“On balance, it’s hard to see how this isn’t a runaway success for Sun. After all, they got everything they wanted, plus $1,950,000,000 in found money. But somehow most of the press managed to see it as McNealy surrendering to Microsoft. Rationally, I don’t see how anyone could read even just the press release and believe this.” Read the editorial at the LinuxInsider.
Sharks, Laziness and Sun’s Gateway to Success
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The reason it is not a success is that microsoft gets to keep supplying an old broken Java to anyone they give Java to. This slows down the acceptance of Java, and with .Net may kill Java. It is a short term victory, at best.
I think the prevailing opinion seems to be that microsoft is paying it’s way out of all it’s troubles and Sun has let them.
But regardless of how much cash microsoft has in the bank 2 billion dollars is a lot of money to just hand over.
I think the writer spotted it when he said the optics were not good for Sun.
My favorite part is the end.
“An even better idea, at least in my opinion, would be to use the money to turn Gateway into an all-Linux business ”
Ummm yea. And Microsoft should start selling Linux…
“Gateway’s conversion to an all-Linux format would give Linux a big boost in market credibility while saving a few American jobs, because Gateway could keep its stores open now and quite possibly merge them with Apple’s stores later to form an independent retail chain dedicated to Unix.”
La, La, La, isn’t it fun to live in a fantasy world? I can’t imagine why Apple wouldn’t want to merge its stores with Gateway’s crappy stores. Apple would just love to sell Linux in big beige boxes right along side G5’s.
It’s true, on the Net they’ll give anyone a soapbox to yell from no matter how crazy or dumb their ideas are.
This guy seems convinced that the best way form Sun to spend the money they got from MS is to get Gateway to go 100% Linux. There is a fine line between being a Linux user and being a religious fanatic and this fellow crossed it about a mile back. Those that believe Linux is the mandate of god should be restricted from having their religious sermons posted to main stream technical sites as some kind of informed source.
LOL, you beat me to it none.
First Microsoft extended with .NET and C#…..Then the peoples at .Mono and Sun embraced and soon Microsoft will exterminate.
Anyone tell u that the big marketing execs at sun quit? it also shows alot of information on eWEEK about inside sun stuff. I think its great. Sun failed at marketing. I hope they will get better marketing execs.
“First Microsoft extended with .NET and C#…..Then the peoples at .Mono and Sun embraced and soon Microsoft will exterminate.”
You’d think by now everyone would see this stuff coming, especially Sun.
he writes… “MS agreed to align its bytecode execution engine with Java standards (and thus eventually morph C# and the CLR into Java);”
Well, I suspect they will always be different enough so MS can claim patents. But J# might be brought up into conformance with up-to-date Java 1.5.
Sun needed to end the battle with Microsoft because they had in essence lost the war.
Sun needs to regroup and find new markets. The server market is moving off of Sparc/Solaris – I don’t care how viable you think the platform is technically, it is dead commercially. If you disagree even with this, read their quarterly report or look at market ownership in servers – IBM and HP each are double Sun market share. In order to effectively regroup they need an infusion of cash that can be used to shore up declining revenues. Although they have a lot of cash on hand, this isn’t a substitute for new money coming in.
Another thing they are doing now which is very smart is cleaning house. Schwartz turfed nearly a dozen execs today – a good move. When earnings continually disappoint, its time to get out the axe. Most tech companies have mountains of deadwood – rich do-nothings, old-timers who refuse to do any real work, and underqualifieds from the .com-boom talent drought. Fire them all.
Next, McNealy needs to groom Schwartz to take over. Sorry Scott, I know its “your” company, but you blew it. Shareholders want your head on a stick next to Michael Eisner’s. Get out before you get forced out.
Once this is done Schwartz can start figuring out how to play to Sun’s strength’s in networked computing and programming tools. They should continue to push Java hard, but they should also concede where outside projects like Eclipse have brainshare. You can’t have it all Johnathan – start treating the Java community like a team. Also they need to get real on Linux. That means pushing it as a tier one platform, not just as an alternative to Windows or Solaris. Also Sun should go deep on Opteron. Sun doesn’t need its own CPU architecture going forward, and it is unlikely they would be able to make one stick in the market even if it was very good. There is a lot to leverage in Opteron. Where it is inadequate, Sun can assist AMD and extend the platform.
In any case Sun is going to be a much smaller company. Expect more layoffs. They are over 30k employees now – they probably want to get down to around 15k or even 10k. Sun is at least twice as big as it should be to meet its realistic future challenges. Also the street loves layoffs – it could keep investors from bailing.
Well blah, it is a shame your “Comment is currently pending review” becasue I thought it was pretty good. Although “Tech Journalists” don’t seem to have clue one, it is good to see that some of the people reading them do.
soon 2 be dead horse {sun that’s} moveon..good bye sun.
Sun needs to regroup and find new markets. The server market is moving off of Sparc/Solaris – I don’t care how viable you think the platform is technically, it is dead commercially. If you disagree even with this, read their quarterly report or look at market ownership in servers – IBM and HP each are double Sun market share.
No. Sun is still number one in UNIX server shipments. Third in overall server market.
Sun Microsystems Inc. and Dell were ranked, respectively, the third- and fourth-largest server vendors by revenue, according to Gartner.
The year was a particularly tough one for beleaguered Sun, which saw its revenue drop by 15 percent for the year, to $5.5 billion, and its share of the shrinking Unix market drop by over 4 percentage points, to 32.6 percent. Though Sun remained the leader in Unix shipments for the year, its lead over second-place Unix vendor HP was cut significantly to less than 1 percent, and HP actually out-sold Sun during the third and fourth quarters of 2003, Gartner said.
Sun is just getting into the non-sparc space. It’s too early to say anything even close to “SPARC is not Commercially viable”. IBM and HP sell much less of Power and Pa-risc from the above data so SPARC is quite commercially vaible.
By your rationale dell should get out of the server market because it too has roughly 1/3 the market of IBM and HP??!!!.
Nothing today indicates that SPARC is not viable or Sun needs to move to a linux x86 shop. Stop your FUD.
Sun is taking the right steps, steps it should have taken a long time ago, to return to profitability. Let’s be patient and watch.
“MS agreed to align its bytecode execution engine with Java standards (and thus eventually morph C# and the CLR into Java);”
That can’t be 100% accurate. I was under the impression that part of the reason that Java couldn’t implment things like performance enhancing generics was that they had limitations in their bytecode. If that is the case then I can’t see MS really using Java bytecode. Maybe this has something to do with making J# work nicely? Or making Java work properly with the CLR?
Your post continues a long stream of shilling for Sun. I am assuming you are a Sun employee.
If you read my post you will see I am not claiming that “Sun is toast”, and in fact I laud some of the moves they have made.
I will continue to say Sparc is dead in the marketplace until I see one cogent, persausive argument based on sales and marketshare to convince me otherwise. I don’t see any.
>> By your rationale dell should get out of the server market because it too has roughly 1/3 the market of IBM and HP??!!!.
If Dell stays in this position they probably should get out of the market. For a company like Dell they should get out of any market they are not #1 or #2 in. Luckily Dell can finance servers as a loss leader with it strong desktop and laptop sales and its low costs. How much does Dell spend on R&D? You can’t even compare these two companies. Dell makes money through scale and efficiency, not R&D.
>> Nothing today indicates that SPARC is not viable
Besides Sun’s quarterly report and its marketshare…
>> Stop your FUD
Be leary of defending your employer too strongly, Sun will be turfing a number of your coworkers next year, you may not think so kindly of them.
Did you even read the article or are you just posting the same response you post to every Sun article?
Sun needed to end the battle with Microsoft because they had in essence lost the war.
Lost the war? How does Sun achieving all of its goals undertaken by litigation outside of the courtroom constitute a loss? They were able to get the concessions they saught from Microsoft along with a tidy cash settlement. This doesn’t sound like a loss to me. You do realize making such a statement would lump you in with the “shallower members of the financial analyst and press communities”? In fact, the preconception that there was any kind of war seems specious to me. Companies compete viciously, and that is fact of business. The reality that Sun was able to get Microsoft to conceed so much is a big business win, espeically for Sun’s customers who, by McNealy’s own admission, had been pressuring Sun for an end to the Sun vs. Microsoft acrimony.
The server market is moving off of Sparc/Solaris – I don’t care how viable you think the platform is technically, it is dead commercially.
This is an inflammatory and baseless statement. It also couldn’t be further from the truth. First, SPARC and Solaris are two completely seperate products, yet you appear to be using them indiscriminately. SPARC is the Scalable Processor ARCitecture which is something that Sun doesn’t own. They’re a member of the SPARC stanards consortium, which is a standards body that is open to the industry. A number of different vendors make SPARC processors. Sun makes the UltraSPARC chip, which is a particular implementation of the SPARC architecture. (Much as a number of different embedded device developers have built various and sundry implementations of ARM’s architectures). While Sun’s price-performance with their SPARC hardware isn’t quite as great as their x86 and x86-64 price-performance, they’re making a lot of moves to keep SPARC competitive in the long term. Their strategic re-alignment to throughput computing is a clear signal to their customers that they are commited to delivering UltraSPARC systems that perform, along with x86 and x86-64 systems.
Solaris is Sun’s UNIX operating system, which runs on x86, x86-64, and SPARC. To suggest that Solaris is dead commercially is equally rediculous. Sun has been generating a tremendous amount of interest in their upcoming Solaris release, and provide features that represent a real *commercial* value to customers. This is especially true when you compare it to Linux which simply doesn’t have the features that Sun is bringing to their customers with Solaris 10. To suggest that Solaris isn’t commercially viable is absurd. Sun is the only commerical UNIX vendor that has constantly increased their investment in their OS while IBM, HP, SGI, and the rest put their UNIX-es on life-support. This has allowed Sun to develop features that you simply cannot get in any other OS. And, as I stated before, these features provide real commercial benefit to customers.
In short: You are either ignorant of the commercial appeal Sun has with their products and strategies, or you are trying to start a flame war.
Also they need to get real on Linux. That means pushing it as a tier one platform, not just as an alternative to Windows or Solaris.
I don’t understand how you can state that Sun hasn’t “gotten real” with respect to Linux. Sun was the first company to push a Linux as a desktop alternative to Windows. The JDS runs Linux and really does stand a chance of giving Microsoft a run for its money. To suggest Sun isn’t serious about Linux is a fallacy. Notice that IBM, Novell, and the rest got on the “Linux on the desktop” bandwagon *after* Sun. If anyone should be accused of not taking Linux seriously, it would be those companies.
By suggesting that Sun push Linux as a Teir-1 solution, you contradict yourself. I think it is you who should “get real on Linux” and understand that there are tradeoffs and differences between Linux and Solaris that make them suited to different tasks. Sun has been pushing Linux on the desktop where it provides a clear advantage to other existing solutions. Suggesting that Linux is somehow comparable to Solaris is simply incorrect. Yes, Linux is UNIX-like, but it is not Solaris. Each technology has a place, and there should be no reason for Sun to give up its existing investment in Solaris, especially when it is more techonogically and commercially beneficial to customers than Linux. I’m not trying to disparage Linux. I run Linux at home and am perfectly happy with it. However, to suggest that Linux is a panacea for all business ills, and espeically as a solution to development of stable platforms for corporate customers, is incredibly short-sighted.
Also Sun should go deep on Opteron. Sun doesn’t need its own CPU architecture going forward, and it is unlikely they would be able to make one stick in the market even if it was very good. There is a lot to leverage in Opteron. Where it is inadequate, Sun can assist AMD and extend the platform.
Sun was one of the very first systems companies to embrace Opteron. They’ve also acquired Kealia systems, a company which has been incredibly serious about developing large-scale high-performance Opteron based solutions. You can’t claim that Sun hasn’t made a serious commitment to Opteron.
Once again, you’re making statements about SPARC without any apparent knowledge of what you’re saying. Sun has already established itself as a player in the SPARC market, and has, by definition, made that “stick”. If you look at the majority of SPARC hardware sold, it comes from Sun. You haven’t justified why it is you believe that Sun no longer needs to develop SPARC processors. Sun has customers who depend upon this technology, and it therefore has a market to sell it to them. If Sun were to give up on SPARC it would be a big win for other SPARC processor vendors, especially Fujitsu, who would be more than happy to take Sun’s customers.
Your comment about Sun extending x86-64 for AMD is also misplaced. You assume that AMD wants Sun’s help in extending an architecture it developed. AMD has their own goals, which may well be different from those of Sun. Right now, early experiments show x86-64 scaling well to 8 and maybe 16 processor implementations. That’s certainly an improvement over Intel’s MP architectures, but if AMD’s strategy doesn’t align with Sun’s, Sun needs to have alternatives available for their large SMP/NUMA customers. Sun and AMD both sell processors, they are partner companies, not the *same* company. Sun isn’t about to let themselves become vulnerable to AMD just because x86-64 and Solaris turn out to be a smart move on Sun’s part. It is overly simplistic to suggest that one processor, or one processor architecture is sufficient to achieve all of Sun’s goals especially when you don’t appear to understand the processor architectures which you criticize, or the realities of the computer systems business.
Your post continues a long stream of shilling for Sun. I am assuming you are a Sun employee.
Just because someone dares correct your inaccurate and misleading statements doesn’t mean that he or she is a Sun employee.
Be leary of defending your employer too strongly, Sun will be turfing a number of your coworkers next year, you may not think so kindly of them.
You don’t actually know that Sun is Raptor’s employer. This is another case of you making statments without having any basis in fact for their justification.
>> Nothing today indicates that SPARC is not viable
Besides Sun’s quarterly report and its marketshare…
As Raptor, and myself have said, hundreds of times before, Sun’s Market-share is not SPARC specific. These figures define Sun’s percentage of the market as a *whole*. This includes all varieties of large, small, and in-between servers. To infer that SPARC suffers a lack of market-share is inaccurate, as Sun is the largest SPARC vendor on the planet. Their SPARC share may not be as large as Dell’s x86 share, but to declar that an architecture is dead and not commercially viable simply because they don’t maintain the same share as Dell is a foolish notion. Sun holds the lion’s share of the SPARC market and still remains the leader there. How you can declare that SPARC is dead, is incomprehensible, espeically in light of the facts.
Ok, so this is a big win for SUN. But what’s in it for microsoft? Why are they suddenly making nice with SUN? Why would they be willing to part with nearly 2 billion? I don’t get it, does anybody understand it?
I can only think of one reason: Microsoft is paying SUN for the same reason why they invested in Corel, namely: they are very confident that the competitive threat from SUN is a complete bygone. As far as competition goes, Microsoft must have realised that SUN is completely dead, as it surely is. That’s why they can afford to be magnanimous. I would like to see Microsoft donate 1 billion to the Linux fund!!
Apple is the biggest threat to Sun right now. OSX is growing and taking over among the people I know. When I started college I was one of two Mac users in the CS department, now there are probably about 10-15 in a department of maybe 150-200 students, if you count all of the clueless pre-CS students here. If you go by the juniors and seniors, probably about as much as 25% of us are Mac users. In one of my 400 level classes, powerbooks are the most common laptops in class.
I had really, really wanted a Sun workstation 2 years ago. I was thinking about spending $1000 for one of their bottom of the barrel entry level machines. But then I said, screw that recently when I realized for $600-$700 more I could get a used dual processor G4 PowerMac running 1.25Ghz PPC procs and 512MB RAM refurbished. Put Panther on that machine and it’s a REAL workstation. I could code, play games, do work, maybe record some bass lines all of it on one solid machine.
Sun is going to be screwed if they don’t address Apple. They need to do it now, ideally they should have started as soon as OSX 10.0 came out. If they did they’d have seen how much potential it had. The super computer just put together by Virginia Tech was a major shot across Sun’s bow. It was Apple letting the old UNIX order know that it was fucked if it didn’t scramble. In the long run, Sun is going to have to deal with the power and flexibility of Apple super computers built on XServes running XGrid.
And of course, Apple’s implementation of Java kicks ass compared to Sun’s on Windows or Linux. It’s such a pleasure to work with because it fits right in with the rest of the OSX applications. If you use Swing for your GUI then everything looks almost entirely native right out of the box which makes it feel more solid, IMO.
> The server market is moving off of Sparc/Solaris
ROFL
That statement alone brought tears to my eyes…thanks.
And I’m employed by Sun, too. Oww, now my sides hurt.
Article: MS agreed to align its bytecode execution engine with Java standards (and thus eventually morph C# and the CLR into Java)
A.K.H.: That can’t be 100% accurate…
You are correct. That statement in the article is almost completely wrong. The “bytecode execution engine” that they agreed to change is the MSJVM, not the CLR. This wouldn’t be hard for MS to do as it is basically compliant already, although with horribly outdated Java 1.0.2 standards. There is nothing in the agreement that requires them to update MSJVM to anything even vaguely recent though, so this isn’t as much of a victory as it may seem.
As for making Java work properly with the CLR, try J# (for source) or KVM (for bytecode). MS doesn’t really have to do anything. Still, it’s nice that they are now allowed to make Java work with .NET if they want to.
I don’t think Sun wants to do anything about Apple. Every single interview with anyone from Sun has them talking about how they want to work with Apple, and how they all use Sun hardware at work and Macs at home. A few years ago they tried to give Apple StarOffice, not lisence, GIVE. They wanted to have Apple to put have it in the default install of MacOS, a free alternative to MS Office (this was before OO.o took off).
apple and linux are killing Sun.
we use solaris os at work and now we are switching to Linux. i did not make the decision but i can tell that open source and apple are taking over.
there is another company which is also switching to Linux and will use Mac
for graphics design.
security and prices are a big concern. i know Macs are not cheap, but they are wonderful.
-2501
Article: …then Sun can use Microsoft’s proprietary protocols in its own products –including StarOffice and Linux tools like Samba. That, of course, would effectively release the API information to the open-source community
The agreement allows Sun and MS to license each other’s patents, but there is no reason to assume that those licenses are transferable beyond Sun. Sun may only be able to use MS proprietary protocols in its closed-source products. We’ll have to see how far Sun can push its luck, or for that matter how far it wants to. Sun competes with open-source, remember – for all their support of Gnome and OpenOffice.org, they also depend on Java and Solaris.
I will continue to say Sparc is dead in the marketplace until I see one cogent, persausive argument based on sales and marketshare to convince me otherwise. I don’t see any.
What part of Sun is still making more money selling SPARC than its competitors are selling thier high-end solutions don’t you find cogent or persuvasive? You have made outlandish claims that you now need to back up.
Show me precisely how SPARC is unviable. Marketing research, articles. Also what market are you talking about.
Also your lack of knowledge that Fujitsu also makes and sells SPARC solaris servers further drowns your SPARC/Solaris isn’t viable argument.
Add up the worldwide Sun and Fujitsu SPARC/Solaris server sales if you are talking about the SPARC architecture. SPARC is perfectly viable. If you are comparing the server ecosystem you need to add all the SPARC vendors to determine viability.
Your post continues a long stream of shilling for Sun. I am assuming you are a Sun employee.
I also do that on Apple related posts so I must work for Apple as well. If find some one spreading FUD on linux I would do the same, so I must develop for the linux kernel as well. Grow up.
> The server market is moving off of Sparc/Solaris – I don’t care how viable you think the platform is technically, it is dead commercially. If you disagree even with this, read their quarterly report or look at market ownership in servers – IBM and HP each are double Sun market share.
Dude, stop smoking that nasty crack of yours! Sun in still #1 Unix vendor out there, and you’re referring to all server sales regardless of the platform and operating system.
It would seem to me that Sun survival depends more on how they are doing in Asia than anything else.
The deal they struck with Microsoft is to team up and lock down intellectual property in the USA and allied powers.
The important thing though is new sales. And with the USA still in a tech slump, Asia/India are the growth centers.
Does anyone know what Sun’s share in Asia/India looks like?
That article was written in La La Land…the guy basically said Sun can open source microsofts technology (the comments about Samba). While I would love to see it happen that would break numerous laws and get Sun in incredible amounts of financial trouble. Meanwhile, as others have noted above, MS got some rights to core Unix prop. unix tech. which they need. Java is dead, people haven’t realized it yet. With Novell driving the Mono project (OS implementation of C# and .net) onto Mac OSX, linux, and others, and a solid implement of ,net on BSD .net will become the defacto “write once, depoly everywhere” platform because you get pick or mix and match your languages with best in class technologies on mono and it’s faster and better looking. Java console apps are slow and look like sh1t.
Also, as a comment on the whole sparc platform…one phrase: “price to performance ratio”. Sparc is also so dead…total waste of money. There is a single thing you can do with a sparc system that can’t be done for half the price using alternative hardware/software.
The journalist is smoking his shorts…
MS is not going to rewrite the CLR to use java bytecode or implement java’s bytecode standard because java is too slow and MS does not have enough control over the standard and Sun has done some stupid things.
.Net, as much as it irks me to say this (being a MS tech.), is the next rung on the evolutionary ladder. Ms took the core concepts behind Java and designed a much better technology…the bytecode implementation is one of many much better things about .net wrt java. If anything, Sun should just tied Java in to the .net CLR…of course, folks are already doing this on Mono. With MS submitting the CLI/CLR and C# to the ECMA, the Mono core is safe. Some of the outside, surrounding technologies found on the windows platform may not be portable to Mono due to patent restrictions but thus far, MS has not put up a fuss.
Sun sold-out to MS again. They should have kept going until they made MS get rid of .net! If MS paid out 2 Billion Dollars then Sun had to have had a chance. Anything less than the complete dismantling and deletion of ALL .net installs and business units by MS is a loss by Sun. MS has already made more money than that by their illegal actions to cripple Java on windows. This is just a slap on the wrist to MS tactics…with nothing to stop them from doing it again…or even actually punish them for what they’ve already done!
Another option would have been for MS to hand over the ENTIRE .net business unit to Sun…That would have been fair.
I don’t understand it. They’re trolls. Check out their SCO articles for example.
is there a relatinship between sun and gateway i am missing?
why should gateway, and not say, dell or hp or ibm, preininstall linux?
I find it most ironic. Open source zealots were pushing Sun to battle against Microsoft all the while they were taking away the solid foundation that was supporting Sun. Now they cry it is a big loss for Sun. Sorry, but Sun never had much to gain from fighting Microsoft except maybe dethroaning them. Once this was no longer a possibility, the best thing they could do is become an ally. For Sun, this is the best news possible. Now that they have signed a deal with Microsoft, they might be able to survive the onslaught from Linux and IBM, their real enemy.
>> Lost the war? How does Sun achieving all of its goals undertaken by litigation outside of the courtroom constitute a loss?
Lets flashback to a time when Scott McNealy was propping fake dog poop on a Windows logo and see if we understand what has been happening since then. Guess Sun PR isn’t pushing the “Windows is a hairball” line too hard anymore.
>> This is an inflammatory and baseless statement.
It is based on server market share and Sun’s quarterly report. Its only inflammatory and baseless if you have staked your retirement on SUNW shares.
>> While Sun’s price-performance with their SPARC hardware isn’t quite as great as their x86 and x86-64 price-performance, they’re making a lot of moves to keep SPARC competitive in the long term.
By cancelling the next iteration of the architecture?
>> Solaris is Sun’s UNIX operating system, which runs on x86, x86-64, and SPARC. To suggest that Solaris is dead commercially is equally rediculous.
I have never claimed Solaris in isolation was “dead”, I have always made my statements with regards to Sparc. I stand by them.
In general you seem to misconstrue my statements. I am not interested in seeing Sun “dead”. They have and will make great contributions to networked computing. Yet mismanagement dogs the firm. I won’t root for them until they turf McNealy, get real about their technology, and start playing to their strengths. Many people felt the same way when DEC was committing suicide years ago.
By cancelling the next iteration of the architecture?
What architecture iteration are you talking about? SPARC is still in V9 architecture state. UltraSPARC is an implemention of SPARC V9. Sun cancelled one project that implemented the SPARCV9 architecture specification to concentrate on what it calls “Throughput computing”. Sun has talked about Niagara and Rock processors that will most probably implement the SPARCV9 specification ( I doubt they would do V10 even if it was out). The have not cancelled any new iteration of the SPARC architecture. There is no evidence to support that so called UltraSPARC V or “millenium” would have been a V10 chip.
Your ignorance about SPARC and UltraSPARC is clearly evident in your posts.
SPARC is the architecture there are many companies implementing the SPARC architecture specifications in thier products.
From sparc.com
SPARC Compliant Systems by Vendor
Aries Research
Fujitsu Limited
PFU Limited
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Tadpole
Toshiba Corporation
SPARC Architectures Certified by Vendor
European Space & Technology Centre
Fujitsu Computer Systems Corp.
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Globespan Virata
Microprocessor Vendors
Fujitsu Microelctronics, Inc.
Gaisler Research
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Texas Instruments
Globespan Virata
OEM’s
Continuous Computer Corp.
Force Computers
Fujitsu
Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation
Gaisler Research
Globespan Virata
Golden Chips Co. LTD.
Gulfcoast Workstation Corp.
LSI Logic
Nature Worldwide Technology Corporation
(NatureTech)
Sheba Systems Co., Ltd.
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Tadpole
Texas Instruments
Themis Computer
Toshiba Corporation
Check out the members list at http://www.sparc.com/members.html
If you can’t understand something please don’t pretend to be an expert on that subject. Don’t offer misguided advise on how a Multibillion dollar company should be run. You end up looking very shall we say …. unintelligent.
You can criticize Sun all you want as long as you criticisims are based on facts. You have clearly demonstrated you have no clue what you are talking about.
I have never claimed Solaris in isolation was “dead”, I have always made my statements with regards to Sparc. I stand by them.
Err.. you have been blathering for about the last few articles now that Sun should consider giving up SPARC and concentrate on Linux, Java and Opteron.
I can’t recollect you ever having said Sun should put some momentum into making Solaris more prominent on x86. So MJ didn’t misconstrue anything.
You keep on posting about how SPARC is not commerically viable, it is most certainly viable and always has been. Take a look at fujitsu’s SPARC implementation it is very competitive with other 64-bit chips. By the way most the SPARC vendors chose to run Solaris on thier systems. So SPARC/Solaris is very viable commercially.
I won’t root for them until they turf McNealy, get real about their technology, and start playing to their strengths. Many people felt the same way when DEC was committing suicide years ago.
Unless I am mistaken the steps that Sun has taken recently has been to “get real about thier technology and thier strengths”. Thier technology namely, h ighly scalable and reliable systems, is one of thier main strengths.
Sun is contentrating on massive mulitcore/multithreaded cpus that Solaris can take full advantage of, I would say that they are playing on thier strengths.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/04/12/HNsungamble_1.html
This article reaffirms what I have said before. There is a good description on Sun’s throughput computing chips on aceshardware.com.
http://aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=55000245
Chris Rijk [Ace’s Hardware]: The 15x performance increase for Niagara, is that over the 650 MHz UltraSPARC IIi in the server blades or the UltraSPARC III?
Dr. Marc Tremblay: The first one [(UltraSPARC IIi)].
Chris Rijk [Ace’s Hardware]: And the 30x increase was compared to the current UltraSPARC III?
Dr. Marc Tremblay: Yes, 1.2 GHz [(UltraSPARC III)].
Lets flashback to a time when Scott McNealy was propping fake dog poop on a Windows logo and see if we understand what has been happening since then. Guess Sun PR isn’t pushing the “Windows is a hairball” line too hard anymore.
For all your criticism, you still haven’t explained how this means Sun has “lost the war.” Sun obtained concessions and cash from Microsoft which were their intented goals of litigation. This occurred without Sun having to take Microsoft to trial. Further, Sun’s customers had been pressuring Sun for an end to the hostility and acrimony between the two companies. So far as I can tell, the example you’ve given is just fancy marketing by McNealy. I don’t know how this implies that Sun has lost some make-believe war.
It is based on server market share and Sun’s quarterly report. Its only inflammatory and baseless if you have staked your retirement on SUNW shares.
I find it tiring that you accuse all of your critics of being Sun employees or shareholders. I don’t own a single share of SUNW. I haven’t accused you of having any alterior motives, despite your incredible conviction to hold to opinions you can’t seem to justify when questioned.
We’ve been over this argument time and time again. Sun owns the majority share of the SPARC market. The overall server market-share figures talk about *all* servers from *all* companies, of which, obviously Sun will have a smaller share.
I consider your statement inflammatory because making a claim like “SPARC is dead” is just as outrageous as saying “Linux is dead” becauase it has such a small share of the server-OS market. (For those who have trouble reading, I’m not actually claiming Linux is dead). Of course, the rest of the world, who appear to be grounded in reality, would point out that while Linux doesn’t hold a major portion of the server-OS marketshare, it is far from dead and many people continue to make improvements on its kernel, libraries, and many free applications that Linux vendors package with their distributions. I made these statements because you either don’t realize how incomplete your argument is, or you are determined to start a flame-war by evangelizing based upon an opinion which you cannot support with facts.
>> While Sun’s price-performance with their SPARC hardware isn’t quite as great as their x86 and x86-64 price-performance, they’re making a lot of moves to keep SPARC competitive in the long term.
By cancelling the next iteration of the architecture?
The rest of that paragraph read:
Their strategic re-alignment to throughput computing is a clear signal to their customers that they are commited to delivering UltraSPARC systems that perform, along with x86 and x86-64 systems.
So, had you read the rest of the statement, you would understand that throughput computing is what they’re offering to their SPARC customers as a long-term performance win. Sun has not cancelled the next interation of their architecture. Sun cancelled Ultrasparc-V and -VI, they are still delivering -IV to their customers, and have used the elimination of the -V and -VI chips to allow them to persue different chip designs that will benefit customers through the multicore/multithread chip design strategy. The -V and -VI chips sound like they were outdated technology anyway. It makes sense for Sun to adjust to put money where they think it will actually benefit themselves and their customers.
I have never claimed Solaris in isolation was “dead”, I have always made my statements with regards to Sparc. I stand by them.
You said:
“The server market is moving off of Sparc/Solaris – I don’t care how viable you think the platform is technically, it is dead commercially.”
“Sparc/Solaris” means Sparc and or Solaris, and you then used platform to refer to Sparc and or Solaris. It sounds to me that you did indeed claim that Solaris as a platform could be dead. Which is why I responded that such a statement couldn’t be further from the truth.
In general you seem to misconstrue my statements.
I have taken your statements as you have written and expressed them. If you would offer more clear, well reasoned arguments backed by facts, and write in a manner which leaves little room for interpretation, it would be much easier for people to understand just what it is you are trying to say.
It will never going to happen. Java ByteCode is inferior to Microsoft’s MSIL. One example I can give is that in Java you have instructions like addint, adddouble, while in MSIL is just “add”. MSIL is more generic, and it is easier to extend to make it support more features. It will never going to happen. That crap sounds like bollocks to me.
I love reading these posts on Sunday morning. Love seeing the intense effort people use to convince themselves and others of the truth of their opinions.
I put my money (or actually my company’s) where my mouth is. I don’t have to rationalize anything. In the last three years I’ve bought everything from Sun V60, V120, V210, 280R, 880 all running Solaris 9. Very sweet OS and my staff love it. Sure we keep Linux at home (myself I’ve had RedHat, Corel, and now Gentoo). But, I run a business and Sun and Solaris are the way for us.
I think a lot of the FUD out there is reflective of the US stock market and the perception that things are black and white. The stock market is rampent with people expecting companies to return a quick buck. This works fine for the PC market.. whether you’re speaking Linux or M$. The problem that ppl have when looking at Sun is that they expect the same thing from a company that does not make its bread or butter from PC’s. It’s as insane as expecting all companies who make wine to sell everything at the same price at the 7 11. It’s insane!
Sun is a software maker that is dependent upon the hardware they make. Sun run’s its own business on its own hardware. They’re bread and butter is Sparc/Solaris. It’s what everything else branches out for them. The difference between Sun and Dell is that Sun has IP and spends a lot on R&D to turn that IP in products for the market. Dell just pushes out hardware it has no control over. Sun sells a product that will be on the market for years to come. There are still lots of ppl who run Sun hardware from over 7 years ago! The cycle of products for Sun is a lot slower than it is for Dell. Sun will still be selling and supporting V480’s for years. Dell will just tell you to buy a new box.
And this is where the perception is really messed up! Sun is after selling quality products to customers that they can depend on for more than a few years. It’s a different kind of market place. And for those who think it’s wrong.. hey.. it works for IBM. You don’t see them selling new mainframes to every IBM mainframe customer every year! Hell the used market for Sun hardware, known as the grey market, generates over $9 billion a year in the US alone! So ppl really need to back off of Sun and realize that it’s been in a different market place for a long time and now everyone is expecting them to be like Dell.
The deal with M$ is not bad for Sun, it’ll give it an edge over Linux and help maintain its ability to “play nice with everyone” in the corporate world.
Sun is trying really hard to push its latest technology out to please the stock market and change the perception ppl have right now. Cancelling the US-V and the US-VI, shows that Sun reallizes that it needs to jump ahead of those designs to bring innovation to the market sooner to give it that edge it lost years ago. Right now, you can buy Sun servers a lot cheaper than you could have years ago. They have done a lot to change things. The tough part is getting the message out. Sun has horrible marketing, and that’s something many companies face out there.
Sun is not dead, they will be around for a long time. And for those who think that they’ll get bought out by someone.. take a number. If Sun where to get bought out, it would be by Fujitsu hands down. And if that happened, you better watch out, they are a lot more agressive than Sun is. That’s why Fujitsu does soo well in the Asian market with it’s PrimePower SPARC64 systems. The good thing is that they are working closer together. Since the SPARC64 is a lot closer in performance to IBM’s Power4, expect to see Sun releasing UltraSparcs with enhancements from Fujitsu to brings things up to speed!
Speaking as Solaris 10 beta tester, watch out.. it’s going to be a huge improvement over the previous Solaris releases and it’ll set new expectations on IBM, HP, and Linux. The difference is that Sun will be ahead and Sun’s already builtin the protection for customer’s software. You can still run software from Solaris 2.5 on a Solaris 10 box, with no recompile. Let me know when you can do that with HPUX, AIX, or even Linux.
Also I second lickedcat’s comment’s. Having one OS and hardware brand to work with makes things easier, especially when those products will be around for years. Companies don’t want to spend lots of $$ every year on the same solution, they expect the thing to work properly and last 3-7 years.
For those of you who don’t follow the boards on Groklaw, LinuxInsider was long ago exposed as a purported “journalistic source” that is actually anti-Linux and OSS for the most part, and pro-MS. So it’s no wonder the MS-boosters are seeing this as some kind of vindication. But once you consider the source, you’ll realise that the opinions expressed are about as impartial as a fax from Redmond.