:4, Insightful)
McDonalds fry cooks can't be replaced by workers in Bangalore.
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, one of the goals of management is to assure that its employees are replaceable. For the health of the organization, you do not want to create a dependency on any one person or group. The company has to assure that they will still be able to function if any network admin or programmer leaves. For that matter, I believe it wise to migrate employees through different positions in the company to re
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a software engineer who recieved my Masters in CS and am about to complete an MBA as well, so I've got some perspective from both sides.
Turn back from the dark side before it's too late. (Only slightly kidding.)
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:2)
According to xap.com, about 5,000 students graduate from Yale each year; Harvard has (a surprisingly modest) 2,000; Duke comes in at a little over 3,000; and U Penn (Philadephia)is a smidgen below 4,000. There are probably other Ivy League Universities (I'm a Brit, so I'm not even dead certain all these are Ivy League either...)
Now; lets assume a conservative (before business school and Masters degree
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:2)
Um. There are a hell of a lot more than 500 CEO positions. In fact, the "Helzburg School of Management" (yea.. THAT doesn't sound like the punchline to a Dilbert joke) claims 1800 of its own alumni in CEO positions [rockhurst.edu] by itself.
I also believe I said MANAGEMENT, not CEO specifically (but, I'm too lazy to go check). My bad if I specified only CEOs, I'm referring to the whole of "upper" management here.
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:2)
I graduated from Cambridge University in '95 (admittedly with a philosophy degree, and a penchant for good wine). None of my friends - even the wekk connected ones - look like they are going to end up CEOs of anything, not even the Local 7-11.
Yet many of the CEOs I know (especially those who started their own company) are self-educated.
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet because of business you can get a job that pays $75,000 a year, have cheap commodity hardware to play on, and live in a world largely shaped by the efforts of 'people like us'.
Look, of course business has a tendency towards evil. It's sad that the most altruistic and non-money-oriented people don't get paid more, but the truth is as immutable as a physical law: People with lots of money and power are generally that way because they pursue it. Sure they need us to have power, and it's a bit of a good ol' boys club, but we are all complicit because a) we are not so power hungry, and b) they give us cool stuff.
I know it's frustrating to be viewed as nothing more than a cog, but don't let it bother you. The powerful few view everyone this way, and why not? They couldn't run a business if they took the time to know how to evaluate every type of employee. You can take consolation in the fact that they are no more likely to be happy then you are, and probably have a much higher stress-level. They are surrounded by sharks day in and day out, and may have a very difficult time discovering who their true friends are (if any).
Bottom line is, we didn't choose this career for money and peer recognition is more important than manager recognition anyway. If they knew what you knew they wouldn't need you, so be thankful you have a job doing something you love. This is a pretty unique time in history as far as that goes.
Re:No, you need experience. (Score:2)
On a serious note, why is it that CEOs are rewarded very handsomely for poor performance and failure when the rest of us get fired when we don't get the job done, or even are perceived as not being value for money?
Why indeed? The previous CEO of Northwestern Power made many millions annually and had obscene perks while he drove the company into bankruptcy and devastated the long-term shareholders, who were mostly just regular customers of the utility. After he was fired/resigned, the board of directors
Again? (Score:5, Interesting)
What "Sun is dying" article? (Score:2)
RTFA. It doesn't talk about Sun "dying", but about it's decline into near irrelevance. To quote:
Blame Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the article is eerily similar to the 'Apple should have' articles. Basically, what was done wrong was to try to do new things, invest in research. Instead the company should have built wintel boxes like Dell and fired a maximum of people.
How many companies have been successful in imitating Dell except Dell?
Just how it is. (Score:2)
You know why the most negative news always comes in the most? because people are cynical depressed bastards in all honesty.
and to make their lives a little more exciting, they have to have bad news, or bad news about someone else having trouble. That's why your local news ALWAYS has something about children getting raped, people getting kidnapped, soldiers being beheaded, detah, destruction, murder, pain, sadne
Brave Sun (Score:5, Funny)
I certainly wouldn't want to reach under McNealy, especially near his low lows.
Sun employees vs Microsoft employees (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sun employees vs Microsoft employees (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sun employees vs Microsoft employees (Score:4, Insightful)
In some ways, energy slowly gets killed by experience, rather than being the result of age per se. In my 20s, technology was cool and I was thrilled with what I found myself increasingly able to do (and with what I was entrusted to do). That made 12 and 14 hour days zip by like nothing, and the occasional all-nighter seemed fun. Now, in my 40s, I can do just about everything more efficiently and with fewer false starts, but the "cool" aspect has diminished and motivation for extraordinary effort has to be found somewhere else...
Re:Sun employees vs Microsoft employees (Score:4, Informative)
But there really is a certain amount of energy -- for everything, not just marathon coding sessions -- that youth brings to the table, and some of it is purely as function of age. All other things being equal, a 25 y/o with five years of experience is going to be much more energetic than a 40 y/o with the same experience. Young people also really do tend to have more imagination than their elders, and are more likely to see a novel way of solving a problem that their older counterparts would just never think of.
On the other side of the coin, you get programmers like my father, who has been doing it since the mid-Sixties, and has worked on a wide variety of both business and technical problems in just about every industry you can name. He flat-out refuses to do the marathons -- hell, he's earned it -- but then, he doesn't have a reason for them; he's seen it all, doesn't ever have to reinvent the wheel, and is at least as productive in 8 hours as a twentysomething whiz kid is in 12. (I consider myself squarely between the two extremes, obviously.) But he does like working with younger programmers who keep him sharp.
Like I said, a mix works best. I'm currently the project lead for a group ranging in age from 18 to 44, so I have a pretty good idea of how this works
Re:Sun employees vs Microsoft employees (Score:2)
Re:Sun employees vs Microsoft employees (Score:5, Informative)
There are a number of Sun engineering offices that have a majority age under 35, but alot of those are overseas so you won't meet them. The offices in California and the Sales offices definitely are of an older average age.
As for the article
Re:Sun employees vs Microsoft employees (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever a M$ sales team comes-a-knocking, its always 3 or 4 pushy guys.
Whenever Sun calls, its a smoking hot sales chick (to weaken your resolve) and a grandfatherly guy who actually knows his shit (to instill confidence).
Classical big-company problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Bruce
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:2)
Along those lines, I'd say that Sun has done much better than HewPaq in the Unix system market.
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Bruce
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:2)
No argument from me wrt to intel and HP. It will be interesting to see if BizWeek has anything to say about that.
My point was that Windows on the Itanic was thought by many in the mid-90's to be the future of workstations - thus making Sun irrelevant. Sun was the first major OEM to pull out of the Itanic bandwagon - much to intel's disgust.
Intel's other major boo-boo was trying to push single processor performance too far. With processor
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:2)
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Clayton Christensen has got to be mildly amused at Sun's disposition (and probably wondering why McNealy didn't fork out the $12 bucks to buy his rather significant book [amazon.com]).
This is classic high-margin "focusing and developing your product line's evolution on your top 5% customers" as well as a clear non-response to Clayton's "trivial technology" via Sun's insistence that Linux could not do what Solaris does.
In the mid-90s, I began predicting Sun's demise when we encountered their Netra Internet "server" fiasco. Sun took a Sparc5, completely crippled its OS, removed its video card (serial or network interface - progressive, eh?), and then made misrepresentations as to what software was included. For instance, it was billed as a web server - but in actuality, it had a FTP server and a copy of Mosaic client software for download. Wala... it was "serving up web software."
Having bought several dozens of these based on Sun's misrepresentations, the only salvation was to buy video cards, full Solaris licenses (with a C compiler which was also excluded from the Netra) and make them a Sparc5 once again (at well over the cost of simply purchasing a Sparc5). Not only was the Sun product manager's response mystifying (blaming the customer for having unique and special needs - what, running http as falsely advertised?), but even more amusing was that no Sun support group had any awareness of this product.
More revealing, however, was that Netra was a stillborne attempt to enter lower margin (ala 40%?) products without threatening the cash cow. It failed miserably and I would expect some of the behind-the-scenes politics might explain why support knew nothing of the product and why it was permitted to leave Sun crippled to the point of unusability. Shortly after my public criticism, it was pulled.
I encountered similar high-marginosis several years later when Sun was pushed as a required platform for numerous Lucent products. The gifted Linux and FreeBSD work of an company employee allowed several thousand dollars worth of Intel hardware to replace quarter-million dollar Sun servers.
As Bruce writes, I'd suggest Sun's high-margin cash-cow myopia goes back well into the early 90s, when according to Clayton's theory, the time to respond to Linux and *BSD was immediate. It'd be interesting if others have Sun experiences, especially with respect to any lower-margin product introductions/failures, that might further illustrate Sun's trouble.
*scoove*
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:4, Funny)
Here, let's at least make it a little more dramatic: "wa-LA!" Now I feel a sense of the theater; the magician has just performed his best trick. Pity it was a with a deck of TV Magic(TM) Cards, but what did you expect? The guy said "Wala" instead of "Voilà!"
Wala. You don't happen to use "formally" instead of "formerly" too, such as in, "I formally had credibility, but then I used 'wala' instead of 'voilà'"? That one drives me nuts, too.
Wala.
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:4, Informative)
I loved the Netras. They were exactly the right product.
What is the value of a video card on a webserver? Or a floppy drive? Or even a CD-ROM, though I would usually end up ordering them, for the additional $135.
Would you really have run the Sun-supplied httpd under any circumstances?? At the time, they were always shipping versions that were seriously outdated. They shipped sendmail4 for YEARS after sendmail8 was out! (This I never understood.)
I bought hundreds of Netras (literally, for a dozen different clients). They were a great way to build a cheap presentation layer for a web farm.
The standard pair of network interfaces was nice too (and rare among HW vendors, at the time). It saved $800 for a quad card.
Yes, they were IDE and there was no MBus. That didn't bother me at all. I used them where there were already good design reasons for system redundancy, either for failover or scaling.
So obviously, the Netras fit my needs perfectly and not yours. For those who weren't around at the time, Linux was *not* a viable option for a large production web farm at the time. It definitely *is* now, and IMHO that's why Sun is so devalued.
Solaris is still superior to Linux in many ways, but Linux is just as good or better for the vast majority of the market. If they were priced equally (TCO- admins, hardware, and software combined), Solaris would still be holding on. They aren't. It isn't.
I still own a bunch of Sun stock that I'm unwilling to sell at this deep of a loss. Come on Scott, make me proud of my stubbornness. Steve did!
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:5, Insightful)
But nobody made Sun protect DEC's lines. So, Sun won. Sun seems to have forgotten that lesson.
Bruce
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:2)
I would propose as the cardinal sin of the computer industry: protecting your own higher-priced or older products from your own newer, lower-priced products. This was a primary contributor to DEC's demise.
How would you compare this to when they dropped the PDP-10 for the VAX?
Sidebar on Netra (Score:3, Informative)
They resembled nexus.yorku.ca, which was a SPARC 1+ which I took the video card out of and shoved in a rack to support a large dial-in community, many moons ago (;-)) That was, you see, the way to get a small compute server cheap.
--dave
Re:Classical big-company problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that's true in the low-end-product space, but that isn't where Sun is making money or where they're putting their effort. The part of the business that was most successful was servers, initially just retargeted workstations and small multiprocessors, and eventually medium and large multiprocessors.
The opportunity in the server space is to significantly lower the cost per unit work, something which I expect the whole industry to be doing in a few years.
Right now, Sun and IBM have their first dual-core chipsets out, in small quantities and starting with the medium-to-large server markets. The big cost reduction will be when they, (and AMD, and probably SGI), have 8- and 16-way multithreaded chips out. These deal with the huge mismatch between CPU and memory speed, and will be able to saturate a modern memory bus by running enough threads to keep the ALUs earning their keep even when individual threads are blocked waiting on a fetch.
At that time, we'll see something like a 10:1 or perhaps 30:1 jump in price-performance. Which, I claim, is A Good Thing (;-))
This, in turn, means the competition will be once again in the server market, where the middle and large ends are both high-margin, and a significant jump in price-perfromance will justify the margins.
I do eventually expect to see low-end multi-threaded chips, probably in blade or 1U enclosures, for a relatively high price per unit but with a very high price-performance offsetting that.
--dave
I'm kind of disappointed ... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait. Sun, not Apple. Got it.
Re:I'm kind of disappointed ... (Score:2)
Today, Intel's processors are twice as fast as SPARC chips, and McNealy admits that his biggest regret is "not putting Solaris on [Intel's chips] six or seven years ago."
Look at the dates here:
-rw-r--r-- 1 213 users 213275 Oct 3 1998 jpeg.6b.i86pc.Solaris.2.6.pkg.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 213 users 48524 Oct 3 1998 zlib.1.1.3.i86pc.Solaris.2.6.pkg.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 213 users 3153437 Sep 17 1998 perl5.004.04.i86pc.Solaris.2
Everything is dying (Score:5, Funny)
OMG Apple is dying
OMG *BSD is dying
OMG Linux is
Re:Everything is dying (Score:2)
I'm confused about "wildly" (Score:5, Funny)
How do you wildly underhype something? (Or even wildly underutilize or underimplement.) Does it involve caffeinated valium?
Simple: the PC killed the SUN (Score:5, Insightful)
The PC put the knife in but Sun twisted it (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be unfair to say that Sun don't have any direction. They do; but it involves thousands of twists and u-turns and someone keeps changing the map.
Re:The PC put the knife in but Sun twisted it (Score:4, Funny)
I wrote a little program to generate Sun's strategy. Here's what they're doing today:
Next month, it'll be:
(I realize that half of those statements make no sense. That's how you know it's working.)
Re:Simple: the PC killed the SUN (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Simple: the PC killed the SUN (Score:2)
I'm only partially trolling with that - I'm no IT person, but I've been in a great many places with a great many Sun Workstations, and can count the number of times I've seen someone sitting at one of them actually working on one or two hands.
Re:Simple: the PC killed the SUN (Score:3, Insightful)
Timeview, used to manage Timeplex's T1/T3 Multiplexers, comes to mind. And Cabletron had a product called Spectrum, used to manage their hubs, or whatever other stuff you were running, also ran on solaris on Sparc.
Re:Simple: the PC killed the SUN (Score:2)
It depends on how you want to define "server". I always found that in the *nix world, the distinction was rather arbitrary. And that was a technical plus. But sometimes a political negative.
I used to admin a Unix lab in a major US Government research facilit
Re:Simple: the PC killed the SUN (Score:2)
There is absolutely no reason why MS would care how many copies of its software you used. As long as when you left, joined a company and bought the licence for you to use then.
Its an excellent marketing strategy, costs MS nothing (that they'd get otherwise) and they also get to appear to be playing nice with poor academic institutions.
Re:Simple: the PC killed the SUN (Score:2)
As obvious as this is today, I think just about EVERYONE in the computer industry underestimated the decendants of the IBM PC 5150. If you look at the PC today, it is hard to believe that it's direct ancestor, the IBM PC, was barely more powerful than the Commodore 64.
New numbers out soon (Score:5, Insightful)
I do find it a little distrubing that I'm even saying something like that.... The short term mentality for success is putting a lot of un-needed pressure on companies.
Anyway, like a previous poster said, this is the quarterly, "Oh, Sun's gonna die soon" thread. Don't believe it.
Look at SGI. They were going great during the early nineties and had their legs cut out from under 'em when the ATI/NVidia wars started and people realized they didn't need to buy those mondo-expensive graphics systems anymore.
Yet, they're still alive. Barely, but they're still alive.
It takes a lot to kill a company, and Sun's not going anywhere anytime soon. They have $7 BILLION in cash in the bank right now, have a strong R&D budget.
They're not going anywhere. Either is McNealy.
Re:New numbers out soon (Score:2, Insightful)
They're not going anywhere. Either is McNealy.
And project looking glass [sun.com] looks really awesome for those who haven't seen it, it's a 3D gui that sits on top of Solaris or Linux and adds a lot more functionality. I'm not sure how they will 3.Profit off of it, but it's pretty badass.
I just go to ask, what does it DO (Score:4, Insightful)
As for browsing music there got to be a better interface then this. I would be far more impressed with a player that can browse by mood, instruments used (In the mood for some sax right now :P) etc etc. An interface that allows me to browse cd covers on my desktop is not needed. I got the cd's, I can browse them just fine in the physical world.
The organising of windows too seemed just to be little tricks and gadgets, it been tried before and people just don't use it after the novelty wears off.
There should be a better way to organize your desktop but I seen to many of these "fancy badass" things in my past to hold out much hope. The current desktop been around a long long time and while horrible if it gets occupied I don't see this helping any. Just look at the space taken up by just 5 windows "shaded".
So exactly what functionaty does it give?
Re:New numbers out soon (Score:5, Interesting)
They have $7 BILLION in cash in the bank right now, have a strong R&D budget.
Take a look at their P&L's. Seven billion doesn't last that long with a company that size if you're not making money.
They're not going anywhere. Either is McNealy.
That's exactly the problem, if you read the article. I hope some of that new research on running multiple tasks simultaneously works out for them.
However, I think a billion spent on cluster computing would be a better bet. I think they were going in the right direction with the hot desktop switching. They just need to take it to the next level. A PC is more than a screen and a keyboard+mouse.
We have scanners, CD burners, webcams, and all kinds of other peripherals we want to use. Give me all that, and give me reliable access to my applications (office, ERP, calendars, development tools, etc. served off off a big fault-tolerant cluster) and now you're talking.
Re:New numbers out soon (Score:3, Insightful)
You're clearly not an accountant then. Cashflow and profit (or in Sun's case, loss) are different things. In my opinion, Sun's problem lies in converting their wealth of vision into reality at the consulting level. Here in Australia they seem to be desperate for consulting revenue, but can't provide great consultants to back up the great vision that issues forth from Menlo Park's EB
They just need to take it to the next level (Score:2)
It is very puzzling. Sun is smart enough to see the promise in this t
Re:They just need to take it to the next level (Score:2)
--dave
Re:New numbers out soon (Score:2)
As a stockholder for the past four years [yahoo.com] - I say it is not just the day traders they should be afraid of... I let my geek side stop me from dumping them because I wanted to believe they could turn things around. These guys needed a solid plan (and stuck with it rather than changing every week) - and the buck stops at McNealy.
Yah, I'm not
Unfortunately for Sun (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unfortunately for Sun (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should Microsoft be worried? Unlike Sun, Microsoft is still raking in profits, so their huge pile of cash is still growing rapidly every year.
Linux is deflating Microsoft's server prospects, but not the desktop. The desktop UI improvements in Linux have been offset by the stability and performance improvements in Windows.
As a longtime Linux user (including on my desktop at work) I hate to say it but linux has plateaued. It's about a
Re:New numbers out soon (Score:3, Insightful)
If nothing else, their cash may make them an attractive acquisition target. That is how big companies die...
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:disagree with article (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you just pulling this stuff out of your ass? I work for Sun, deal with IGS on a regular basis, and they are bigtime Sun *fans*. Blows me away every time I talk to them. The number one deployment platform for IBM software such as DB2 and Websphere remains... Sun.
"The Army is not using Sun boxes for critical systems anymore"
Again, where are you getting this?
Astrophysically speaking... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Astrophysically speaking... (Score:2, Funny)
Sun's future (Score:3, Interesting)
But they have A LOT of innovative new projects and they have the money, time, and culture to start a lot more. Betting against all of them seems unwise.
solaris not on x86? (Score:2, Informative)
but IIRC, Solaris x86 was around in the mid-nineties or even earlier...
Jonathon Schwartz's blog (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey! Make *me* CEO! (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though I prefer to work with Linux, when it comes to serious back end and database processing, Big UNIX Iron is still the way to go. Linux owns the front end as far as I'm concerned, and will probably be eating Sun's, HP's and IBM's lunch in the back end in a couple of years. Given IBM's investment in Linux, they obviously know that as well.
Apparently even Microsoft can read the writing on the wall, because they're integrating SFU (Windows Services for UNIX) into Longhorn. But SFU is crap.
Make me CEO of Sun and I will make my junior execs do whatever it took to get Microsoft to integrate Solaris into Windows 2008. In the meantime, I will be delivering an interim product: SSFW - Solaris Services for Windows. I will probably have to sell my junior execs' souls to Bill, but I'll have Windows source code to get the job done.
Honestly, I don't understand the appeal of Windows. But it is undeniable... Lemmings.
I envision millions of Windows servers reliably and securely running native UNIX/Linux software side-by-side with the Windows applications that have made choosing Microsoft so easy. I see my developers sitting in Redmond cubes and Microsoft developers sitting in my bay area cubes.
With Solaris integrated into the Professional, Server, Enterprise and Data Center versions -- everything except Home Edition -- I won't charge much in the way of royalties. Single digit percentages of the MSRP will bring in vast revenues to Sun.
In return for helping Microsoft shut out HP and IBM, Bill will be obliged to help create a Solaris management user interface look and feel that mimics Windows. The next generation of sys admins will feel just as at-home on Solaris as they do on Windows.
Oh, and once a year Steve Ballmer has to come down to Mountain View and dance around screaming "DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS!". After all, Steve gets it!
s/ Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Microsoft.
Disappointed with SUN (Score:5, Interesting)
When the dot-com bust came, it came hard on training. Nobody wanted to learn any more. Most all of the training partners folded, and SUN absorbed a few of the more profitable ones for itself. Eventually, SUN divested itself of the education part and sold it off to a 3rd party named Accenture, while keeping only 3 centers for themselves (San Jose, Broomfield CO, and Burlington MA). Accenture has many of the other former SUN sites, and there are still a few struggling and starving training partners waiting for an upturn.
The demand for training is ever so slowly and painfully rising, about as fast as SUN's fortunes are now. But the heyday of the late '90s is long gone. And most of the instructors I personally knew were either released or they quit. These were some mighty bright people, too-- it was hard to see them go.
My outlook is wait and see. I myself am hibernating while teaching at a local technical college. Maybe things will get better, maybe they won't. Time will tell.
Re:Disappointed with SUN (Score:2)
Well, I guess that's one explanation. Another is that the "training" was never all that useful, and certainly not worth the money people were throwing at it during the 90's. Really good programmers/sysadmins/other don't come out of vendor training programs, they come from on-the-job experience. The idea that you can sit in a classroom for a week (after forking over a couple of grand) and end up with subject matter experti
Opportunistic (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately for Sun, they're not innovators and there are no current trends directly in their area for them to latch on to. Unfortunatley in lean times you need to either a) innovate and create new markets or b) produce commodity items cheaper. Neither of these things are congruent to Scott's vision or Sun's current form.
Even if Scott was to step down, what do you do with Sun? Java is not going to make it any money as a product, their in house developers are terrible and IBM has pretty much gobbled up large enterprise development market, Microsoft, agreement or not, is always looming in the corner looking to spank McNealy. If McNealy was smarter, he would have tried to be a visionary by latching onto biotech or something, developing other hardware that would leveraged his existing product base and created a reason to use his products over someone elses. But again, not innovators, regardless of how much they complain about Microsoft stiffling innovation.
Ultimately, Sun isn't quite a ship headed towards an iceberg, nor is it headed toward land. It's just circling in the middle of no where waiting for a volcano to build an island in its path.
Every ship needs to refuel at some point.
Re:Opportunistic (Score:3, Insightful)
Sun have always been innovators. They were the main drivers for Unix Workstations in the 1980s, they pioneered GUIs for Unix. They helped push 'open systems' in which different OS providers wrote to common APIs. They pioneered donating APIs to the community to assist with market growth (NFS is a good example). They were one of the first users of RISC. They helped make binary po
Easy (Score:4, Interesting)
Most computers are workstations and Sun's workstations have no chance against Dell. Apple is a "higher-quality" niche player, spends good money on R&D and has a good head start. What is Sun going to offer to get even 1% of the market?
Now the problem is that people want servers to be extensions of their workstations, not something totally different. Same UI for management, interoperable applications from the same vendors, one place to call for support and so on. Windows-based servers and to some degree XServe fit this model well. I wonder how Sun will address this problem. Even IBM better make sure that their Linux servers remain cheaper/more stable than Windows. You know, you could just run Apache on Win server and firewall everything except port 80. Instant security! I am sure Linux is currently better at multitasking/SMP but on the other hand driver support sucks (want to do some server-side rendering using your ATI video card?) and Microsoft will not sit still forever on performance.
Re:Easy (Score:2)
Yes, I didn't actually do this kind of things myself and just summarize what I read and exper
Re:Easy (Score:2)
Still I suspect they don't need $5B in the bank to make a profit of 12 million. Don't they get as much from interest? If they returned like $4
Strategic alliances (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only that McNeal failed to make good strategic alliances. He is too preoccupied with Microsoft. Does anyone here realize that when a company is preoccupied with MS, they lose? One loses the focus one needs to innovate and instead, tries to survive by cutting costs something the likes of Microsoft and Dell can easily deal with since they have the volume. I thought a long time ago that Apple and Sun should have made great partners since some of their philosophies were similar. But, as much as McNealy hates Gates, he views Apple-Sun alliance as cumbersome. Notice how Sun release JVM for Wintel and not for Mac OS X? Star Office for Wintel and not for Mac OS X? You'd think that when you are threatened by microsoft, you'd need as many friends as you can gather.
Some old time Corporate Values (Score:4, Interesting)
I was there when the stock quadrupled in value, split and quadrupled again and split again. I even made some money along the way. Some of our machines were big hits and we helped change the industry, if not the world in sorts.
I was also there for the big turnaround, When we, the design engineers didnt' deliver such hot products as we did in the mid 90's. There is a lot that contributed to that, but I won't go into my opinions on the matter.
I just want to say when the economy and market turned vicious on us, McNealy stood up and said "look, you guys invested alot of time in this company and brought us to where we were. Now we're here, the market isn't right, you guys have developed the best machines you could, but the market isn't right. But I'm not going to let you sit there and cry. Sun's invested alot in you, Sun's invested alot in R&D. Sun's going to protect it's investment in you and protect it's investment in R&D. You are Sun's richest resource and R&D is our future. We have umpty ump billions in the cash and we can hold out and forge ahead with no layoffs and continue our R&D".
That was before the first RIF 3 years ago. Since then Sun has had 5 RIFS and I can attest that every RIF'ed employee over that time, was RIF'ed grudgingly. Every project that was cancelled -- was done so because our executive management felt it wasn't going to meet the market demand or window. And I've no reason to doubt them. I didn't doubt them when we where high flying, and I'm not going to when times are tough.
Management that recognizes that I've made investments in them, as well as they've made investments in me and treat me like an asset -- is the type of management I want to work for.
So eat your hearts out. I work for a CEO that smart and daring and willing to take risks and make good gambles, while at the same time doing his darned best that I have a job with good benefits and strong and healthy corporate culture.
SPARC couldn't compete (Score:3, Insightful)
HP recognized that they couldn't play the custom processor game and teamed up with Intel for what is now called Itanium, which has not turned out well for HP.
It remains to be seen whether IBM's POWER series can survive. IBM, unlike Sun, can at least leverage their investment with other customers such as Apple and reportedly Microsoft's XBOX 2.
Sun *is* doomed (Score:4, Interesting)
Ultimately, Sun is doomed. It has carved itself out a niche between IBM's big-iron machines and Dell's cheap-iron ones, but the gap in which Sun lives is rapidly narrowing. Even Apple is taking sales away from them, and if that happens, you know you're in trouble. As for Java...well, it's a good language and portable, too, but the coming onslaught of .NET is only going to hurt Sun more.
This means that Sun no longer has an edge it can use to drive a wedge between Dell, Microsoft, Apple and IBM, all of whom are rapidly closing in on it like a pack of wolves. Ultimately, Sun will go the way of Netscape (except that in Sun's case, it will be the rest of the industry crushing them instead of just MSFT). If they're smart, they'll open-source Java, because that's the only way I can think of for there to be something left of them once the company is gone.
Just hire more Israelis and Indians! (Score:2)
-- Scott McNeally September 2000 [sun.com] after the dot-con implosion was already in full swing.
Sun Erie-Bucyrus? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the meantime, the lower, broader-based competition ate their potential market by coming out with new competitively attactive, but not forward looking, product.
So called innovators in computing are just commiditizers. The difference is that now the time gap between innovation, read profit, and commodity , read cheap-ass knock-off, is shrinking (which USED to be the purpose of a patent system.)
Sun is not a viable company in the long term unless the do what Apple did and head in another direction.
Re:Sun Erie-Bucyrus? (Score:2)
Since when?
HP and IBM will eat them (Score:2)
Therefore they will fail.
Re:How is SUN dieing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How is SUN dieing? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How is SUN dieing? (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of service exactly are you getting from ebay or newegg ???
Yeah, its true that SUN's hardware is expensive... but when shit hits the fan and your server is down... and you're losing money 1000 transactions BY THE MINUTE, you really need someone to come down and save you!!
This is enterprise grade hardware... not any DIY stuff!
If you can manage a whole day replacing and restoring everything from backup, and waiting for your homemade RAID to replicate all data, by ALL means do that. Incidently there are a LOT of businesses that can NOT afford that.
The only problem with SUN is that they've overengineered their products and right now, the market for such exotic stuff is limited... and SUN has been slow to respond to changes.
If you want to blame their management for that, do it. But don't raise a finger at their products!!
Re:How is SUN dieing? (Score:3, Interesting)
If that's the case you may have picked the wrong solution or wrong architecture..
Sun is by no means high end or "exotic stuff" or even "overengineered". If your application is easily HA clustered then Dell etc will do just as well.
If it isn't and it's that critical maybe you should be using so
Re:How is SUN dieing? (Score:2)
My money's on Sun over Dell in the AMD market. I have a feeling AMD's are going to be seeing more linux and solaris than windows. When you want support for that, do you want tech support for those OS's I think more people would trust Sun over Dell.
Re:How is SUN dieing? (Score:2)
Some day your management will realize that the expensive servers they're buying really aren't worth that much. It shouldn't take that long to realize that you're paying too much for what has now become commodity hardware.
Yeah comparing a new server to a 7 year old one - one is worth f**k all, one costs a lot.
Who would have thought it!, you heard of depreciation buddy ?
Alex
Re:How is SUN dieing? (Score:2)
Sun doesn't really have a high-end anymore.
Dual Opterons are just as fast or faster than Dual G5s, but they are selling them as low end. UltraSparcs are dreadfully slow. Any of the latest 'desktop' processors can beat them.
Heck, compared to a 8-way Opteron, an UltraSPARC would have to be MANY more processors to compete. Of course
Re:Sun's Future (Score:2)
And I would add getting the AMD-64 port of Solaris out the door on schedule. One of their most critical tasks is maintaining developer mindshare for Solaris.
Re:Sun's Future (Score:2)
Sun thinks of the Enterprise too much. They're a small company and need to worry about their focus but I'd like to see them promoting their iforce partners more and helping to build a bigger SMB base.
Re:So what are we doing with Sun? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:2)