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Sun Microsystems’ Extreme Makeover

  Submitted by Michael Oracle and SUN 21 Comments

Sun Microsystems is embarking on a $50 million ad campaign, associating its products and services with some of its prominent customers such as eBay, General Motors, and Major League Baseball. Responding to declining sales and influence in the industry, Sun is revamping its image, down to their packaging, office decor and even on-hold music.

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21 Comments

  1. 2005-05-31 3:32 pm
    Anonymous

    The on-hold music! Boy, if only they had gotten some different on-hold music earlier, I would’ve considered buying their outrageously priced servers!

  2. 2005-05-31 3:38 pm
    Anonymous

    Wow, this reminds me of when IBM sponsored college bowl games, calling them the OS/2 bowl. Poor OS/2, I knew it was game over then.

    And Sun wants to associate itself with GM, as GM heads towards bankruptcy, ready to shaft all its retirees and bond holders? Desperate, futile measures. 50 million could be spent on much more productive stuff. And how much will be spent changing “office decor”. The execs must have nothing to do if they want new desks.

  3. 2005-05-31 3:47 pm
    Anonymous

    Image is important and they definitely need to shake of the “…is dying” stigma, but price is also important. When I graduate I plan to get myself an extravagant computer just for the pure decadence of it. I was willing to get a little less bang for the buck just for thre bragging rights… when someone like that decides you are too pricey perhaps it’s time to reconsider your pricing. After all, if they could tap into the high-end onsumer market they could make a lot more.

  4. 2005-05-31 3:48 pm
    Anonymous

    This weekend I download Solaris 10, Netbeans, and the Sun App Server (Platform Edition).

    Solaris 10 is on its way to being Open Source (Yes I do think it will happen), Netbeans is Open Source, and the Sun App Server (Platform Edition) is free. They all work very well together, and provide a full suite of products needed to do enterprise application development.

    I also like the fact that Andy Bechtolsheim is back at SUN. I think that if anyone can help SUN bring cheaper/faster/better servers to the production lines it is Andy.

    My biggest worry is that SUN will make the mistakes of old, which in a Nutshell is: Starting going in a very promissing direction and then change their mind a screw it all up. The only thing that makes me feel better about this time around is that they have no choice. Is that if they screw up they are gone. Make it or Break it, and this time I think they will make it ;)

  5. 2005-05-31 3:50 pm
    Anonymous

    Anyone saw that campaign they did during the dotcom era? “We are the dot in dot com”.

  6. 2005-05-31 3:51 pm
    Anonymous

    Translation: They are getting ready to let quite a few people go. Every job I have been in where they have a reorganization ,image makeover, etc or bringing in consultants meant my position was “too expensive” for them to justify nevermind they paid some consultant (dogbert type) who didn’t really do anything about 2-3 times the salary I made.

  7. 2005-05-31 4:02 pm
    Anonymous

    @Flynn

    Translation: They are getting ready to let quite a few people go.

    Actually, they’ve had scheduled layoffs for the past year or so I believe. So, they’re not “getting ready to”. They’ve already been doing that bit by bit. Even if they did, “let quite a few people go”, SUN has over 32,000 employees. Trimming the fat is sometimes necessary in any company. Even tiny ones.

  8. 2005-05-31 4:16 pm
    Anonymous

    And what can $50million buy you?

    A native port of Adobe Acrobat Reader/Creator for Solaris

    OR

    Dozen new drivers for Solaris

    OR

    A better Audio API (Buy out OpenSound, and when ready, merge OSS 4 into the main Solaris code)

    Hmm, and to think they’d rather waste on more misdirected fluff; so people, more ads in magazines that decision makers don’t read, nice offices, cute music on the phone and more clueless drival from the sales sheeple. Seems like the same old SUN, wasting money on marketing diatribe instead of focusing on deliverying solutions to customers.

    Regarding GM, this isn’t the first time they’ve associated themselves with loser companies; heck, they’ve got a relationship with EDS, which is a pinnacle of project disasters – just look at their list of victims.

    Oh, and if GM wish to save money; get rid of the health plan – it isn’t the responsibility for employers to pay for the health care of the workers; workers pay federal income tax, thats what the tax should be used for (not galavanting around Iraq looking for fictional weapons).

  9. 2005-05-31 4:48 pm
    Anonymous

    Oh, Sun.

    With your stylish logos, purple color schemes and cool looking cases.

    With your java.

    With your marketing hype.

    It was nice knowing you.

    “Next”

  10. 2005-05-31 4:55 pm
    Anonymous

    In this article Sun Fan-boys said massively that Sun wasn’t marketing to normal users. Yet Who are you marketing to with a 50 million dollar ad campaign? It doens’t cost that much to advertise a server setup. Or maybe Sun is trying to market Solaris to everybody. Once again Actions speak louder than words.

    http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10673 Article in question.

  11. 2005-05-31 5:23 pm
    Anonymous

    I think it’s there for a long while

    http://www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

  12. 2005-05-31 5:27 pm
    Anonymous

    I think it’s there for a long while

  • 2005-05-31 6:23 pm
    Anonymous

    You’re correct, no “current” Adobe Acrobat reader for Solaris x86 does suck, but there are alternatives:

    http://www.riddleware.com/solx86/acrobat.html

  • 2005-05-31 6:44 pm
    Anonymous

    Considering the tech industry average Marketing budget in 2003 and 2004 were 3% and 3.2% of total revenue (per IDC as reported in CMO Magazine http://www.cmomagazine.com/analyst/011205_idc.html ). $50M on this marketing campaign would equate to about 15% of Sun’s total annual marketing budget, based on the industry averages listed above. Doesn’t seem that “extreme” to me.

  • 2005-05-31 10:06 pm
    Anonymous

    Don’t forget, also, that Sun is not just trying to do a makeover of itself, but it’s trying to create a makeover in the market place.

    With its new focus in the past couple years towards subscription services, outsourced computing (their $1/cpu/hr), outsourced monitoring, and thin clients.

    These are all rather contrary to the current conventional practice regarding large data center deployments.

    So, they really need to get their message out to get decision makers to consider their new “radical” approach at all, much less giving contract to Sun to support such an approach.

    Sun is in no way alone regarding this kind of service focus, but they are more and more committing to this kind of strategy.

  • 2005-05-31 10:49 pm
    Anonymous

    Sun is looking much nicer these days. Hope they keep this up and cut back on the anti-Linux nonsense, which I believe has negative impact on sales. But I could be wrong.

    Sun is poised to offer some very competitive systems in the next few years. They already do, but it will be interesting to see what ZFS and Niagra bring to the table. At that time there will be other multi-core competitors. Price/performance comparisons would be nice. Hope all the EULAs allow for some real competition in that regard.

    I want to see some benchmarks and stats.

  • 2005-06-01 5:28 am
    Anonymous

    You know a company has serious problems when they begin rearranging the chairs on the Titanic while the musicians continue to play.

    Serve some fine caviar while you are at it. Marketing is not what Sun needs. Better products at better price points might be.

    I just really don’t see how they plan to compete with Linux. If I were then, I would get out of the software business completely. Put Java and Solaris under the GPL and sell support on those as well as tons of quality hardware.

  • 2005-06-01 5:59 am
    Anonymous

    I just really don’t see how they plan to compete with Linux.

    Ummm where did we say that?

    In fact Jonathan has stated a number of times that you can’t compete with a social movement.

    We are not competing with Linux.

    Vendors who sell Linux distributions, that is another (and completely different) story.

    Alan.

  • 2005-06-01 8:46 am
    Anonymous

    They should start by earning more money. Go!

  • 2005-06-01 12:54 pm
    Anonymous

    I’m not sure that the lack of native Acrobat from Adobe is nearly as bad as the presence of native Acrobat from Adobe.

    Acrobat is intrusive and buggy on every machine I have used it on. Alternative .pdf readers seem to do a better job most of the time.

  • 2005-06-02 5:16 am
    Anonymous

    Well, the paint in my office hasn’t changed colors just yet.

    For folks who charge that Sun spends way too much on advertising, I’d encourage you to look at a slightly less well publicized number. Numerous articles have recently stated that outside analysts estimate that Sun has spent about $16 million/year on advertising over the past several years. I can’t verify or dispute that number, but try googling for “IBM advertising million” and do some comparisons– my very rough estimate is that IBM probably spends on the order of $400 million a year on advertising. Here’s a supporting document: http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/1010081 . I’d say Sun has continued to pour a lot of money into R&D on the bet that it will pay off. Taking a small amount of money and using it for brand building seems appropriate from time to time. Whether you like it or not, part of success is marketing and brand building.

    As for the Acrobat problem, my not-officially-sanctioned advice is to please go to Adobe’s website and let them know what you think. Thanks.