LWM’s Bill Claybrook, spoke with John Loiacono, executive vice president of Sun Microsystem’s Software Group about his new job, and what he has in store for Sun’s Linux strategy.
Where Is Sun Going with Linux?
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Eugenia Loli
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I think Sun as a company has a very clear cut Linux strategy and that all of the confusion arose from Jonathan Schwartz, who has singlehandedly managed to destroy Sun’s PR by giving out confusing and conflicting information because, frankly, he’s completely clueless. While he’s been very effective in terms of management, like Ken Olsen he’s out of touch and confused by the technology.
So what is Sun’s Linux strategy? Continue pushing JDS into the low-end commodity marketplace which is currently dominated by Windows. They’ve been enormously successful with this in many places, case in point China where JDS replaced Red Flag Linux.
From J. Scwartz:
“Also, let me really clear about our Linux strategy. We don’t have one. We don’t at all. We do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period.”
From J. Loicono:
“If Sun were not sincere about Linux, we wouldn’t be putting our entire JES (Java Enterprise System) and entire middleware portfolio on Linux. Our entire desktop system (JDS) runs on Linux. Every one of my major software applications runs on Linux, and, by the way, I ship JES on Red Hat on the same day that I ship it on Solaris.”
So, which one is lying to you about Sun’s involvement with Linux?
They both ain’t lying dude. Take a close look. Swartsch is talking about Linux on the server. Loicono is talking about JDS– correct, Desktop system.
See, it takes a simple read to understand someone’s words.
JES is a desktop product?
Suns ‘entire middleware portfolio’ is a desktop product?
‘Every one of his major software applications’ are desktop products?
They do employ GNOME and OOo hackers. They do give back.
The following is Sun’s Linux stratedgy, it’s not that complicated.
-We would rather you run Solaris than pay Redhat for just the OS.
-We provide much more than just the OS.
-If you want to run something besides Soalris, then we want to sell you other software to sit on top of either Windows, Linux, or Solaris.
The only OS comapnies that are all or nothing in today’s market are Redhat and MS. Sun, IBM, HP, and many ISVs support multiple OSs. Customers don’t want vendor lockin anymore no matter what platform it is.
Just like any business that wants to stay in business, Sun is realizing that they NEED a coherent alternative OS and platform strategy because their customer base demands it. They’ve been losing customers to the competition because they weren’t listening. This change in management signals that they are waking up and moving to a more services oriented strategy based on solutions rather than a product oriented strategy taken separately. This is really where they made their original splash so many years ago in the workstation market. To make it in the current technology market you must be extremely flexible and give your customers the options they demand, otherwise you loose their business. Ignore their demands too much, and you go out of business. Try to dictate what your customer will and will not buy and you will alienate them.
“First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Gandhi
I think that their strategy is to fumble about until they go out of business. Free unix-like operating systems have marginalized their products and they face still competition from other hardware vendors like HP and IBM.
Hell, at this point, it looks like Apple has a better Unix strategy than Sun does.
1) Sun doesn’t sell GNU/Linux, an operating system.
2) Sun sells products that runs on GNU/Linux operating system (server or desktop).
3) JDS is *NOT* a Linux distro. It is a desktop system that can run on top of both GNU/Linux and Solaris (x86 and SPARC).
Keep in mind that Java platform is a core asset of Sun.
So, actually, if you replace the word “GNU/Linux” with “Windows” in (1) and (2), it just pretty the same.
You can understand the messages from both Loiacono and Schwartz.
— As long as its surface is one of Java platforms, anything under the hood is fine.
(Solaris, great. But Windows, Red Hat, Mac OS X, Palm OS, and Symbian are alright.) —
From this point of view, I see that messages from both of them are in harmony and nobody lies.
Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Endorses Sun Java Desktop System For Open Desktop Environment Initiative
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20041110#meti_endorsement…
I think that their strategy is to fumble about until they go out of business. Free unix-like operating systems have marginalized their products
Oh please. There’s nothing that runs Linux in the high end server space that can compete with Sun Fire servers. Sun Fire utilizes an eighteen channel cache coherent crossbar architecture which NUMA-based systems like Altix can’t compete with in terms of I/O. Solaris/SPARC continues to be the #1 database platform in the world and will likely remain so for quite some time.
Oh please. There’s nothing that runs Linux in the high end server space that can compete with Sun Fire servers. Sun Fire utilizes an eighteen channel cache coherent crossbar architecture which NUMA-based systems like Altix can’t compete with in terms of I/O.
That’s not where Sun needs to be to survive I’m afraid.
Solaris/SPARC continues to be the #1 database platform in the world and will likely remain so for quite some time.
Really?
Oh please. There’s nothing that runs Linux in the high end server space that can compete with Sun Fire servers. Sun Fire utilizes an eighteen channel cache coherent crossbar architecture which NUMA-based systems like Altix can’t compete with in terms of I/O.
I seem to remember that IBM sells Linux on their zSeries systems. I’m guessing a z900 can keep up with a Sun Fire when it comes to I/O. And IBM pSeries systems aren’t exactly garbage either. So, yes, there is stuff that runs Linux in the high end server space which can compete with Sun Fire servers.
And before you go down that road, the zSeries might not be as popular as Solaris/SPARC for databases, it just shows that Linux is just as capable of running on that scale of hardware as Solaris is. The only reason Linux doesn’t run on Sun Fire hardware is because Sun doesn’t want it to.
Sun Fire utilizes an eighteen channel cache coherent crossbar architecture which NUMA-based systems like Altix can’t compete with in terms of I/O. Solaris/SPARC continues to be the #1 database platform in the world and will likely remain so for quite some time.
Altix will blow Solaris out of the water in terms of I/O. Take a look at any major benchmark for I/O such as streams and you will not see SUN anywhere near Altix.
Wow! #1 database platform. Could it be that SUN was in bed with Oracle for a long, long time? It sure was. Oracle ran SUN machines and it was the optimum platform to run it on. Again, it isn’t now. Altix is!
> Oracle ran SUN machines and it was the optimum platform to run it on. Again, it isn’t now. Altix is!
What the hell are you smoking there, dude? SGI hasn’t shipped a single Altix system as a platform for Oracle, ever. Altix systems will not perform well on database loads and SGI is not even trying to pitch Altix in the enterprise for extactly that reason. Oracle on the other hand is using Sparc/Solaris as a reference development platform for the Oracle database as a product, that also has to be for reason. Oracle is also using Solaris/Sparc almost exclusively internally as a platform for company applications. Not so long ago Oracle consolidated almost a hundred of databases internally onto just a few Sun SF15/25K — Oracle is choosing Sun for pretty good reason — it is proven, it is stable, and it scales.
Sorry Sun. I’m not the only one that doesn’t trust you on Linux matters.
What the hell are you smoking there, dude? SGI hasn’t shipped a single Altix system as a platform for Oracle, ever.
And you know this how?
Altix systems will not perform well on database loads and SGI is not even trying to pitch Altix in the enterprise for extactly that reason.
Now I know you don’t have a clue. If I can load the entire database into memory and throw 512 processors at it with petabytes of disk, it can handle any database load you throw at it. Period.
Altix does not aim at the business of running Oracle databases, it aims at the HPC market for medical, engineering and media. If a customer requested Altix for running Oracle they could. Oracle is certified to run on Altix IIRC.
Not so long ago Oracle consolidated almost a hundred of databases internally onto just a few Sun SF15/25K — Oracle is choosing Sun for pretty good reason — it is proven, it is stable, and it scales.
No, they have existing hardware they can trade in on newer equipment. Instead of having to purchase a completely new system outright they only have to pay the difference. It’s business ecomonics.
Oh and BTW, Oracle is in the process of switching to linux internally for much of their infrastructure. Just thought you might want to know that.
No ones going to beat anyone, Sun has its fans, Linux has its fans, much more vocal than Sun or Windows fans and over religous about the products like their Mac counterparts, and Windows has its fans. I do use Linux, I do use Solaris and I use Windows. They are tools they all have a job. I use what i want, I use Windows Server 2003 on my file and web servers, I replaced SuSE Linux Enterprise 8 with Server 2003, and with all due respect to Linux and Unix users and distributors, there is no amount of marketing, sales pitches or study that can get me to switch. If I see something that I think Linux will function better I would use it for that purpose, but for right now i see no reason to, Linux doesnt offer me anything Windows Server 2003 doesnt offer. Same with Solaris, I agree with Bascule, all my database servers are Solaris and I see more solaris deployed for Database servers than anything else.
> And you know this how?
I know this because I’ve been watching SGI’s customer wins for a long time. The last time SGI was selling servers for database-type workloads was in the days of Origin 2000. Ever since Altix became the priority for SGI I haven’t seen even a single customer win on any database.
>Now I know you don’t have a clue. If I can load the entire database into memory and throw 512 processors at it with petabytes of disk, it can handle any database load you throw at it.
Speaking of not having a clue, you can also throw 512 processors at the problem on a Sun cluster and have your database entirely loaded in memory, you can even have petabytes of disk with that if you want to. At any rate Sun’s FirePlane interconnect is better suited for database applications with fairly low latency requirements than SGI’s NumaFlex — FirePlane gives equally fast access of all nodes to all nodes in the domain (snoopy cache coherency domain) and has pretty low access times, NumaFlex on the other hand does not really allow each node in the interconnect to access all other nodes which can translate to serious latency when memory need to be migrated between nodes. With Oracle especially on very transactional loads the lock management will most likely put Altix to shame compared to Sun Fire servers.
To add insult to the injury Altix system have practically zero RAS features — no domains, no partitioning, no DR, which makes Altix pretty unsuitable for pretty much any enterprise deployment at that scale. Sorry dude, Altix can not be used anywhere besides HPC because it not capable of anything else.
> If a customer requested Altix for running Oracle they could. Oracle is certified to run on Altix IIRC.
Yes you could run Oracle on Altix, because Oracle is certified for both SuSE and RedHat. The customers do not request Oracle on Altix because the performance would be questionable to say the least, plus why in the hell would you take any risk when you can have a better, cheaper and proven system from Sun?
> Oh and BTW, Oracle is in the process of switching to linux internally for much of their infrastructure. Just thought you might want to know that.
That’s true, only Oracle is moving to Linux on the desktop. I seriously doubt they will be planning to move their backend infrastructure to Linux any time soon.
> If I can load the entire database into memory and throw 512 processors at it with petabytes of disk
Even setting all the hardware/interconnect differences aside with Sun Fire vs. Altix it would be a pretty insane idea to run a transactional database on a pretty coarse grained single-threaded Linux kernel. Even the most recognized Linux kernel developers (including Linus Torvalds) publically admitted that Linux wil have problems with scalability beyond 16 processors. Altix sweet spot — the highly parallel HPC loads — is a totally different story all together where all nodes in the interconnect are fairly independent of each other and allows Linux kernel to rack up the number of CPU’s — on the database workloads there is no chance it would fly.
I’ve researched sun and I invest in it and I have talked to schwartz and others and all this stuff.. but anyway
Sun’s Linux Strategy clearly changed when schwartz took over COO. <opinion>Nealy view linux as competition where as</opinion>schwartz (whom loves linux) thought of it as something they must not only embrace because its inevitable but something they must copy off of.. Hence, Solaris will be released in 2 major versions.. A Commercial version and an open source version. Mac OS X is to Darwin as Solaris is to OpenSolaris.
Now, Sun feels that they should go with the market and thus has adopted x86 more so than before but they aren’t running from the prefered platform to them, SPARC and have plans for it.
Sun believes that customers should have choice and while they prefer solaris they embrace linux as they feel that they could sell their software on that platform now as well. While they used to be in the BSD camp they haven’t entered linux much until recently.
If you want to run linux with sun software it’s great and they’ll sell it.
If you want to run solaris with sun softare it’s even better and they’ll sell it.
<opinion> Schwartz finally got in there and decided that sun must bend with the market, while neely was stubborn. </opinion>
HP and IBM adopted similiar strategies prior to sun’s adoption. IBM however has always viewed that you make more money on the hardware than software. HP is in dissary and appears to be adopting a similiar approach.
Schwartz is not stupid–he knows why linux has been so successful and he knows it will kill solaris if they do not open source solaris. and while sun will be unable to copy completely off linux they can make similiar adoptions like apple with darwin.
Also: Schwartz is horrible at PR. He throws stuff out there to get people’s reactions ON PURPOSE. … NEVER believe any ideas or suggestions about sun he may throw out there. He does state many truthful facts and fighting words against competitors.
and that in a ranting nutshell is sun’s linux strategy
hah, sgi has strayed from the workstation market where the company was mainly involved in! Hint the name Silicon Graphics, Inc.!
Why trust SGI? Itanium isn’t succeeded as most thought and they are failures at marketing and never keep a unified business. They have split all the businesses off that could give them marketing funds into their own little corporations. It is worthless to invest in SGI unless if they radically changed management.
Talk to anyone within SGI and you will know that the reason they are no longer called Silicon Graphics is because people were only associating them with graphics. They are much more than a graphics company and therefore went with SGI.
As far as it being worthless to invest you can say the same about SUN and the fragmentation happening within that company. I still don’t understand how a company like sun who hasn’t replaced any of it’s hardware with something new since UltraSparc III can still be held so high. At least SGI has innovated in the past 3 years, despite all the problems they had.
“hah, sgi has strayed from the workstation market where the company was mainly involved in!”
Do you define Onyxes, Origins or even Crimson and the Challengers as workstation? SGI was never ‘mainly’ involved in the workstation market! They were mainly involved in the ‘graphics’ market and with that SGI was involved in both workstations and (later more and more) HPC servers [but i must admit, AFAIK they were never strong at the database front; i don’t see thats their market. I don’t see how SGI markets itself as such. Not even with Altix].
“Hint the name Silicon Graphics, Inc.!”
*Clueless* remark. Perhaps you’d like to read a bit more about _why_ SGI changed their name from Silicon Graphics to SGI? Hint: it has to do with the second letter. They changed their core business away from ‘graphics’ to HPC servers.
“Why trust SGI? Itanium isn’t succeeded as most thought and they are failures at marketing”
Itanium failed for _Intel_. Not necessarily for SGI.
“[…] and never keep a unified business.”
???
“It is worthless to invest in SGI unless if they radically changed management.”
..a Sun investor said ;^)
I suggest you go talk about stuff you know about such as Suns or something. Perhaps you can make you investments in Sun more worth in a more honest by doing so!
> As far as it being worthless to invest you can say the same about SUN and the fragmentation happening within that company.
What fragmentation are you talking about? May be you’re referring to the fact that Sun is no longer than just a hardware company, but has grown to become a full blown systems company. Sun can now offer a real end-to-end architecture from server hardware and first class middleware to desktops and mobile infrastructure. Sun and SGI can not even be compared to each other in this respect — SGI is just a fraction of the company Sun currently is (I guess if SGI innovated by continuing the development of MIPS, they wouldn’ve been in the dump they are in now). I would not hesitate to call Sun the absolute most innovative company in IT industry in general bar none. Sun innovates in all respects starting from hardware and software engineering to licensing and ways of selling services.
…tells you that Sun has no linux strategy. Actually Sun has no strategy period. Its market got up and walked away. Eventually they will go the route of SGI, making big exotic boxes for four or five cusomters a year…praying that very high end customers will be more forgiving than the cruel mass market.
I would not hesitate to call Sun the absolute most innovative company in IT industry in general bar none.
I would have to whole heartly disagree with statement, however I respect your thoughts.
Keep in mind that SUN really doesn’t do much more than any other company out there as far as products and services go. Really the only product line that has kept SUN alive is it’s Java product line. This is one thing that SUN has done quite well, and I wouldn’t argue this. For the most part this has been the technology that has been keeping SUN afloat for as long as it has.
SUN is experiencing the same pains as SGI and a number of other computer manufacturers. They’ve had to layoff thousands of people because the hardware market is saturated and x86 servers have come into the enterprise. Like SGI and a number of others, they’ve had to refocus and add additional services. More power to them but they are far from the be-all-end-all computer company.
“Sun Fire utilizes an eighteen channel cache coherent crossbar architecture which NUMA-based system…”
all ten customers for these systems agree.
Hilarious reading about all your big iron and how cool it is…
Wakey wakey! Yahoo and Google serving farms…miles and miles of cheap 1U boxes are the future. Ask yourself how the coolest tech company in the world can get by without a Sun Starfire, handling billions of queries a day.
> Eventually they will go the route of SGI, making big exotic boxes for four or five cusomters a year…praying that very high end customers will be more forgiving than the cruel mass market.
Yeah, except Sun is still the biggest selling Unix server vendor by a pretty good margin. And Sun also happened to be the fastest growing server manufacturer during the last quarter beating IBM, HP and even Dell in unit shipment increase. If SGI and Itanic strike a note with you, you gonna like this piece of statistic — Sun outships all Itanium based shipments taking place during the entire year in less than two weeks. There is a huge customer base on Sun and it is growing. I don’t see any demise coming for Sun, if anything I see Sun as one of the most promissing companies in the long term.
> They’ve had to layoff thousands of people
So did IBM, Cisco, HP and a countless number of other IT companies after the dotcom boom. Compared with others Sun is a pureplay enterprise/server company, Sun doesn’t hedge its bets with digital cameras and printers and other consumer gear — therefore it was hit the hardest when the server market as the whole shriveled. It didn’t have much to do with Sun or Sun’s products, but with sluggish market the economy as a whole.
The fact this discussion is taking place tells you that Sun has no linux strategy.
No. The fact something is debated doesn’t proof it is true or false. The fact something is heavily debated doesn’t proof it is true or false either.
Examples: Catholic church said earth evolved around the sun till ’98; weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or not?; Linux better than Windows? Or turn that around, Windows better than Windows? I’m sure there are a lot more, better examples to be found in discussions. Its probably what Microsoft’s ‘Get the ”’facts”” aim is.
Anyway, point is, this is a ‘where smoke is, is fire’ fallacy / popularity fallacy.
> Wakey wakey! Yahoo and Google serving farms…miles and miles of cheap 1U boxes are the future. Ask yourself how the coolest tech company in the world can get by without a Sun Starfire, handling billions of queries a day.
YesUCanRead, but I’m not sure if you can think. You’re comparing apples to oranges. Google and Yahoo are running inherently horizontally scalable workloads and web farms are perfect for that. Sun Fire on the other hand is targetted at the vertial scalability and workloads that do scale horizontally, i.e. transactional databases, ERP, etc. Get a freaking clue, nimrod.
Yahoo and Google serving farms…miles and miles of cheap 1U boxes are the future. Ask yourself how the coolest tech company in the world can get by without a Sun Starfire, handling billions of queries a day.
Latency ain’t an issue there and neither is 99.9% uptime for these clusters for the machines are easily and cheap to be replaced. Its a different league, with some overlappings, but those x86 clusters can’t take 100% of the big iron market. This is discussed so many times up on /. Cray and Sun threads and probably also here.
yes, you can go argue all you want. SGI sold all it’s graphics related IP and used to be involved greatly in the workstation and high performance computing market.
Yes, I believe SGI will die for the most part.
SGI will be nothing more than another Cray. They will build supercomputers only rather than what they used to build.
Besides, they are killing off MIPS. oh yes I believe everything I said about SGI
but this article isn’t about SGI.. totally off subject.
Anyway.. I don’t want to argue about SGI as I doubt your the type of person that would even consider to believe anything that I would say.
Besides, I was just expressing my opinion ^_^ well said.
management, mainly neely was stubborn and not quick to change sun to adapt. now since they are changing they will return to fruitfullness..
also, its clear sun does have a strategy
and yes linux is bundled with JDS but they don’t make it. sun still have not figured out that you have to include your linux desktop package with UPDATED packages.. still they concentrate on the technology part which isn’t all that great in my opinion.
From J. Scwartz:
“Also, let me really clear about our Linux strategy. We don’t have one. We don’t at all. We do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period.”
<translation> We have no plans to start our own version of Linux for the desktop nor do we intend to provide services for Linux over than the desktop. We believe the future direction for OUR company is Solaris.</translation>
Regarding JES, obvious you didn’t take the time to read the original quote. They’ll provide middleware for Linux, they’ll sell Linux preloaded on servers, but don’t expect them to provide any SUN services surrounding Linux.
When you buy a Linux equiped server from SUN, all you are getting is just that, if you want the service, you get it from Red Hat.
Oh please. There’s nothing that runs Linux in the high end server space that can compete with Sun Fire servers. Sun Fire utilizes an eighteen channel cache coherent crossbar architecture which NUMA-based systems like Altix can’t compete with in terms of I/O.
That’s not where Sun needs to be to survive I’m afraid.
Well DUH! that is why they’re selling Opteron servers either loaded with Solaris or Linux, and if you want to install Windows 2003 Enterprise, the hardware is 100% WHQL certified.
Pull you head out of your ass and actually read some information before making an idiot of yourself.
SUN’s stratergy is pretty f*cking simple. If you can’t understand it, then obviously you’re in a position of absolutely NO importance in the decision making process.
Wake up sunshine and stop spreading the bullcrap. A while back some idiot made the same remark, and Bascule went into great depth to why the google model doesn’t work for every situation and why StarFire are still chosen over clusters.
Oh, and btw sunshine, Linux’s claim to fame was being a cheap UNIX clone, now that Solaris is effectively going to be free for every tom, dick and harry once open sourced, what are the Linux boosters going to say when businesses say, “hey, why not move to Solaris?”?
kaiwai (IP: —.a.002.cba.iprimus.net.au) – Posted on 2004-11-13 10:03:45
From J. Scwartz:
“Also, let me really clear about our Linux strategy. We don’t have one. We don’t at all. We do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period.”
<translation> We have no plans to start our own version of Linux for the desktop nor do we intend to provide services for Linux over than the desktop. We believe the future direction for OUR company is Solaris.</translation>
It should be:
kaiwai (IP: —.a.002.cba.iprimus.net.au) – Posted on 2004-11-13 10:03:45
From J. Scwartz:
“Also, let me really clear about our Linux strategy. We don’t have one. We don’t at all. We do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period.”
<translation> We have no plans to start our own version of Linux for the SERVER nor do we intend to provide services for Linux over than the SERVER. We believe the future direction for OUR company is Solaris.</translation>
Why so we could stop all the nonsense, childish behavior, and whining over spelling errors and typos?
At the end of day it doesn’t make a god damn bit of difference if you spell Shit with a capital “S” or a small one. Most are bright enough to follow along.
“Yahoo and Google serving farms…miles and miles of cheap 1U boxes are the future.”
Lots of boxes can gives you lots of processing power, true.
but that’s only for the application that is not highly parallel.
Each box in web farms like that doesn’t communicate much to others, so Gigabit ethernet is more than enough.
But in the case of HPC apps, we still need those ‘big irons’.
‘Scale out’ is not the same as ‘scale up’.
Another point is, space (in sq.ft.) rental is also a running cost.
lots of boxes = more space required
lots of boxes = needs more maintenance
…
these factors are critical to some organizations
so big irons have their own future, and will have for long.
Neither.
According to sunw, Linux is for the desktop, Solaris is for servers. Sun doesn’t have a strategy for linux on the *server*.
Of course, sunw’s view that linux is not for servers defies all logic and evidence. Linux is actually much more popular for servers than for desktops.
Take a look at any major benchmark for I/O such as streams and you will not see SUN anywhere near Altix.
STREAMS is a memory bandwidth benchmark not I/O.
I still don’t understand how a company like sun who hasn’t replaced any of it’s hardware with something new since UltraSparc III can still be held so high. At least SGI has innovated in the past 3 years, despite all the problems they had.
Ever heard of the Ultrasparc IV? Solaris 10?
Yeah, SGI who takes Someone elses processor, OS and puts them together is more innovative?????? Please.
That’s true, only Oracle is moving to Linux on the desktop. I seriously doubt they will be planning to move their backend infrastructure to Linux any time soon.
They already have – why do you think they’ve had a relationship with Red Hat, and are certifying to run on Suse? The Linux desktop is the next phase, their back-end servers was the first. Don’t try and say that Oracle are running nothing serious on Linux, because they are. Sun has lost Oracle.
They already have – why do you think they’ve had a relationship with Red Hat, and are certifying to run on Suse? The Linux desktop is the next phase, their back-end servers was the first. Don’t try and say that Oracle are running nothing serious on Linux, because they are. Sun has lost Oracle.
Not true. I know a few people at Oracle and that is simply not true. There is a little linux penetration but nothing wholescale like you say. They have a lot of Sun gear.
More Marketing speak from Oracle and Larry Ellison.
Well DUH! that is why they’re selling Opteron servers either loaded with Solaris or Linux, and if you want to install Windows 2003 Enterprise, the hardware is 100% WHQL certified.
Given that this strategy isn’t focused it isn’t something a customer will go for. They will want Linux or Solaris or Windows. No one wants a mix because it just isn’t necessary.
Pull you head out of your ass and actually read some information before making an idiot of yourself.
Do the same yourself please.
SUN’s stratergy is pretty f*cking simple. If you can’t understand it, then obviously you’re in a position of absolutely NO importance in the decision making process.
Is this the same Sun that had excellent cheap servers in Cobalt and told their customers to buy SPARC instead? Is this the Sun that had a desktop answer years ago in the Network Computer and Java Stations? Whatever did happen to those? What answer do you think Sun will give when a customer asks about why there is Linux and Solaris, and what exactly is the difference? They’ll give an extremely confused response, because the choice is pointless.
Sun and strategy. Now there’s a contradiction in terms.
Not true. I know a few people at Oracle and that is simply not true. There is a little linux penetration but nothing wholescale like you say. They have a lot of Sun gear.
Everything Oracle does in terms of 10g etc. is geared towards Linux. They still support Sun because it’s historical, but all their new development and thinking is Linux first.
More Marketing speak from Oracle and Larry Ellison.
Oh, cover your ears! It’s not true! Marketing in this way is pointless unless you’re actually doing it, as Sun is finding out.
Is this the same Sun that had excellent cheap servers in Cobalt and told their customers to buy SPARC instead?
Oh no. Not this again, Give it up already. Cobalta and server appliances were a dead market and Sun killed the product. Name another server appliance that is still being sold.
Is this the Sun that had a desktop answer years ago in the Network Computer and Java Stations?
Suns slogan was the network is the computer and the Java station was a badly executed and deserved to fail. Just like Microsoft Bob.
What answer do you think Sun will give when a customer asks about why there is Linux and Solaris, and what exactly is the difference?
Solaris. Sun will give Solaris to customers. And sell Apps and servers if the customer wants linux. Look at all the positive reviews of Sun’s opteron solutions for linux on sites like Anandtech and such.
They’ll give an extremely confused response, because the choice is pointless.
Nope. Look above.
Sun and strategy. Now there’s a contradiction in terms.
David and reasoning is more like it.
Everything Oracle does in terms of 10g etc. is geared towards Linux. They still support Sun because it’s historical, but all their new development and thinking is Linux first.
Really? That’s news. How about Larry and Scott on stage renewing comittiment to Sun and Oracle’s business partnership after the enite “Linux unbreakable” campaign.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/oracle1…
Looks like Soalris x86 in sync with Linux on thier download page. And the SPARC version with everything else.
Oh, cover your ears! It’s not true! Marketing in this way is pointless unless you’re actually doing it, as Sun is finding out.
Sun never calimed any thing like it is putting linux on every desktop in Sun. Their message has been clear. Sun is behind Solaris and will support linux for customer needs.
Oh one more thing. Oracle will have a version for anything that makes money. They even support Mac OS X. Linux is all the Buzz and Oracle will support it and claim anything.
If tomorrow Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris becomes the buzz on x86 or SPARC picks up. How much do you want to bet Oracle will change it’s tune. IMO Oracle already has and none of thier marketting recently says anything remotely close to being pro-linux anti Sun.
Raptor,
You sure seem to feel like your job’s on the line. Are you a Sun employeed afraid of losing his job?
Look at yourself foaming at the mouth over how great Sun is. No matter what you say, proprietary hardware is out. And wake me up when Sun’s solaris or Opensolaris has the performance of Linux on 2-4 way systems or the same amount of hardware support.
Get a clue!
Wake up!!!
Oh no. Not this again, Give it up already…. Name another server appliance that is still being sold.
Because it is relevant. Cobalt
If you don’t want to hear it don’t get too far up Sun’s backside. Server applicances currently being sold are x86 servers – cheap, easy to put in and they perform a range of specific jobs and just stay there. Try looking at what servers actually do.
Cobalta and server appliances were a dead market and Sun killed the product.
So they spent two billion dollars on it? Yep, that sounds like Sun.
So cheap low-end servers and a strategy to implement it is not important? Hmmm, that sounds familiar.
Suns slogan was the network is the computer and the Java station was a badly executed and deserved to fail. Just like Microsoft Bob.
It still is their slogan.
So why would a customer feel that that they should trust the JDS or Sun’s new-found strategy any more than now than then?
Please don’t compare it to Microsoft Bob. Sun’s initiatives have been a collector’s scrap book of unmitigated disasters.
Really? That’s news. How about Larry and Scott on stage renewing comittiment to Sun and Oracle’s business partnership after the enite “Linux unbreakable” campaign.
That’s in addition to the Unbreakable Linux strategy, and they’re always going to keep Sun around. However, it is clear that Linux now comes first.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/oracle1…..
Nothing on that page – 404.
Their message has been clear. Sun is behind Solaris and will support linux for customer needs.
Which totally confuses a customer. If Solaris is so great and that’s what Sun is selling, why are they confusing me with Linux? What’s wrong with Solaris? If they are supplying Linux for customer needs then why Solaris? It sounds to me as if Solaris is surplus to requirements, and that’s exactly what they’ll be asked.
Whichever way Sun or anyone else tries to dress this up it is a confused mess, and it will come off that way.
IMO Oracle already has and none of thier marketting recently says anything remotely close to being pro-linux anti Sun.
I’ve never seen an Unbreakable Solaris slogan.
Solaris. Sun will give Solaris to customers. And sell Apps and servers if the customer wants linux. Look at all the positive reviews of Sun’s opteron solutions for linux on sites like Anandtech and such.
Like Sun you have no clue about selling. As a customer how would I know if I wanted Linux or Solaris? If I want Linux I’ll go to a Linux company, and that’s exactly what people are still doing.
You and Sun don’t get it. Solaris is not some incredible brand (sorry Sun), it is something that does a job in the same way as Linux. You and Sun are acting as if providing Solaris or Linux is important to a customer – it isn’t.
Nope. Look above.
Still pointless.
Wake up!!!
Please do.
Because it is relevant. Cobalt
Really? can you come up with one competitor for cobalt. The industry has spoken. get a clue. That was a dead end.
Server applicances currently being sold are x86 servers – cheap, easy to put in and they perform a range of specific jobs and just stay there. Try looking at what servers actually do.
Sun sells cheap x86 servers. Servers are not server appliances, it’s time you did some looking up.
So why would a customer feel that that they should trust the JDS or Sun’s new-found strategy any more than now than then?
They don’t?? Sun’s volumes are the highest in history. They annouced an increase in revenue for two consecutive quarters.
Please don’t compare it to Microsoft Bob. Sun’s initiatives have been a collector’s scrap book of unmitigated disasters.
One failed product!!!! let’s see no other comupter company has ever had a failed product, right?
Let’s see what about Web TV, then?
That’s in addition to the Unbreakable Linux strategy, and they’re always going to keep Sun around. However, it is clear that Linux now comes first.
No, It isn’t. Oracle will change it’s tune the mintue something else comes along. That’s business and marketting.
Which totally confuses a customer.
Why? Confusing to you may be. But from what I have seen that’s not hard.
If Solaris is so great and that’s what Sun is selling, why are they confusing me with Linux?
Because you are not a Sun customer.
What’s wrong with Solaris? If they are supplying Linux for customer needs then why Solaris? It sounds to me as if Solaris is surplus to requirements, and that’s exactly what they’ll be asked.
Nothing is wrong with Solaris. But if some customer or CIO is brainwashed into running linux, Sun might as well sell them hardware and services. Since you are totally oblivious to what business is. Services are a big business, sometimes more than products themselves, Example, IBM global services makes up more than 50% of IBM’s revenue, more than hardware or software.
Infosys, Tata Consulting services, Wipro to name a few. Sun services is a growing business for Sun. It makes sense.
I’ve never seen an Unbreakable Solaris slogan.
The linux unbreakable campaign didn’t work, why would that one????? And Sun does a good job at doing that, Oracle doesn’t need to.DUH.
Like Sun you have no clue about selling. As a customer how would I know if I wanted Linux or Solaris? If I want Linux I’ll go to a Linux company, and that’s exactly what people are still doing.
I don’t think most of Sun’s customers fall in that category. Those customers aren’t your average “Best Buy” customers. Most of them have highly qualified IT staff and CIOs, who know exactly what they want.
You and Sun don’t get it. Solaris is not some incredible brand (sorry Sun), it is something that does a job in the same way as Linux.
Solaris is an incredible brand (sorry David).
You and Sun are acting as if providing Solaris or Linux is important to a customer – it isn’t.
They why would customers want linux and not Soalris? Sun does have a full value proposition, hardware, software, support and services. Sun doesn’t just sell an OS or a box, Or a KERNEL (linux).
Still pointless.
Yup, your arguments that is. You have no understanding of Business or the Computing industry. You are time warped and stuck in 1998-99. Time to wake up.
> Everything Oracle does in terms of 10g etc. is geared towards Linux. They still support Sun because it’s historical, but all their new development and thinking is Linux first.
Oracle is just screaming the loudest about Linux, but it is Solaris that is bringing the bacon for Oracle databases as Solaris is still the premier deployment platform of choice. All the drivel surrounding Oracle 10g scalability preached by Oracle about putting the database on a bunch of commodity el cheapo Linux servers is a bunch of marketing crap, there isn’t much substance behind it. Oracle 10g scalability is quite sub-linear and starts to seriously loose itsproposition when you have more than two nodes in the cluster. Oracle still runs much better on big SMP machines and Sun is still perfect for running Oracle. I had first hand experience with this as not so long ago our DBA’s had a wet dream of replacing the “expensive” Sun servers with a cheap Linux cluster running 10g on commodity Intel machines. Guess what, we just bought a couple of shiny new Sun Fire 6800 servers. 10g just wouldn’t scale as we expected on the Linux cluster even though we threw the most expensive interconnect we could afford at the problem. Bottom line of all this is Oracle 10g doesn’t scale well on Linux, whatever Oracle salespeople try to tell you. 10g could be a pretty good Oracle HA solution, but certainly not a way to scale. So yeah, Sun is still *the* way to go for your Oracle database.
Sun sells cheap x86 servers. Servers are not server appliances, it’s time you did some looking up.
It’s time you separated marketing speak from what something actually does and called a duck a duck.
They don’t?? Sun’s volumes are the highest in history. They annouced an increase in revenue for two consecutive quarters.
Are they? The economic reality is that Sun is trying (we’ll have to see though) on low margin server volumes to compete with Red Hat, Dell and others. They can’t maintain the margins they’ve been doing with over expensive hardware and other needless add-ons. That means that overall revenue will continue to fall, despite any increase in server volumes or server revenues. It’s the overall health of the company and it’s margins, not what its server revenues are.
To compete like this Sun will have to accept that their annual revenue will be slashed to less than a quarter of what it is now – maybe more. Whether Sun are intelligent enough to realise this (or even accept it) is another matter, but if they pretend to cosy up to the low-end and discard it like they did with Cobalt the end is nigh. Sun says it’s about volumes, but they are not a volume company.
One failed product!!!! let’s see no other comupter company has ever had a failed product, right?
One failed product?! You obviously lose on this, so no further discussion is necessary. Sun’s decisions in their core business have been a catalogue of failures.
Because you are not a Sun customer.
Ridculously bizarre answer. Sun aren’t going to have very many, are they? Telling people they’re not you’re customers almost always results in bankruptcy.
No, It isn’t. Oracle will change it’s tune the mintue something else comes along. That’s business and marketting.
That’s the reality of what they’re doing I’m afraid, marketing or not. Besides, this comment you’ve made is an admission I’m right about Oracle moving to Linux
.
Nothing is wrong with Solaris. But if some customer or CIO is brainwashed into running linux, Sun might as well sell them hardware and services. Since you are totally oblivious to what business is. Services are a big business, sometimes more than products themselves, Example, IBM global services makes up more than 50% of IBM’s revenue, more than hardware or software.
Blah, blah, blah. Again less of the marketing speak. Business is about having a cast-iron, clear idea and message of what you’re selling – you’ll find it in all good management books. You don’t sell two totally conflicting ways of doing things without a bloody good idea of what the difference is.
The linux unbreakable campaign didn’t work, why would that one????? And Sun does a good job at doing that, Oracle doesn’t need to.DUH.
Considering the amount of Dell/Red Hat/Oracle amounts shifting, that’s pretty disconnected. Sun does a good job at marketing? Pull the other one.
I don’t think most of Sun’s customers fall in that category.
Pigeon-holing customers is a dangerous thing to be doing in any business.
Those customers aren’t your average “Best Buy” customers. Most of them have highly qualified IT staff and CIOs, who know exactly what they want.
That used to be the case – it isn’t now. Many people just want something on an ad hoc basis that does something. The reason why Sun has found it difficult is they’ve found the lucrative high-end has simply merged with the medium and low-end business sectors. Continue to think like that and its bankruptcy.
Besides, considering all those using Linux, if they want it they’ll go to a Linux company. Sun just don’t have that reputation, and they won’t if they don’t work out what they’re selling.
Solaris is an incredible brand (sorry David).
Marketing speak again. Fatal mistake, and I now know you’re thinking wishfully inside a Sun bunker somewhere. People want servers and solutions to do something. Considering how Linux has been largely responsible for taking away a large chunk of Sun’s revenue, that brand means absolutely nothing. You just keep on making that mistake.
They why would customers want linux and not Soalris? Sun does have a full value proposition, hardware, software, support and services. Sun doesn’t just sell an OS or a box, Or a KERNEL (linux).
Blah, blah, blah, blah, value proposition. Linux companies sell more than a kernel, which is why Sun has had so much trouble. That statement alone is pretty daft.
Yup, your arguments that is. You have no understanding of Business or the Computing industry.
I don’t know what you’ve been convincing yourself of, but the brainwashing must have had a pretty good effect.
You are time warped and stuck in 1998-99. Time to wake up.
How is 1998 and 1999 any different to now – other than the fact that Sun still want to be there? I think you might want to tell Sun and yourself to wake up, because they are definitely not an eighteen billion dollar revenue company.
You’re obviously a very worried character, and I find that hilarious as well as telling.
Of course, sunw’s view that linux is not for servers defies all logic and evidence. Linux is actually much more popular for servers than for desktops.
Interesting how you completely ignore Linus’s comments on Linux for the desktop and why Linux’s adoption on the server is growing faster than on the desktop.
Here is a quick hint sunshine, servers have fixed requirements, desktops don’t. Desktops are harder to perfect are the variables are so different from environment to environment.
No matter what you say, proprietary hardware is out.
A minor nit, but SPARC is not proprietary, it’s based upon an open standard, and governed by an standards body that includes a number of industry participants. x86 is actually proprietary, since nobody but Intel gets to decide what the instruction set is. (All other x86 vendors get to try to provide compatible implementations after the fact.)
And, as a preemptive answer to those who will inevitably argue that x86 is a de-facto standard: shut up. A de-facto standard is a contradiction.
Cobalt and server appliances were a dead market and Sun killed the product. Name another server appliance that is still being sold.
Network Appliance sells lots of server appliance boxes. I’m surprised this wasn’t the first name to be thrown out in the disucssion. A number of their NFS and storage solutions compete with Sun hardware and software.
Irrespective, David, you sound like a scorned child. Sun discontinued Cobalt because they decided they weren’t making enough money to justify selling the product. Yet you complain that Sun has no business sense. It would be more rediculous for them to continue selling Cobalt boxes just because you wanted to buy one. Grow up.
Are they? The economic reality is that Sun is trying (we’ll have to see though) on low margin server volumes to compete with Red Hat, Dell and others. They can’t maintain the margins they’ve been doing with over expensive hardware and other needless add-ons. That means that overall revenue will continue to fall, despite any increase in server volumes or server revenues. It’s the overall health of the company and it’s margins, not what its server revenues are.
So you’ve only gotten about one-third of the message that was presented in that article. Volumes really do matter when you’re selling a product at a low margin. However, just because Sun is selling their x86 servers at a low-margin, doesn’t mean they can’t re-coup their losses elsewhere. Think about it: does a wireless carrier sell you a handset at cost? No, they’re willing to take a loss on the handset so that they can get you by charging you for all of the silly services you use. (Not the silly services you personally use…) It’s the same thing with Gillette. They don’t make money selling razors, it’s all the follow-up razor blades you have to buy once you’ve got the razor.
Sun is in a unique position to offer volume discounts to customers because they have products that stretch from end to end. Microsoft can’t give you a discount on hardware if you buy software from them, because they don’t make any hardware that they can sell. The converse is true for Dell, they’re beholden to Microsoft’s OEM policies with respect to software, and can’t offer you much of a discount when you buy their hardware. Sun, on the other hand, can make you a deal on hardware, software, middleware, or service/support based upon what’s best for the customer.
Solaris … is something that does a job in the same way as Linux. You and Sun are acting as if providing Solaris or Linux is important to a customer – it isn’t.
This is a laughable statement. Customers do care about an operating system, and are concerned about whether or not they’re purchasing Solaris or Linux. Sun’s original impoetus for offering Linux was that there were customers who really wanted to buy Sun hardware but didn’t want to run Solaris on it. Fair enough.
As far as Solaris the product is concerned, your statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Solaris has many more features than Linux that provide real value to customers. You may believe that the operating system is commoditized, and if so, then you ought to realize that the differentiator between otherwise identical commodities would be features. If Solaris costs less that RHEL and provides more features that allow you to purchase less harware to achieve the same result, I would argue that it is different from Linux, and offers customers something tangibile.
But it’s okay. I realize that until Sun makes another Cobalt box and puts Solaris on it, you’ll continue to be a naysayer.
ut if they pretend to cosy up to the low-end and discard it like they did with Cobalt the end is nigh. Sun says it’s about volumes, but they are not a volume company.
See above about volume. I assure you that they are. As far as Cobalt goes, I’ll let you borrow my handkerchief.
Ugh. Sorry for the formatting error. That last comment should read:
but if they pretend to cosy up to the low-end and discard it like they did with Cobalt the end is nigh. Sun says it’s about volumes, but they are not a volume company.
See above about volume. I assure you that they are. As far as Cobalt goes, I’ll let you borrow my handkerchief.
“Well DUH! that is why they’re selling Opteron servers either loaded with Solaris or Linux, and if you want to install Windows 2003 Enterprise, the hardware is 100% WHQL certified.”
Given that this strategy isn’t focused it isn’t something a customer will go for. They will want Linux or Solaris or Windows. No one wants a mix because it just isn’t necessary.
Stop missing the point and replying to a post simply to say, “look, I replied”. They sell x86 servers, you have three operating systems you can choose from, thats no bloody different than IBM, HP or Dell.
FACT: SUN Sell 64bit x86 server at rock bottom commodity prices.
FACT: You have three choices for operating systems
FACT: JES can run on all three
SUN’s stratergy is pretty f*cking simple. If you can’t understand it, then obviously you’re in a position of absolutely NO importance in the decision making process.
Is this the same Sun that had excellent cheap servers in Cobalt and told their customers to buy SPARC instead? Is this the Sun that had a desktop answer years ago in the Network Computer and Java Stations? Whatever did happen to those? What answer do you think Sun will give when a customer asks about why there is Linux and Solaris, and what exactly is the difference? They’ll give an extremely confused response, because the choice is pointless.
FACT: Cobalts business was sliding down before SUN bought it. Cobalt was a product of the don-con boom, thats it. A fad in the market of many other fads.
FACT: They did no such thing telling peope they should stop buying cobalt in favour of SPARC servers.
FACT: The Java station is has been superceeded by the SUN Ray; they still have the same stratergy on the thin client front.
FACT: Solaris scales better than Windows and Linux.
FACT: Until you’ve actually USED Solaris, you’ll never know why people use it over the competition.
FACT: SUNs stratergy has been constant for the last 15 years. The only change is that they’re now offering x86 desktops and servers once again, like they did back in the early 1990s.
It’s time you separated marketing speak from what something actually does and called a duck a duck.
Why don’t you do the same? That’s all I have to say to you. Others have responded to you aptly. Most of your drivel is meaningless blathering on things of the past.
Like server appliances, a useless trend that died a well deserved death with the internet boom.
Linux companies don’t sell hardware, Systems companies do. And almost any major enterprise system company has a varied portfolio of products and services. Intel with cheap hardware was more instrumental in Sun’s marketshare in the low end. IBM in the highend. Not linux alone. Linux wouldn’t be anything in the industry without cheap hardware from intel.
Which totally confuses a customer. If Solaris is so great and that’s what Sun is selling, why are they confusing me with Linux? What’s wrong with Solaris? If they are supplying Linux for customer needs then why Solaris? It sounds to me as if Solaris is surplus to requirements, and that’s exactly what they’ll be asked.
Ok, I’ll bite; here is a translation for what IBM is doing.
“Which totally confuses a customer. If AIX is so great and that’s what IBM is selling, why are they confusing me with Linux? What’s wrong with AIX? If they are supplying Linux for customer needs then why AIX? It sounds to me as if AIX is surplus to requirements, and that’s exactly what they’ll be asked.”
Sounds familar? if IBM is so confident about AIX, why offer it on the POWER platform? if their mainframe environment is so great, why offer Linux?
What ever you apply to that can be spun right back to SUN.
Check and mate.
Have a nice day.
Network Appliance sells lots of server appliance boxes.
No they sell storage appliances. Not something like cobalt did. Just a nit.
>> Network Appliance sells lots of server appliance boxes.
> No they sell storage appliances. Not something like cobalt did. Just a nit.
*shrug* I never said that NetApp sells appliances that are functionally equivalent to those of Cobalt. Rather, my point was that they’re still in the appliance business, and have figured out how to compete effectively against Sun and other storage and systems vendors.
If a server appliance is different from a storage appliance, then yes, I’m entirely wrong. However, a number of their offerings are effectively file-servers on steroids. So, it really boils down to the question: Is a file server appliance a server appliance or a storage appliance? I figured calling it a server appliance was a more general term, since one of the things people tend to do with servers is attach a lot of storage to them. But if you’re one of those people who attaches servers to your storage, then I understand our confusion.
Seriously, though, I wasn’t trying to pick on you with that comment. It was aimed entirely at the reasoning capabilities of your sparring partner.
I really don’t understand why Linux zealots are so against Sun. What have they done to you? Stick a gun to your head to buy Sun servers? Or force you to use Java?
I work in a government data center,and there are more Sun boxes that Linux. For the real mission critical applications, they can only trust Sun.
If linux zealots hate Sun so much, please don’t use their products, simple as that. Don’t use Java, OpenOffice, Netbeans..etc..
Seriously, though, I wasn’t trying to pick on you with that comment. It was aimed entirely at the reasoning capabilities of your sparring partner.
Neither was I. I just didn’t want my sparring partner to use that against me
I thought netapp competed more with EMC, just like Sun does.
I thought netapp competed more with EMC, just like Sun does.
Yes, my experience is that most Sun people have far more animosity for EMC than for NetApp. Part of that may be because Sun partners with McData, who has been collaborating with NetApp. I’m just guessing at this point, though.
Sun’s revenue is already on the rebound and unit shipments are up, which means
Sun’s server shipments and revenue has stabilised – it’s overall stability has not. Given that Sun have slashed jobs and costs and have just about broken-even, there is extremely good reason to believe that they won’t be able to continue to sell cheaply and maintain the revenues they think they’re entitle to. The longevity of this strategy is in question.
That’s the material point I’m afraid. Sun think they’re going to do the cheap commodity x86 thing until they’ve weathered the storm, and then go back to doing what they’ve done in the past. That storm will last a very, very, very long time.
Sun discontinued Cobalt because they decided they weren’t making enough money to justify selling the product.
Because they killed it themselves through getting worried about it encroaching on their very expensive SPARC/Solaris server business, and funnily enough many people then found that they didn’t need to buy those very expensive Sun servers. Hence the current circumstances.
Yet you complain that Sun has no business sense. It would be more rediculous for them to continue selling Cobalt boxes just because you wanted to buy one. Grow up.
I’m not sore over Coablt – you think what you like. It is simply an object example of Sun’s incompetence. It should be pointed out that they spent two billion dollars on Cobalt, and people somehow assume you can paint over that kind of idiocy.
Think about it: does a wireless carrier sell you a handset at cost? No, they’re willing to take a loss on the handset so that they can get you by charging you for all of the silly services you use.
I hear a lot about this stupid services crap, and it depends on how you judge the market. Some can get away with this, in others they can’t.
It depends if the customer thinks they’re getting anything for that service. Sun’s services are going to have to be ridiculously expensive for them to make any money (which they already are, incidentally). People will simply realise that if they can pay a certain amount for a cheap server, and pay a certain amount for the services it works out better. You can get away with this to a certain extent, but you need to strike a balance.
Servers and enterprise IT systems are nat Fast Moving Consumer Bloody Goods (FMCGs for anyone with any sense around here), and with Linux they are becoming even less so.
(Not the silly services you personally use…)
The hurt on this topic is self-evident.
It’s the same thing with Gillette. They don’t make money selling razors, it’s all the follow-up razor blades you have to buy once you’ve got the razor.
Those are commodity items that you use on a daily and weekly basis. Servers aren’t, and they’re becoming even less so.
You’re trying to tell me you know something about this subject, and you’re comparing daily throwaway items like razors?
This is a laughable statement. Customers do care about an operating system, and are concerned about whether or not they’re purchasing Solaris or Linux.
No, they’re not and that’s the huge mistake. The market has changed radically as Sun’s revenues have fallen, as what was high-end computing is now not. Considering that people now buy servers to simply get things done the OS doesn’t matter at all to them. The choice of Linux or Solaris matters even less. A more accurate comparison would be TVs. You probably replace that as often as you do a server, maybe even longer. Do you really care what brand of software it runs internally as long as it works out at a reasonable price overall?
I can see people trying to defend this strategy, but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Solaris has many more features than Linux that provide real value to customers.
Not based on market conditions and what people are actually using their servers for.
See above about volume. I assure you that they are. As far as Cobalt goes, I’ll let you borrow my handkerchief.
Oooh, bold. Did I start that trend?
Unfortunately, direct parallels can be drawn between Sun’s current strategy with x86 etc. and what they thought they might have done with Cobalt. Once they felt that it threatened them, they gagged. The “Oh you’re sore over Cobalt” line doesn’t wash.
Stop missing the point and replying to a post simply to say, “look, I replied”. They sell x86 servers, you have three operating systems you can choose from, thats no bloody different than IBM, HP or Dell.
FACT: SUN Sell 64bit x86 server at rock bottom commodity prices.
FACT: You have three choices for operating systems
FACT: JES can run on all three
Since a customer may want to run database severs, applications servers and various other things that all sit on top of any of the operating systems you may choose, what does the choice of an OS bloody well mean to them? If it’s well supported by a wide range of companies, and it works out cost-effectively that’s all that really matters but it’s not something you see directly. If it’s Solaris, give them Solaris.
FACT: Cobalts business was sliding down before SUN bought it. Cobalt was a product of the don-con boom, thats it. A fad in the market of many other fads.
To the tune of two billion dollars.
Is Sun’s x86 strategy another fad? I can see that this flies way over peoples’ heads for reasons I can’t fathom. Maybe you don’t want to see it.
FACT: They did no such thing telling peope they should stop buying cobalt in favour of SPARC servers.
That’s not what I said, but nice try
. I said that Sun felt that Cobalt threatened Sun’s SPARC business as people bought cheaper servers where once they woul have bought SPARCS, As it turned out, that trend happened without them.
FACT: The Java station is has been superceeded by the SUN Ray; they still have the same stratergy on the thin client front.
And yet Sun had no clue as to what would be required to create a client good enough, and they’re still trying to work out how on Earth to create an integrated Java-based client in all but name. They should ask Microsoft, seriously.
Stratergy is spelled strategy, since people like nit-picking about things that aren’t relevant.
FACT: Until you’ve actually USED Solaris, you’ll never know why people use it over the competition.
From Sun’s steadily falling revenue I’d say people aren’t using it over the competition. Just an observation.
FACT: SUNs stratergy has been constant for the last 15 years. The only change is that they’re now offering x86 desktops and servers once again, like they did back in the early 1990s.
So some people like to think.
Linux wouldn’t be anything in the industry without cheap hardware from intel.
To make that work you need a cheap, commodity OS environment to make that work. Linux filled that gap in a way Sun was scared about, and which they didn’t want Solaris to become. The hardware was already there, with or without Linux.
Sounds familar? if IBM is so confident about AIX, why offer it on the POWER platform? if their mainframe environment is so great, why offer Linux?
Doesn’t make any sense. Linux runs on Power as well.
There’s a clear distinction, and that’s what has helped IBM to make this work. Linux is offered at the lower-end generally, and they keep AIX for their bigger Power type implementations because they feel it works better for some of the things they want to offer. It’s been quite a clear strategy, there’s been some overlap, but it’s been pretty successful. The obviously haven’t been paranoid about Linux replacing AIX in most of what they offer. That doesn’t apply to Sun and Solaris.
However, unlike Sun they don’t give you a choice of AIX or Linux and it is never a large part of the sales push. They have whole solutions that use Linux only, and some marginal solutions that only use AIX, and AIX is becoming even more marginalised. Some people in IBM have seemed to be uncomfortable about that, but they’re not paranoid about it like Sun is with Solaris. If AIX goes, well, tough.
What ever you apply to that can be spun right back to SUN.
No it can’t. If IBM’s strategy is so much the same as Sun’s, how come IBM have been making so much money at the expense of Sun?
Check and mate.
That about sums it up.
Neither was I. I just didn’t want my sparring partner to use that against me
Sparring partner? Hardly the words I would choose.
Anyway, the fact that either of you two think that this is in any way relevant to what I’ve written and is on-topic is pretty telling.
However, it displays perfectly the inability of Sun and those around them to focus on what has hanged, and what is actualy required.
David, you sound like a broken record player. You made your points, they refuted them, and you kept going “yeah… but” over and over again without adding anything new. I seriously suggest that you look for God in someother place than an operating system. I am tempted to make a comment on some of your arguments, but it’s pretty clear that you are clueless, so I will just save my time and go elsewhere.
Anyway, the fact that either of you two think that this is in any way relevant to what I’ve written and is on-topic is pretty telling.
Yes it is. It tells us that you are pretty much just a sparring partner not a real rival in terms of skill. So it is ok for me to battle you in the ring of OSNews but in the real world you are no threat.
However, it displays perfectly the inability of Sun and those around them to focus on what has hanged, and what is actualy required.
In case you haven’t noticed, many people other than me have disagreed with you and called you a “broken record” and a “child”. That is what you sound like. So much so that I didn’t even bother to read all of the other drivel you said in respnse to MJ and Kaiwai past the first sentence.
Since you can’t win an argument, you have in the past gotten down to the level of correcting spelling and grammer. Now you want people to put subjects in when you yourself don’t. Pretty immature.
No, they’re not and that’s the huge mistake. The market has changed radically as Sun’s revenues have fallen, as what was high-end computing is now not. Considering that people now buy servers to simply get things done the OS doesn’t matter at all to them. The choice of Linux or Solaris matters even less. A more accurate comparison would be TVs. You probably replace that as often as you do a server, maybe even longer. Do you really care what brand of software it runs internally as long as it works out at a reasonable price overall?
I really want to know what Koolaid you are drinking. Really a TV is like a server????
How many apps can I buy for my TV? Can my TV do more than just display a picture fed to it. NO. A single use appliance is not a computer system.
A smartphone would be a better example and yes people do care what OS runs on thier smartphones. Symbian or Pocket PC or embedded linux or blackberry.
Is Sun’s x86 strategy another fad?
No.
Servers and enterprise IT systems are nat Fast Moving Consumer Bloody Goods (FMCGs for anyone with any sense around here), and with Linux they are becoming even less so.
Hunh. Your koolaid is running out. You said a server was like a TV and now it is not (not is no spelled nat) a FMCG.
Those are commodity items that you use on a daily and weekly basis. Servers aren’t, and they’re becoming even less so.
So people don’t use their servers daily???? Ok. makes sense in you world I guess.
You’re trying to tell me you know something about this subject, and you’re comparing daily throwaway items like razors?
Yes cheap x86 servers are throwaway items, today. The Software and services is where the market is, more so with linux. RedHat doesn’t charge you $179-$18000 for a cpu becuase you bought a x86 server. The charge you that for the services. May be you should really look at what linux companies actually charge.
Your understanding of how the industry works is very naive, to say the least. No one in thier right mind just downloads a version of debian and runs a Billion dollar business, not if they value their job.
David, you sound like a broken record player. You made your points, they refuted them, and you kept going “yeah… but”
They made their points, they got trashed.
It tells us that you are pretty much just a sparring partner not a real rival in terms of skill. So it is ok for me to battle you in the ring of OSNews but in the real world you are no threat.
Blah, blah, blah.
In case you haven’t noticed, many people other than me have disagreed with you and called you a “broken record” and a “child”.
Because you’ve been taken to pieces – that’s why people are screaming and stamping their feet. Unfortunately, no one has any clue how to respond. You be again below.
So much so that I didn’t even bother to read all of the other drivel you said in respnse to MJ and Kaiwai past the first sentence.
Because you can’t – however, I suggest you do. I’ve taken everyone’s points one by one and put them through the ringer, hence the broken record/child comments.
Hopefully, it may actually do Sun and the people who defend them some good, but I’m not holding my breath.
I really want to know what Koolaid you are drinking. Really a TV is like a server????
Razors are like servers?! You’re doing this deliberately, aren’t you? TVs are just an everyday item that are comparable to servers in two ways – comparable price, how painful it is in terms of upheaval and price to throw them away every so often for individuals and businesses and more importantly the turn-around. People tend to replace them every few years or more, but they’re not terribly dynamic. Not a great direct comparison it has to be said, but bloody razors?
How many apps can I buy for my TV? Can my TV do more than just display a picture fed to it. NO. A single use appliance is not a computer system.
No you idiot – it was a comparison of the type of markets and the relative turnarounds in terms of buying. It wasn’t a like-for-like comparison in terms of features of each. The above therefore is meaningless, but then again, it is an indication of how infrastructure like people have started to view servers, hence the, NO, in capital letters
.
A smartphone would be a better example and yes people do care what OS runs on thier smartphones. Symbian or Pocket PC or embedded linux or blackberry.
When was the last time anyone went into a mobile phone shop and asked what damn OS the phone they were going to buy ran? Absolutely no one, that’s who. Do you see “Runs Symbian…” or “Runs Linux…” or “Runs Windows…” anywhere on a mobile phone brochure? Nope. It’s all about what the system does and relative price and the same goes for servers these days.
That’s a stunning statement devoid of any real-world knowledge, and you’ve dug a deep hole for yourself there.
No.
Since Sun were wanting to do the same thing with Cobalt, and that was called a fad from the dot com boom, and Java Stations and NCs failed and that was a fad – what’s different this time? How can potential Sun customers tell the difference?
Hunh. Your koolaid is running out. You said a server was like a TV and now it is not
Look up the definition please. TVs and now servers are viewed as commodity items because they are common-place, but they are not replaced on a daily, monthly or even yearly basis – but they’re fairly easy to replace. A razor is an FMCG on the other hand because they are replaced on a regular basis measured in days or weeks at most. Your comparison is simply bizarre.
not (not is no spelled nat) a FMCG.
I corrected your spelling as you spelled strategy wrong several times, since we were nit-picking. Anyway, I think you mean not is not spelled nat
.
So people don’t use their servers daily???? Ok. makes sense in you world I guess.
No, people do not directly use their servers everyday, they’re not played with and you don’t have half a dozen Sun technicians fiddling about with them in the background all the time. They are simply there as part of the infrastructure and you pay to have them supported, like most other pieces of business infrastructure. Since you were talking about razors(?!), the nature of these and the turnover of them is obviously totally different.
Hint: you can’t just pick bits out of what people have been saying and ask silly questions like “Which is it?”, “You said this and it isn’t” and so on and so forth in order to score points. You have to do some reading and some thinking and know what you’re talking about. Since you can’t read past the first sentence by your own admission, then don’t bother replying.
Yes cheap x86 servers are throwaway items, today.
They’re cheap as many people have realised they simply don’t need hugely expensive hardware most of the time, but they are by no means throwaway items. Sun has gone way too far in the other direction here, bizarrely, that’s if it’s not a fad. Either way, they’re going to have trouble.
RedHat doesn’t charge you $179-$18000 for a cpu becuase you bought a x86 server. The charge you that for the services.
Yer, and?
May be you should really look at what linux companies actually charge.
I do know what they charge, and I know what Sun charges. However, if you’d done any reading above my point is that if Sun want to give away their servers and charge for services then they’re going to have to charge an absolutely ridiculous amount for them, which they do anyway in many ways. They’re going to have to charge so much to maintain, stabilise and increase their current multi-billion dollar revenues that it just isn’t going to be sustainable. It’s a milestone around their necks.
There’s a heck of a lot of stuff that Sun sell separately like documentation, development tools and even add-on encryption packs. A company like Red Hat simply throws it in as a whole distribution and supports it. Sun’s per employee pricing for the Java Enterprise System is also rather silly. It’s what amounts to a client access license, and they propose to charge this instead of services and support which they think make companies like Red Hat expensive and proprietary. How they think that is going to be less expensive, God only knows.
Since Red Hat and others are smaller companies with no large revenues to protect, the only way is up. That’s the problem Sun have to face.
Your understanding of how the industry works is very naive, to say the least. No one in thier right mind just downloads a version of debian and runs a Billion dollar business, not if they value their job.
At no point did I say that people were going to download a copy of Debian and run their enterprise on it – is that what you think Linux means? That’s probably what Sun thinks, and they’re going to pay an even heavier price for it.
However, people’s attitudes towards the expensive IT and enterprise systems they have bought in the past has quite clearly changed and Sun really need to change their entire business and historical way of thinking if they are to get it. Given the historical examples I have given of past Sun initiatives and strategies (see the relevance?), the future does not look as if it will be any different. Sad, but true.
“A company like Red Hat simply throws it in as a whole distribution and supports it.”
so you think building a enterprise quality distro like redhat el is easy. let me see
http://new.linuxjournal.com/node/7288
doesnt that look a serious effort?
Because they killed it themselves through getting worried about it encroaching on their very expensive SPARC/Solaris server business, and funnily enough many people then found that they didn’t need to buy those very expensive Sun servers. Hence the current circumstances.
Hence the current circumstances? What’s your point? Sun is selling x86 and x86-64 servers to their customers because they want to make money and the market demands it. I don’t understand how this boils down to some overblown Anti-Cobalt pro SPARC conspiracy theory. If what you say is true, why then is Sun bending over backwards to sell x86 boxes, when you claim they’re worried about encroachment on their SPARC line? This just doesn’t make any sense. Are you going to argue that IBM is also holding latent malevolent tendancies towards their x86 offerings since they also have the potential to cannabilize their POWER processors?
I’m not sore over Coablt
You sure act like it.
Considering that people now buy servers to simply get things done the OS doesn’t matter at all to them.
So people in the good ‘ole days bought computers just so they could put an Operating System on it? Give me a break. Even before there were operating systems people were purchasing computers so they could get things done.
The choice of Linux or Solaris matters even less. A more accurate comparison would be TVs. You probably replace that as often as you do a server, maybe even longer.
This is an entirely half-baked argument. Your statement is that all customers care about is price, and nothing else matters? I’m afraid that simply isn’t true. IT is much more complicated, and I don’t understand your argument. Are you suggesting that everyone should put Java on all their servers so that it really doesn’t matter what operating system you run, and can then run your applications everywhere?
Further, your example is naive in that you fail to account for all of the complexity surrounding a server and its interoperation with a customer’s applications. You do care about what that TV of yours runs if you need to hook it up to a DVR that needs special video interconnects, and understands a particular video protocol. (This example is contrived, as all TVs use a industry standard video protocol and connectors).
Your claim that servers are now completely commoditized doesn’t mesh with reality. IT is certainly more commoditized than it was 3 years ago, but complexity still persists. Customers still have huge pains to migrate from one OS to another, or one hardware platform to another. How does this imply that their operation is anywhere near being commoditized, where they could simply swap one componenet for another?
Do you really care what brand of software it runs internally as long as it works out at a reasonable price overall?
> Solaris has many more features than Linux that provide real value to customers.
Not based on market conditions and what people are actually using their servers for.
You have either contradicted yourself, or failed to educate yourself about the differences in features between Solaris and Linux. I previously stated, “If Solaris costs less that RHEL and provides more features that allow you to purchase less harware to achieve the same result, I would argue that it is different…” Yet, you’ve ignored this completely. If customers care about price and features, and they can make less hardware do more work for less money, doesn’t this imply that Solaris is indeed in a favorable market position compared to Linux? You can’t assert that price/performance a customer’s most important concern, and then claim that Linux beats Solaris without contradicting yourself.
there’s a difference when a company sends money to an open source group as a tax write off and a company whom employs open source programmers.
there’s a difference when a company sends money to an open source group as a tax write off and a company whom employs open source programmers.
Sure, but understand that there are also legitimate reasons for funding external Open Source projects, rather than having your own developers work on them. Consider NFSv4: Sun has worked extensively to develop the spec via the RFC process. They developed an implementation for Solaris in-house, and funded a number of universities so that they could build an Open-Source Linux NFSv4 implementation. Given the paranoia surrounding intellectual property concerns lately, it’s actually better in this case. That way, Open-Source developers get to build something that is legitimately their own, from the ground up. It has no IP infringement issues, since it’s a clean-room implementation of a system built to an open specification. Everybody wins in this situation. I guess I don’t see how this is bad.
Because you can’t – however, I suggest you do. I’ve taken everyone’s points one by one and put them through the ringer, hence the broken record/child comments.
Hopefully, it may actually do Sun and the people who defend them some good, but I’m not holding my breath.
That is some strong koolaid. Talk about disillusioned. You put what through the ringer? Everyone including me has desmolished your every coment.
You don’t even know who your responding to. You didn’t correct my spelling. First learn to read before you give others advice to.
Case in point:
David, you sound like a broken record player. You made your points, they refuted them, and you kept going “yeah… but”
They made their points, they got trashed.
I did not post that yet you titled your response to me. You really need to stop what ever your smoking gather your thoughts, learn to read and be coherent.
Such lack of cognitive control clearly proves my point that nothing you have said amounts to anything more than drivel and blathering.
Razors are like servers?!
Did I say that? No. read my response above. Get it.
Yer, and?
Can’t read? Can’t understand? or are you just dumb founded at the price?
No, people do not directly use their servers everyday, they’re not played with and you don’t have half a dozen Sun technicians fiddling about with them in the background all the time. They are simply there as part of the infrastructure and you pay to have them supported, like most other pieces of business infrastructure. Since you were talking about razors(?!), the nature of these and the turnover of them is obviously totally different.
First, learn to read. I didn’t give the razor example.
A razor has a use, to cut hair. A razor not cutting hair is not in use.
A server has a use, to run applications. A server is used if it is running applications and not if it is powered off or can not run applications and can’t be accessed localy or remotely (downtime).
Now that is the definition of used in the context of those to products. Your definition of use is wrong and absolutely absurd.
A analogy of your reasoning would be a razor is being used if gillette technicians adjust the blade alignment to offer me the best shave. Absurd? Thought so.
Hint: you can’t just pick bits out of what people have been saying and ask silly questions like “Which is it?”, “You said this and it isn’t” and so on and so forth in order to score points. You have to do some reading and some thinking and know what you’re talking about. Since you can’t read past the first sentence by your own admission, then don’t bother replying.
Hint: take your own hint, read it many many times and apply it to yourself.
I got past your ridiculuous reasoning to give you the benefit of the doubt and read the posts and replied. If you think your own post isn’t worth reading, I will gladly oblige and not read them. Then don’t bother posting drivel.
They’re cheap as many people have realised they simply don’t need hugely expensive hardware most of the time, but they are by no means throwaway items. Sun has gone way too far in the other direction here, bizarrely, that’s if it’s not a fad. Either way, they’re going to have trouble.
Google and many enterprises treat thier x86 blades as throwaway items. If one fails throw it out and replace it with another one. That is reality.
A company like Red Hat simply throws it in as a whole distribution and supports it. Sun’s per employee pricing for the Java Enterprise System is also rather silly. It’s what amounts to a client access license, and they propose to charge this instead of services and support which they think make companies like Red Hat expensive and proprietary. How they think that is going to be less expensive, God only knows.
Now I am certain your cognitive abilities are retarded. A Client access license is a price per access to a service by a client. Sun’s JES pricing is a fixed price number of employees * x amount unlimited accesses by clients. Huge difference not even the same neighbourhood, not even the same planet.
Given the historical examples I have given of past Sun initiatives and strategies (see the relevance?), the future does not look as if it will be any different. Sad, but true.
I think almost everyone agrees that Sun has changed and learned from the past, expect you and a few diehard linux zealots. So the sad part in this equation is you.
Look up the definition please. TVs and now servers are viewed as commodity items because they are common-place, but they are not replaced on a daily, monthly or even yearly basis – but they’re fairly easy to replace. A razor is an FMCG on the other hand because they are replaced on a regular basis measured in days or weeks at most. Your comparison is simply bizarre.
First MJ gave the razor analogy, a good one at that, about the services bussiness. With your constant ranting and bikering about comparisons this and comparisons that all you have shown is that your don’t understand what the word analogy means ( and you go correcting spellings, go figure).
MJ’s point was like Gillette doesn’t sell you the razor but makes money of the blade cartridges. The service industry works by giving an item at a low price and charging for services. Example, Redhat gives the OS free but charges a per cpu price for services such as updates, support and proprietary Redhat Apps like clustering so on and so forth.
I suggest you learn to read, start by picking up a dictionary turn to the word analogy (Hint: is it is under the Letter “A” at the begining of the book, A is the first alphabet in the english language, the definition of Alphabet is also under A).
Once you have learned to read, then figure out who posted what and respond to them in a coherent and cogent manner. Please leave sarcasm and arrogance out until you have first learned to read and then learned to follow threads and respond accurately. You’ll just end up looking like a fool as you already have
When was the last time anyone went into a mobile phone shop and asked what damn OS the phone they were going to buy ran? Absolutely no one, that’s who. Do you see “Runs Symbian…” or “Runs Linux…” or “Runs Windows…” anywhere on a mobile phone brochure? Nope. It’s all about what the system does and relative price and the same goes for servers these days.
Really? you stand at every mobilephone store around the world and did a survey. People care a lot about what OS thier smartphone runs becuase it means access to apps and games.
Nokia names top Symbian apps
http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/1683.html
http://www.attwireless.com/smartphone/
http://www.series60.com/series60challenge
Here are a few more links.
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,46827,00.html
http://commerce.motorola.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrf…
http://www.smartfone.net/6/340.html
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/
That’s a stunning statement devoid of any real-world knowledge, and you’ve dug a deep hole for yourself there.
Speak for yourself. Smartphones have a hell a lot more in common to servers than TVs. Smartphones run apps and apps and services are sold by service providers. The instruments are themselves comodities. Servers and smartphones run Apps and what Apps they run are determined by the OS platform supported by said device. The OS is extremely important in customer purchase decisions.
The only apps that make the OS irrelevant are Java Apps and you must know all enterprise apps are not written in Java.
First learn what analogy means. Then learn how to give a convincing one like it did. The only arguments you put throught the ringer is your own through contradiction and with stupid examples like TVs being the same as servers. Please.
>>I really don’t understand why Linux zealots are so against Sun. What have they done to you? Stick a gun to your head to buy Sun servers? Or force you to use Java?<<
What has sunw done to the linux zealots?
1) Sponsored scox, in scox’s attempt to make the world believe that linux is illegal. Scox has loudly claimed that scox owns all UNIX, and by extension, Linux. Since, according to scox, Linux is just an illegal derivitive of UNIX. Scox has even claimed that they have “mountains” of evidence proving that sysV code was directly copied into Linux. Of course, scox refuses to provide evidence of such copying.
2) McNealy and Shwartz unfairly bash Linux as a server OS, every chance they get.
Sunw has some good technology. But, sunw’s business tactics are every bit as tasteless as msft’s. Also, McNealy and Shwartz sound like a**h***s everytime they open their months.
I don’t know where the K/O for Sun will come from:
1) From Sun itself? – Solaris 10 is almost free:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/software/2004-11-15-solaris10…
2) Dell? – Dell blades:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/servers/0,39020363,39173815,00.htm
3) Dell and Microsoft?
http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/tech/software/10194329.html?cm_ve…
While Sun is focusing on stopping the leaking, their competitors are sailing with a blue sky, thank you very much.
With new features, the best scalability reputation in the industry, open sourced source code, subscription pricing that is very competitive with RHEL, JES and JDS, and Project Looking Glass, Solaris looks like a compelling product.
Now, if they cand do the Java Desktop System with Solaris 10, bundle it with NetBeans, make available Project Looking Glass and Java Studio Creator, feature Gnome 2.6 or 2.8, feature Project Janus, and ship it with those cheap Microtel PCs at WalMart.com, I’ll gladly buy one of those PCs. It looks like it could be a kick-butt product.
And Solaris is already a proven kick-butt poduct on the servers side. It just got it’s butt kicked by Linux on price over the last 3 years or so. Now that Solaris is competing on price and is offering more features, it has a great chance to help bring Sun back from the dead. It seems that Systems Admins that are administering Solaris love Solaris and are loyal to it.
I’m saying all of this as both a big Linux fan (my favorite is Mandrake), and as a frequent Sun critic. But ultimately, I’m a huge fan of great affordable technology. If Sun can deliver this stuff, more power to ’em. Sun, in spite of all of the stupid stuff McNealy and Schwartz say, and inspite of their many business/marketing blunders, does in fact produce kick-butt technology, and continues to invest heavily on R&D. So with that in mind, I hope they survive and prosper.
In short, Linux, Solaris – it’s all good.
Did I say that? No. read my response above. Get it.
Don’t reply to things then and act like you did then. You and MJ tend to merge.
Really? you stand at every mobilephone store around the world and did a survey. People care a lot about what OS thier smartphone runs becuase it means access to apps and games.
*Laughs heartily out loud*. You don’t get out much, do you? I think anyone in the real world knows that that isn’t true, so it’s not worth it.
Ranting and bickering. There’s a good one.
You don’t get out much, do you? I think anyone in the real world knows that that isn’t true, so it’s not worth it.
LOL, You really don’t get out much and have no clue what the real world is made of, do you?’
I just proved you wrong with a few links, not a comprehensive list mind you. BTW the real world is not limited to the US. The US is woefully behind in mobile technology, Asia and Europe have an amazing grasp at mobile phonse thier OS’ and Apps.
http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=934&source=HOME
Series 90 lives on in Nokia 7710
Series 90 is the Symbian OS that runs on the phone. Why would the OS that runs on the phone be at the begining of the title for a mobile phone review if that did not matter to customers????
Don’t even try to answer that coz you can’t!!!
The OS matters, on phones and most certainly on Servers. Example, Todays Solaris 10 announcement made Sun’s stock jump to the highest in months or even a year.
News.com and a lot of other news website are covering the announcement.
http://news.com.com/Sun+aims+at+Red+Hat+with+new+Solaris+pricing/21…
So since according to you the OS is irrelevant, why so much hoopla over an OS release? Because it matters and customers care and from the looks of it so do investors.
All this goes to prove that you are so out of touch with reality that you don’t even realize that you have made a fool of your self. And continur to do so time and again on Sun realted articles.
How do you like them apples? What a laugh inded. The jokes on you. LOL.