OSNews

Sun's solutions consistently cost more to aquire and maintain than their competitors.

Certainly true. At least you can go to HP, Dell and others and easily aquire a server for s specific purpose, like you would pick up a television. Sun absolutely have to sell you a whole raft of crap, inluding support, subscriptions, add-on crap you don't need. They also consistently have very archane hardware and software to make sure you have to pay for the support and a legion of Sun engineers to get anything done.

Aside from flat out lying to your face, they'll refuse to take responsibility for anything, even on their OWN hardware.

I'm sorry to say I can vouch for that. If you tell Sun you can't get something working, especially open source software, they will more than likely blame the open source project's developers for creating bugs that make it unusable on Solaris. They simply won't even look concerned, even when software works fine on Linux, BSD or even Windows. Open Solaris? Yer, whatever.

Oh please; ring up Dell and you'll get a person who doesn't understand English but puts on a bloody convincing American accent, even though I'm a New Zealand customer; HP is a painful maze of beaucracy; IBM will ram Global services down all your orifaces so hard, you'd swear that you've just been anal raped by a 20 inch black dildo!

As for SUN - I wanted to order a Ultra 20; I put in a quote at their website, no bastard got back to me about it! not even an email saying, "hey, I see you've made an inquiry; are you interested in taking this further?" - not, not even something that simple.

For all SUN knew, I could have been a multi-billion dollar company seeing how well I would be treated if I were to enquire as joe average - believe me, having done it before, I use that as a great berometre as to how much these companies appreciate their customers, regardless of how much their business may bring.

Oh please; ring up Dell and you'll get a person who doesn't understand English but puts on a bloody convincing American accent

If you're a big enough customer you'll get an account manager. If you're not big enough, well, do some research so that you don't need to helpdesk...... It's the same for everyone.

IBM will ram Global services down all your orifaces so hard, you'd swear that you've just been anal raped by a 20 inch black dildo!

And yet I can still simply order machines from them. The Global Services stuff gets pushed, obviously, but it isn't tied at the hip to the purchase that I've made.

As for SUN - I wanted to order a Ultra 20; I put in a quote at their website, no bastard got back to me about it! not even an email saying, "hey, I see you've made an inquiry; are you interested in taking this further?" - not, not even something that simple.

That's where Sun fail. You can't simply order one or a handful of machines to order. Sun, culturally, still have a very strange idea about how most machines get sold these days.

Yes, I think myopia is a rather apt description.

Regarding scepticism about Solaris x86 - its interesting how that they released the Linux version of their SUN Ray software (version 3.0) before their Solaris x86 version - you'd think with all the hype and promise that they're now back behind Solaris x86, they would be put the Linux version on the back burner in favour of pushing the Solaris x86 out before the Linux version, as proof that they're serious when it comes to supporting and developing products for the Solaris x86 environment.

That doesn't mean Sun is neglecting Solaris 10 x86, nor does it mean that Sun is not spending hundreds of millions on developing Solaris x86. It just means that Sun is listening to it's customers, and if they want a Linux version of Sun Ray more than the Solaris x86, then Sun is going to privide it. In any case, I wouldn't read too much into it.

I don't know about you, but if I were higher up than those individuals, the temptation to fire that individual would be incredibly high - if that individual has such a myopic view on the IT world

Welcome to the world.

they need to work with big players like Adobe to bring their applications to the Solaris desktop - no use jumping around the stage praising the idea of thin client platforms when the damn platform itself has sweet bugger all software available for it - and this goes for Linux as well.

Solaris really does have sweet FA software available for it. All of the open source software, desktop and server, are designed and made to run for Linux first and the BSDs get next billing. That's where the community support is, and it does matter. The number of problems people have running software on Solaris that runs fine on Linux and BSD is simply just too high. "Why bother when we can run it on Linux?" is something you here a lot of. I'm afraid getting a crap PDF viewer ported to your platform is a very small splash in a large ocean.

It all starts from getting the vast majority of software developer community support. If you don't have that you might as well give up.

Regarding scepticism about Solaris x86 - its interesting how that they released the Linux version of their SUN Ray software (version 3.0) before their Solaris x86 version - you'd think with all the hype and promise that they're now back behind Solaris x86

I get the impression Sun are having a really tough time explaining to people why they should use Solaris over anything else. When they're selling x86 many people are asking for the Windows support they get from Dell or HP, and those that know they want a Unix-like OS choose Linux anyway. The only customers for x86 Solaris are existing Solaris customers.

I don't find that at all disturbing. Rather, I find that good. Just because you find Sun as a possible alternative strategy, it doesn't mean everyone else has to. When you make a purchase, do you always contact IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, Gateway, EMC, NetApp, RedHat, Microsoft, Cisco, Lucent, Nortel, Avaya, Juniper, Alcatel, Apple, etc? Are you up to date with HPs server line? How about Dells server line? If you have 80 Cisco routers and 160 Cisco switches running, are you trully going to think about migrating vendors? Truth is, you get to make a first impression once. Sun messed up big and lost its mindshare. Other vendors haven't given their customers any reason to run back to Sun.

Please; the guy didn't even KNOW about the Galaxy servers - thats pretty pathetic; you'd think that when looking at possible vendors to supply hardware, the company would have cast the net as wide as possible to ensure that all possibilities have been assessed.

A company should always be going, "well, this is a good setup, but I wonder what the other alternatives offer" - not only to ensure that all possibilities are looked at, but to ensure that the current supplier doesn't get too cosy in thinking that their current situation will last for ever - it would force their current supplier to be even MORE competitive.

"Childish advertisements like this one leave me wondering if Sun invests more money in marketing and corporate image than their own technology."

Yes, Sun has serious problems with both marketing and professionalism. Basically, their marketing is quite amaturish, and the blogs/sound bites from McNealy and Schwartz, while attracting attention, come off as childish, arrogant, silly, and unprofessional.

The large enterprise customer is still Sun's bread and butter, and CTOs of large enterprises don't take childish stuff very seriously, and this probably causes the CTOs to dismiss Sun in favor of a more profesional (at least, in appearence) vendor.

Too bad, because Sun does appear to be turning things around, is making some good moves (open sourcing Solaris, AMD servers, Java improvements, etc), and always does produce good technology.

And its any better than the childish rantings of the UNISYS + Microsoft combo, with their anti-UNIX site; or the fact that various bloggers on Microsoft host the anti-UNIX guide as if it were something to be proud of.

Sorry, childishness goes both ways, and it is used to grab peoples atttention, just like politicians saying something radical to get the attention of the public - what they say and actually DO are normally two different things.

> I mean, how many times have we heard the name: Bechtolsheim in the last few months?
> One would think he designed the whole system.

[As you may know, I work for Sun, but not in H/W design]

Of course, he didn't design the whole system. He has a great team assembled. Andy has simply become emblematic of the team he leads-- a very common phenomenon across many industries. But I was truly blown away the first time I heard Andy B. speak about the systems his team was building. It doesn't take more than five minutes to realize that the guy isn't a manager, and he isn't a figurehead. He's a humble, soft spoken engineer. He loves power supplies. He talks very, very fast. He gets animated when talking about finding the perfect fan, the best cooling design. That's the kind of detail orientation which I think will help to differentiate these systems. I hope you get the chance to see him talk some time, even if you aren't interesting in making purchases from Sun.

Me too. I love Sun's technology and their engineers have always been top notch, I'm just frustrated by their management and marketing decisions.

Technically Sun is improving quickly and will be excellent competition for at least several more years if nothing changes. But if they wanted to they could be the best. Just like SGI and IBM and maybe even HP could be the best. None of them seems interested in doing it for the tech, tho. IBM won't try to make a comodity PPC market. SGI won't try to compete in the consumer gaming/graphics markets again. HP is just like Dell, but more professional about it. They're all doing just fine, but Sun.. Sun could be better and we know it. Right now their tech is acceptable and prices are very nice. Now its just a matter of culture.

It just takes their management to become a little more humble and attempt to compete with quality and service and technology instead of stupid advertisements that make them look like they came late to the party and are trying to look "cool" by picking on the little guy. That's not cool. They aren't technically superior enough to do that and look and sound "cool" anymore. They shouldn't even be concerned about Dell.

When they were "the dot in dotcom" they were "cool", they had superior tech and the industry could afford it. Now things have changed and they either need to humble themselves and catch up before they go off bragging and bagging on the competition, or become another Dell. I don't know what they want to do, but being another Dell isn't very "cool", IMO. Being Sun with Solaris having bash and bzip2 and sshd and Xorg and Xine and the GIMP and KDE and GNOME and Firefox and Thunderbird in every default install, having automated package management, excellent choice of services and support options, options to run Linux on an UltraSparc in a zone or as the base OS, etc. Now that would be cool. But will we ever see it from them? As long as they let McNealy and Schwartz run things I doubt it. We'd be more likely to see another Matrix parody with these two acting in place of Balmer and Gates.

This frustrates me because I watched them take the Ultra 2 and turn it into the Ultra 5. Stuff like that is just retarded. They got to be thinking with something other than their brain to make these kinds of decisions. Its like they don't understand how these decisions affect brand name recognition and public perception of their quality. If their low-end systems are no better than a cheap PC what's to stop their customers from just using cheap PCs? (that was 3 years ago) Now that their low-end systems ARE cheap PCs what reason do customers have to come back? A pretty case?

I want them to succeed despite my dislike of their management and business decisions. I just don't want to see another Cobalt or iPlanet happen. I care more about what happened to those engineers than I ever will about Sun's execs or stock price. And anticompetitive business practices are simply wrong (not to mention illegal). Don't do them, period.

but who am I to write about this stuff.. im just a stupid sys admin..

This frustrates me because I watched them take the Ultra 2 and turn it into the Ultra 5. Stuff like that is just retarded. They got to be thinking with something other than their brain to make these kinds of decisions. Its like they don't understand how these decisions affect brand name recognition and public perception of their quality.

The ultra 2 didn't become the ultra 5. The Ultra 2 was an Ultraspace 1/II, sbus based machine. The ultra 5 a US II and PCI/UPA based machine. Totally different architectures. The ulra 5/10 were Sun's largest selling desktops. I am not sure why you have a problem with it.
Is it becuase the ultra 5 was cheaper and had an IDE harddisk?

The ultra 60 was the dual cpu scsi based machine in the family ultra family and the ultra 2 replacement.

Ultraspace 1/11

can't type... UltraSPARC I/II.

Ultra 5 was a good machine; things started to fall to pieces with their Blade 100/150 machines; over priced machines, underperforming, coupled with a crappy graphics card that could make a grown man cry - if they must have an integrated video card, PLEASE for the love of god, put it on a bus that has a decent level of bandwidth, and please, use a GPU that actually has some balls rather than the ancient ATI Rage XL which is used in the Blade 150!

Again, it would be nice for SUN to finally come out and publicly state where the Opteron fits into their vision; are they going to mothball SPARC workstations in favour of Opteron machines? if so, why not bloody well come out and say so? I would hardly say that is 'strategically important' information in regards to competition - atleast customers would know whether their investment into a SPARC workstation is worth it if in the long run Opteron is going to be its successor? or are SUN going to start shipping SPARC workstations using Fujitsu's processors?

Again, it would be nice for SUN to finally come out and publicly state where the Opteron fits into their vision; are they going to mothball SPARC workstations in favour of Opteron machines? if so, why not bloody well come out and say so?

Well, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it? Low-end midrange servers have sold generally well (as you might expect), but it has crimped the revenue from their high-end stuff. Even then, x86 servers are a small proportion of their total sales. Because of that, you really have to question Sun's commitment to x86, because if they really embrace it they're simply going to have to accept significantly lower revenues for some time - at least until they start selling something.

They are simply in the wrong market, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, selling the wrong stuff if they want to maintain around $2.5 billion in revenue. It's just not sustainable, because again, their higher end SPARC stuff is what is propping up the business (I hardly think they're going to completely replace SPARC with Opteron) - and yet - they need to do something about those x86 machines that have eaten into them over the past five years. Unfortunately, they're not going to out-Dell Dell, IBM or HP.

In reality, they have absolutely no choice but to really go down the x86 route, swallow the pride, let many customers replace SPARC with x86 and Opteron, and leave SPARC for the really high-end customers (as IBM do with PowerPC). To replace the massive drop in revenue and profits that would result, they need to look at more profitable markets like software and making sure a wide variety of software is supported and runs well on their systems. You look at the software support in Solaris compared with what you get in your average Linux distribution and you really have to have no brain to choose Solaris. However, that's what is happening with Sun - customers are choosing Linux whenever they buy a machine from them. Consequently, that's hurting their value-added ideas for boosting revenue through Solaris. Quite what those ideas are, and what they're going to use to boost revenue is anybody's guess.

Sun have everything they need to be an end-to-end hardware and software supplier and to reap some pretty large rewards. Unfortunately, they have simply now idea how to deal with x86 and Opteron, where to position it, how to generate income via other business areas or how to consider x86 as anything othen than a threat against the revenue SPARC generates. The need to dramatically shift the proportion of revenue in the areas they generate today, and they won't be able to do it. A lot of those reasons are down to cultural and institutional inertia at Sun. As a whole they just can't seem to accept the incredibly difficult decisions they're going to have to make in order to remain viable. Simply selling an x86 line of servers is nowhere near enough.

In reality, they have absolutely no choice but to really go down the x86 route, swallow the pride, let many customers replace SPARC with x86 and Opteron, and leave SPARC for the really high-end customers (as IBM do with PowerPC).

IBM sells POWER at the high end (64-way pSeries)
and the low end:
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/openpower/hardware/710_browse...

HP sells Itanium at the high end (Integrity superdome)
and the low end:
http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/integrity/entry_level/index.htm...

Sun sells SPARC at the high end (72 x Dual core E25k)
and the low end:
v120 etc. (to be replaced by Niagara).

And they all sell x86 to the low end.

Sun sells SPARC at the high end (72 x Dual core E25k)
and the low end:
v120 etc. (to be replaced by Niagara).

And they all sell x86 to the low end.

No actually, Sun are different, although I wouldn't exactly say HP are selling many Itaniums. Sun's large growth came over the years because they started selling SPARCS and Solaris to customers who aren't your typical high-end customers (and that really happened during the dot com era). You notice IBM keeps Power well away from these customers and doesn't mix the two (usually by making PowerPC prohibitively expensive). However, it certainly helps when you have a profitable x86 business as well ;-).

Fast forward to today. People running IBM's Power really are customers with some serious money who believe they need what they have, so they keep using it and have no reason to change. Unfortunately, at Sun most of their revenue comes from customers who have found that they really do not need to be spending the amount they have done on their kit and software, so when they come to upgrade and refresh there are decisions to be made. It remains to be seen how much more Sun lose from that, but it's a precarious situation to be in.

Hmmm. I really, really don't understand what you are
saying and why you feel the need to express nebulous
conjecture so forcefully. Sun joined the X86 game late,
admittedly, but is now at least trying to do what it
does best (innovate) in that area. If you are in
the market for X86 systems then why not Galaxy servers
from Sun? I don't understand how you are conveying the
development of a complete range of bespoke X86 systems
(systems) which offer compelling performance and
efficiency advanatages over the competition as a
'questionable commitment'. Sun has managed to turn
itself into a one stop shop for hardware and software
(well, not if you want Windows) if you look. Also,
a lot of it's other software (directory server etc.)
is available for other OS'es.

As for not being clear on Opteron, I find that laughable. Sun has been very clear. If you want Opteron, they will sell you Opteron. The new Galaxy systems developed by Sun are Opteron based. It's a case of building a completely new product line, not
supplanting SPARC with Opteron or vice versa. Sun
see the Opteron line a complementing their existing
SPARC line, particularly with Solaris 10 and their
obvious experience with 64 bit computing.

And as for SPARC, again the road map is very, very clear. There will the first CMT servers (Niagara 1
based) this year, APL with Fujitsu in 2006-2007, ROCK
and Niagara 2 2007-2008. Sun is not abandoning SPARC,
it is just doing X86 as well. Sun is still no.1 in
UNIX sales (volume) and it's X86 business is more
than doubling every quarter.

Can you elaborate more on your 'Software availability'
comments. AFAIK, open source software runs just as
well on Solaris as it does on a linux distro. If
it's commericial apps you are talking about then you
are not really talking linux anymore though are you?

Suns business model is changing (just look at the
changes over the last year, Solaris 10, blogs, opensolaris) - it's just like all big corporations in
that it has the turning circle of an oil tanker.

If you have some specific facts rather than just general
statements then I would be happy to discuss them with you.

Hmmm. I really, really don't understand what you are
saying and why you feel the need to express nebulous
conjecture so forcefully.

You could try reading it and responding to each bit.

Sun has been very clear. If you want Opteron, they will sell you Opteron.

That's not being clear. A customer needs to know where it fits in, and a SPARC customer needs to know why they should pick the more expensive option over the other. That's where Sun's dilemma continues to come up, and it's what effectively killed stuff like Cobalt.

It's a case of building a completely new product line, not supplanting SPARC with Opteron or vice versa.

Even with the limited sales they've had, Sun have admitted that sales of midrange x86 servers have affected the normal spin-off sales that Sun expect at, supposedly, the higher end - storage additions etc. Unless Sun address that in their business set up they are never going to be supportive of x86 in their product lines.

Can you elaborate more on your 'Software availability' comments. AFAIK, open source software runs just as well on Solaris as it does on a linux distro.

Have a look at the software you get with, and supported, on an average Linux distribution. Then look at what comes with Solaris.

Suns business model is changing (just look at the
changes over the last year, Solaris 10, blogs, opensolaris)

Apart from selling x86 there have been no changes whatsoever. Sun have kidded themselves that they have changed whilst doing all the same things.

If you have some specific facts rather than just general statements

One man's facts are another's general statements, and it's doubtful whether many people round here would see anything as a fact. However, from the links provided around here, including those from others, and Sun's bottom-line results it is reasonable to extrapolate from them what has actually happened. Mind you, many people simply don't understand the concept of extrapolating useful information from data and evidence provided.

1) What SUN need, if they were to become a 'one stop shop' would be a database; a good move would have been to buy out Sybase when they had the chance.

2) The arguement isn't about SPARC vs. Opteron; it is about where Opteron fits into the equation, and why Opteron workstations and servers, when it comes to ISV support, why it is treated like the red headed step child of the family.

When are we going to see Applications, COMMERCIAL applications delivered to the Solaris x86 platform, for the workstation, and obviously for Solaris being used as a thin client platform.

Like I said in previous posts, its all very nice having sexy hardware, great performance and awesome management tools, but it doesn't change the fact that if an end customer can't get the software they require, all that hardware will simply be an over weight door stop as it will never solve the problem that the customer needs solving.

3) The Solaris x86 is smaller than the SPARC market, which is even smaller than the Windows market; SUN need to lower the cost barriers to entry; buy Mainsoft and make their development tools not only free of charge (and unsupported), do the same for their on development software - approach the large companies like Adobe, sit down and ask them, "how much will it cost to get you to port your applications to our platform? regarding support and maintanence, can we work out a joint venture?"

It is about proactive enticement of ISVs to Solaris, not just sitting back and saying, "if we build it, they will come" - sorry, OS2 was built, and no one came, BeOS was built and no one came, Linux has been built and no one has come. Sitting back and waiting isnt going to solve the problems - get out there and sell yourself.

4) I an questioning SPARC sales on the workstation front because I have seen NO updating of their low end workstations, namely their Blade 150 - how about a nice sexy Blade 150, PCIe expansion buses, low end Quadro video card with 64MB video memory, a nice UltraSPARC III 750Mhz processor, some DDR memory running at 400Mhz - throw 256MB of that on board; sell the whole lot for the current price of $1395, and it would be a great deal. So what is the hold up?

Oh jeez, it looks like you have absolutely no clue whatsoever

You haven't read the article then.

Contrary to your ignorant drivel Sun is now the value leader compared with IBM, HP and even Dell.

Value leader? Err, no. Depending on what day of the week it is and what that phrase actually means, in terms of value x86 machines Sun hasn't got a snowball in hell's chance of outselling HP, IBM or Dell in that area.

Value leader my arse. That really is tosh.

Sun has got the *cheapest* x86 gear out of all top tier vendors (Dell included).

Really. Would you like to factor in all the costs, even after you've made the purchase?

If you look at software and OS licensing costs, Solaris/JES comes out an order of the magnitude cheaper than similar setup from MS for instance.

Well, considering the absolute lack of software on JDS and JES (no one at all is buying JES), especially with JDS on Solaris, I hardly call it value for money. Solaris as a Unix workstation/desktop is just pure wishful thinking. That's over now.

Sun is the value leader right now and can save you some serious coin if you go with it.

I hardly think anyone is going to back a sinking ship at this point, even if they can apparently save some money up front.

> no one at all is buying JES

Oh really?

What about General Motors:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1706144915;fp;16;fpid;...

...and General Electric?
biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050801/nym052.html

What about General Motors:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1706144915;fp;16;fpid;.....

...and General Electric?
biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050801/nym052.html

Please, do some reading around. General Motors and General Electric are the two dogsbodies Sun always wheel out for these things. Everyone has a partner they give free stuff and money to to make their stuff look good, right? Even Microsoft does it.

You only need to look at the sales of Sun's JES system to see that, which have seriously dropped the anchor over the past five quarters, amounting to 15,000 this quarter. It's just pointless keeping the thing up and running:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/print/?TYPE=story&AT=39195191-39020363t-1000...

You only need to look at the sales of Sun's JES system to see that, which have seriously dropped the anchor over the past five quarters, amounting to 15,000 this quarter. It's just pointless keeping the thing up and running:

I would hardly call the quarter ending April "this quarter". With somewhere around 1 million subscribers singed up in total, each paying somewhere around $100 per year, I can think of a few reasons to "keep the thing up and running".

I would hardly call the quarter ending April "this quarter".

It's a quarter nevertheless.

With somewhere around 1 million subscribers singed up in total

Even 1 million is a pretty low figure.

How do you know they're signed up paying customers and are still using it? Also, if you'd read around no one wants to pay $100 per employee. It's a lame duck product price-wise. 15,000 new subscribers is absolutely pitiful and not justifiable with such a system labelled enterprise.

I can think of a few reasons to "keep the thing up and running".

Well you haven't listed those reasons, nor is the figure of 15,000 justifiable. Mind you, I find plenty of such wishful thinking amongst Sun people.

You only need to look at the sales of Sun's JES system to see that, which have seriously dropped the anchor over the past five quarters, amounting to 15,000 this quarter. It's just pointless keeping the thing up and running:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/print/?TYPE=story&AT=39195191-39020363t-...<...

There you are again more outdated data to prove a non existent point.
The very next quarter JES sales were 187,000 licenses.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/27/sun_q4_2005/