With Java, StarOffice, Solaris and Linux all on the verge of major breakthroughs (or busts), Sun Executive Vice President Jonathan Schwartz has a lot on his mind. Since shifting over from his role as Sun’s Chief Strategy Officer last July, Schwartz has been revving up the Sun software engine, which had lost ground in several critical areas, including development tools, application servers and dealing with Linux. In a dinner conversation that carried over to a subsequent e-mail exchange, eWEEK’s John Taschek asked Schwartz about the threat of Linux and how Sun will cope with Dell as a competitor.
Sun’s Schwartz: ‘We’re Back in Force’
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“I see your schwartz is as big as mine.” — Dark Helmet
Apart from Schwartz mostly kicking at the competition, I found the following part to be rather amusing.
“That’s maximizing IBM’s revenue, not maximizing customer savings. We’re focused on the latter; IBM’s focused on the former.”
Uh, why of course you are. Warning people, ANY company telling you they’re doing something for _your_ good should be taken with a HUGE amount of salt.
That aside, he has got a few points when it comes to embracing open standards and AIX being a hell of a lot more proprietary than Solaris. Then again, X being more Y than Z is, doesn’t imply that Z isn’t also Y (to a lesser extent of course)…
from the article:
eWEEK: Is there a value for open source in the enterprise?
Schwartz: Open source? Haven’t heard customers value that, at all. Most CIOs I talk to want less source code, not more, contrary to what IBM says. But again, they’re selling service hours, so they want the customer to have as much complexity as possible
———————-
He he he…the interview was basically how Sun sees the world through its rose-colored glasses. I got a kick out of the above quotes though.
No doubt the guys is right that any company that is service-oriented is a company that has zero incentive to provide a good product…the goal is to maximize profits from the project and that means force a complex product that requires perpetual support and takes a long time to complete…consultants and service firms are the laywers of the computer world.
Sadly, I would like to say that small companies building closed source apps have a strong incentive to make easy to use software because they can’t afford to provide support…truth though is that easy-to-use intuitive software is not a hallmark of the small firm either.
Sun’s approach still seems scattered and not focused and they are probably seriously underestimating the how adroit IBM is…this Schwartz fellow seems to forget that IBM is moving to be a major player in the 64-bit world on the low end as well with their upcoming chips.
I agree. It is like the government saying “trust us, we have more information than you to make an informed judgement”, believe it or not Americans actually believe this tag line given by GWB and his crew claiming there are links between Saddam, Al Qaeda, the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.
Anyone, be it government or business that claims to have your best interests are heart are more likely to give you a sort sharp buggerisation when the opportunity arises.
Couldn’t agree with you more – the sad part is that people (and countries!) actually fall for these easy tricks…:-/
seems to be the new lingo of these tech guys. it’s all spin, though it’s fun to read.
The argument that Swartz makes about Sun owning ip and therefore automatically being in a better position is something that I don’t get. One of the reasons Dell is able to be so efficient and profitable is because they don’t have the overhead of development costs and proprietary gear. They simply take components that other companies make and put them together in a cheap and effective way. Isnt this what Sony does … Panasonic … Cisco … etc? Gee, use high quality industry accepted parts to create capable and cheap solutions that solve real world customer problems. What a novel idea. Mikey is on to something big here. His company is slowly marginalizing the disparate component makers. He is making them irrelevant by simply picking and choosing whatever solutions best fit his customers’ needs and giving it to them. In other words he is using his immense buying power and industry clout to dictate terms to the Intel’s and Microsoft’s of the world. Over time this WILL make these brands irrelevant, like the components in an electronics appliance like Sony’s. I mean does anyone care what software their Sony dvd player runs on? Does it matter that the processor on the PS2 is not from Intel? Why should you care what os your file server runs on, if it works well? This is the game that Dell is playing and the long term benefits to his company and any other companies that model themselves in like fashion will be far greater than even what Dell has been able to accomplish thus far. They will OWN the computer industry.
“As another example, we support MySQL—IBM’s still trying to promote their proprietary database, which won’t run on MySQL. Seems like a lock-in strategy to me.”
Ok. So he’s saying that MySQL runs on Solaris.
Then he says that DB2, IBM’s “proprietary database” won’t run on MySQL. WTF? Why would you want to run DB2 on top of MySQL?
If you code against MySQL’s little quirks, you’ll be locked in to it just as much as PL/SQL locks you into Oracle and T-SQL locks you in to MS SQL Server.
“Our Unix runs on 32-bit x86 systems, and supports standards that run on all platforms. Last [time] I checked, you could only run proprietary AIX systems on IBM’s proprietary systems. Ours features IMAP, LDAP, ICAP, J2EE, JSP, on and on. AIX, again, doesn’t”
Wow, Sun supports x86. They just started.
So, there are no apps for AIX that support LDAP, IMAP, etc.
JSP is part of J2EE. You would think a Sun employee would know this.
Java runs on AIX so therefore J2EE will run on it.
Seems like marketing dribble to sway the CIOs and CTOs who’s knowledge of technology comes soley from reading eWeek and SDTimes.
I am amazed at how arrogant Schwartz is. And how he has a delusional, totally Sun-centric and self-righteous view on the entire computing industry.
Schwartz probably thinks another round of the glorious excesses of the dotcom era are just around the corner. He sounds like he is still flying high on the vapours of the last binge. For a company whose stock is now at $3.40/share, somehow it just doesn’t ring true. Those guys at Sun need to wake up to the fact that the dotcom illusion is over.
[i]”You need to understand we’re in a better position than Dell—they don’t own any [intellectual property].”[i]
Sun in a better position than Dell? Wow. Sun is the owner of a big fat line of high-margin machines. Sun is the owner of a big fat high-complexity OS called Solaris. Sun is the owner of a big fat corporate culture that has fallen into a giant sticky success trap and cannot see daylight.
Dell’s IP is manufacturing, specifically how to use low-cost production to commoditize technology.
Dell is going to take the core of Sun’s technology that customers really care about and commoditize it. And Sun will have no way to deal with it.
If somehow Schwartz thinks that people want to buy expensive hardware vs. cheap hardware, he is sadly mistaken. The market is speaking otherwise.
If somehow Schwartz thinks Sun will be able to promote Solaris over Linux, he is sadly mistaken. It is Linux that is pervasive and popular, not Solaris. It is Linux that the world loves, not Solaris. Sun blew it with their greedy ways and there is no way for them to catch up. The world wants open technology, not more Sun-fake-open-source merry-go-round-community-process bullcrap.
Microsoft doesn’t mention Sun as a threat, but rather Linux and open source. Sun has as much to lose from Linux and open source as does Microsoft.
One could go on and on, picking apart Schwartz’s endless fabrications, but it is pointless.
The sad fact remains that Sun doesn’t have anyone in management who is capable of creating a cogent strategy that makes any sense. Even if Sun came up with a workable strategy, how could an investor trust Sun’s obviously delusional management to implement it?
Looks like Sun is headed for the glue factory. At least there they can continue sniffing and flying high in their dotcom fantasy world.
Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition Complete Benchmark Sweep with World’s Fastest 32-Way (64-Bit) TPC-C Result
http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2003/evaluation/performance/t…
MSFT sure as hell isn’t afraid to post their benchmarks…
The problems SUN are facing are from a number of fronts. I have even contacted the Solaris Manager who is not willing to take on the challenge. The challenge is lower cost, higher performing servers and workstations. This is my cure for SUN’s ill’s:
1) Cancel the manufacturing contract with TI and share it between UMC and TSMC. I am sure both foundries can offer a better deal than what TI is offering.
2) Assembly. Why are SUN workstations and servers assembled in the USA? the third most expensive country to not only to conduct business in but to manufacturer as well. Have some common sense and more the assembly to China to Malaysia to cut down on labour costs.
3) Value for money. What is the point of selling a server and an OS that can’t do a bloody thing? SUN needs to start bundling FREE OF CHARGE their server software.
4) Encourage third party development by improving the tools that are available and reducing the price.
5) Get rid of the anti-Microsoft dogma. At the end of the day, what is more important, serving the customer with what they want or defending a dogma? SUN should pump money into mono and start improving Java. With (3) and (5) the customer can then make a choice, do I go with java? c#? a native application? ultimately SUN should be able to say, “What ever direction you choose to go in, we’ll have a solution”. Simply screaming Java isn’t going to make money. Again, give the customer what they want and you will make sales. Just look at IBM, they support with .NET and Java, the net result? what ever the customer wants from IBM they can provide both in services, hardware and software.
1) how about expose your real IP address instead of hiding behind a third party proxy.
2) what has the TPC benchmark have to do with SUN’s wowes? SUN’s problems have ABSOLUTLY NOTHING TO DO WITH MICROSOFT! GET IT! IBM’s UNIX division is profitable and same with HP/Compaq. So the UNIX market ISN’T DEAD when you see SUN’s competitors still making profits.
You seem to have some common sense, Mr. Gardiner. I can only hope that Sun listens to your sage words.
A few musings and additions to your remedy:
1) Cancel the manufacturing contract with TI and share it between UMC and TSMC. I am sure both foundries can offer a better deal than what TI is offering.
This is great wisdom. In addition, I think that Sun has to realize, deeply, that Sun != SPARC. It looks like Sun is going to be shipping Opteron processors soon as part of their blade offering. I believe Sun should look at forming a strategic partnership with AMD and offering Opteron in many more machines, from workstations to mid-range servers to high-performance clusters.
2) Assembly. Why are SUN workstations and servers assembled in the USA? the third most expensive country to not only to conduct business in but to manufacturer as well. Have some common sense and more the assembly to China to Malaysia to cut down on labour costs.
Again, good wisdom. Sun may want to completely outsource the building of their machines as Dell, IBM, and many of the PC companies do. There is no value add in Sun plastic.
3) Value for money. What is the point of selling a server and an OS that can’t do a bloody thing? SUN needs to start bundling FREE OF CHARGE their server software.
Sun got caught in a lie yet again regarding “free” software. They announced that they were going to give away Solaris with everything you needed to get a system going. Turns out you’ve got to pay for everything past the base OS. Solaris and the rest of Sun’s server software is never going to succeed at the current prices.
4) Encourage third party development by improving the tools that are available and reducing the price.
Sun needs to give away the tools. They are competing against Linux and all free tools. Sun could charge for support on the tools, but they need to match the entry cost of Linux.
5) Get rid of the anti-Microsoft dogma. At the end of the day, what is more important, serving the customer with what they want or defending a dogma? SUN should pump money into mono and start improving Java. With (3) and (5) the customer can then make a choice, do I go with java? c#? a native application? ultimately SUN should be able to say, “What ever direction you choose to go in, we’ll have a solution”. Simply screaming Java isn’t going to make money. Again, give the customer what they want and you will make sales. Just look at IBM, they support with .NET and Java, the net result? what ever the customer wants from IBM they can provide both in services, hardware and software.
Hear ye, hear ye. Sun needs to get away from monoculture that is for sure. I would suggest that they open up the guts of the VM for everyone to see so that it can be monitored, tuned, etc. For a piece of system software, the Java VM is remarkably immature.
Overall, Sun needs to realize things have changed. The dotcom era is over. Selling big expensive machines that are beat on performance benchmarks by machines that cost 1/10 to 1/4 as much is a dead end strategy. Sun needs to pay more than lip service to open standards and open up Java, Solaris, and the rest of their software suite. I am not holding my breath for them, though. They have proven as Mr. Schwartz just demonstrated, that from top to bottom, they are one of the most pigheaded companies around. It looks like they will be joining their neighbor SGI in the proprietrary UNIX burnout and fade away therapy group soon.
What Sun really needs to do is shelf half of the product line, mostly the older machines that are not producing revenue. They need to pull out of the court systems, quit chasing the Microsoft Unicorn or windmill and channel some of the money they spend on the lawyers into salaries for employees. They should hire for retention, not in order to train the rest of the computer industry, and they should not waste good talent on layoffs. Why let the good people go when you don’t have to. They laid off the #1 salesperson in the company back in November. That was a POOR business decision on their part. She was a good friend of mine.
Mcnealy needs to get his act together, or step aside and let someone else run the company. Salaries for execs need to be sliced. More companies need to do that, but it will all be in a new book I am writing about many things that should change.
Michael Murdock, Author & Former Sun Employee #76079
Solaris has been running on x86 since 2.1, 1992 (at least). Now if only they put more effort into drivers for commodity hardware.
Solaris for x86 has been an on again off again thing for Sun. They canceled it a while back and only under the threat of law suits and full page ads in newspapers did Sun decide to restore it.
Sun is a company you simply cannot trust as these large Solaris x86 adopters learned. Imagine a customer having to threaten your “enterprise class” vendor with lawsuits because they cancelled your infrastructure! Sun is a dumb bunch of jerks that is for sure.
The only way Solaris x86 has a future is to open source and GPL it.
In fact, someone out there suggested Sun should give it to GNU/FSF. I think that’s a brilliant idea.
Yeah, give away intellectual property, that always helps companies become more profitable. Solaris x86 has plenty of future it they support wholeheartedly instead of dicking it around. It still has one of the best, if not the best SMP implementation on x86, and can be bought for a nominal price.
If Sun wanted Solaris x86 to succeed, they’d cut deals with Dell, IBM, HP, NEC, etc., to make Solaris an available option when you order your x86 server.
To date, I don’t believe any of these companies offers Solaris x86.
And why would anyone PAY for Solaris x86 vs. getting Linux for a nominal fee?
Solaris may have a good kernel on Sun, but it’s no great shakes on x86. Notice it winning any benchmarks? It may be Solaris, it may be more stable than the Linux kernel, but it is an operating system backed by one company and shunned by the rest of the industry who are sick and tired of Sun’s fake open source policies. Everyone is behind Linux. To compete with the Linux juggernaut, Sun has to give Solaris away and establish some mindshare.
Instead of maintaining Solaris x86, how about give the x86 Solaris users a reason to migrate to the UltraSparc platform. Simply supporting a community because it is nice isn’t going to produce revenue.
Maybe what SUN needs to do is look at their New Zealand subsidary/partnership with Solnet. It is in constant growth year after year. Find out what makes them tick.
Here is a hint. It isn’t just by selling hardware. You could say they’re a mini-IBM.
I wouldn’t pay for Linux in any case, I’d pay for FreeBSD
and I’d pay for Solaris x86 despite owning a SunBlade 100.
Not that I’m bigotted, I know I can get Linux from a dozen sources for free, I’d like to support the FreeBSD project and Solaris-x86’s fee is not that expensive.
Fact concerning that Windows Server 2003 on Itanium-2 TPC-C benchmark:
“…Only one system has ever posted a higher TPC-C non-clustered score, but it achieved only 5 percent more performance—even though it had four times as many processors, and cost more than twice as much per transaction…”
That machine was a Fujitsu SPARC-clone piece of crap Running Solaris 8:
“Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER 2000 c/s, Sun Solaris 8, SymfoWARE Server Enterp. Ed. VLM 3.0, 455,818 tpmC, $28.58/tpmC. Available 2/28/02.“
This shows that either Solaris and/or $un’s architecture has serious design problems. Maybe $un doesn’t care about efficiency because they can sell bigger boxes that way, but their customers do.
$un is paranoid about MSFT for real reasons and they are not hallucinating as you suggest.
$un? Bwaaaa hahahahahahahaha!!!!!
I think Sun should look more at what Lindows has brought, I mean as far as hardware. Sun should have a few laptops with Solaris x86, and Linux x86 on them with a easy to use interface of course with network tools for Solaris Sparc servers. And of course wouldn’t it be nice for them to start a better file directory structure for Linux to make it more like Solaris, or better yet start a completely new one simpular to NextStep or BeOS. That would be the day.
Of course not have hardware as cheap as Lindows OS but I would seriously by a 800 dollar computer or 1000 dollar laptop from Sun running a RedHat stype Linux version. Of course with more added tools and software. Just imagine built in java, built in this and that, tools from Netscape, or others. Sun has the people, more then anyone, but it doesn’t seem like they have the brains. Look at IBM, work the desktop, pull those people into the server. Sun should do the same, work with the desktop, home, then move them into the server. Dell has sever started that trend. Who ever thought Dell would be selling servers, now it’s common place.
maybe a little offtopic but I wanted to play around with solaris x86 and not minding giving Sun a few bucks I ordered solaris 9 for the x86 – that was on feb 07 – I just got a reciept on the 19th saying that my os will be sent to me on 03/05 – man I got a whole computer from dell with in that time frame.
RE: QAChaos (IP: —.sbc.com)
You think that is bad, try ordering a piece of SUN equipment. I swear, I could probably order a custom tailoured suit in a short space of time.
SUN stuffs around, again I stress had they taken by advice on the first page I gave, we would not even be talking about SUN in such a negative manor, infact, we’d be talking about a POSITIVE turn around. Unfortunately no one at SUN has the balls to make the tough decisions and crack the whip of change.
RE: Gil Bates (IP: 192.139.216.—)
Funny how I see people like you quote TPC, yet, if you worked in the IT field, you’d know the benchmarks do not represent what happens in the real world. They’re actually assuming that the MSCE’s who maintain the Windows server would actually have a clue. Believe or not, getting a MSCE who knows something beyond point in click is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The majority of the claimed TCO costs of Windows centre around the low cost aspect of trained Windows admins. Sure, you have cheap labour, but what they don’t tell you is how hard it is to get someone who has a formal education and is going to stick with the company for more than 6months.
I was unaware of that. I thought it was new with Solaris 8.
Thx for the info.
I couldn’t finish reading this because it was such intelligence-insulting trash. Of course Sun is better than everyone else on all fronts.
Sun’s may have more IP than Dell, but is it worth much? It’s only good for serving large entities that will get their support from IBM anyway.
R&D is a risk. It is a gamble that hopefully pays off bigtime. Dell can slaughter Sun because R&D is not a great investment now. Technology’s goal is usually to lower costs (especially in this economy), and people are looking at saving money by using cheap x86 boxes.
“Funny how I see people like you quote TPC, yet, if you worked in the IT field, you’d know the benchmarks do not represent what happens in the real world.”
Cute. OK, Matthew, then what is the real purpose of benchmarks if they are useless as an indicator of comparitive system performance and why does the TPC exist?
…and why is it that I am sure you would be fine with the benchmarks if SUNW was beating everyone else? As it is, SUNW can’t even make the top ten anymore and probably gave up posting benchmarks a couple of years ago because they are just too damned embarassing.
There you go again, hiding behind a proxy because you’re too much of a coward to stand behind what you say.
1) TPC is a grand pissing competition to entertain morons like yourself.
2)I ignore all benchmarks be it from SUN, Microsoft, HP or IBM.
“I ignore all benchmarks be it from SUN, Microsoft, HP or IBM.”
That’s real clever Matthew. So you have absolutely no way of comparing the performance of boxes from different vendors and the only clue you have to rely on is vendor propaganda and anecdotal FUD and hype.
Genious.
No, actually I do what I am paid to do, actually go out and perform a study MYSELF against the requirements of the organisation.
You may love to live in the hairy-fairy world of benchmarks, loud music and hype, I would rather do the hard yards myself and get a REAL world result.
So you think you can get as many a variety of boxes to test on as the TPC for your own evaluations, do you? You are going to acquisition big-iron boxes from multiple vendors to test your apps on and figure out for yourself which platform is the best, all by yourself?
Not likely. What’s more likely is you’ll just tell your client to use Sun because that’s what your skill set is and that’s what you like for political and other reasons that are mostly just subjective.
You really are as stupid as you look. I have NEVER told a client to use SUN. Infact, why would I tell a customer to use a SUN product over the products I assemble and sell? that wouldn’t make any business sense.
I sell servers running primarily a *NIX or *BSD depending on the customers requirements.
So no, I don’t suggest people to buy a SUN workstation, server or what ever the gizmo of the month they’re selling.
“…I have NEVER told a client to use SUN. Infact, why would I tell a customer to use a SUN product over the products I assemble and sell?…blah, blah, blah…I sell servers running primarily a *NIX or *BSD…”
OK, how about this then:
…Not likely. What’s more likely is you’ll just tell your client to use BSD because that’s what your skill set is and that’s what you like for political and other reasons that are mostly just subjective.
There you go again, hiding beyond a third party proxy. Conclusion, you’re posting it from work and don’t want people to find out who you work for.
As for servers running Windows, yes, I have installed a few and if you actually too any time to read my website:
http://home.iprimus.com.au/matgarnz/win2000tips.htm
I would be the last one bashing Windows. How about you take a deep breath and calm down. Goodness sake, its only a frigg’in operating system.
You might find this story interesting. I sure did. I wonder what other OSes those x86 blades might run other than Linux?
Sun Ships Industry’s First Multi-Architecture Blade Platform
http://www.supercomputingonline.com/article.php?sid=3155
Don’t say I never gave you anything but a hard time.
It is a good start, however, unfortunately I don’t think SUN will ever be able to compete with the established x86 players who have the economies of scale to produce faster and cheaper blades. With that being said, SUN maybe lucky and be able to rid out some success on their well recognised name.
The SPARC blades aren’t too bad and not priced too high, however, it is unfortunate they haven’t mentioned what SPARC they are using. The last time I had a look they used the UltraSparc IIe which performs adequately.
The big thing I am interested in is their management tools. Even in their hay-day they never really produced management tools comparable to what IBM, SGI, or HP provides.
“The big thing I am interested in is their management tools. Even in their hay-day they never really produced management tools comparable to what IBM, SGI, or HP provides.”
I’ll have to take your word for that because I don’t know the world of big-iron/*NIX systems a whole lot compared to my MSFT platform knowledge.
Anyway, all of that N1 stuff that I keep reading about sure seems impressive to me – virtualizing the hardware/OSes/storage etc. across the datacenter like that, and the supercomputing online article makes some pretty big claims about increased productivity and managability. Nice to see some undisputably innovative work coming out of SUNW these days. I may criticize them a lot but I applaud all movement in the direction towards self-improvement and wish them the best when they focus on their real merits.