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Sun Microsystems IT

New Hopes From Sun's Idea Factory 122

Posted by Hemos from the rebirth-coming? dept.
UltimaGuy writes "While it's way too soon to say Sun is back on track, the return of Bechtolsheim, aggressive improvements in products and a healthy dose of humility among Sun's executives mean the troubled company and its investors have more cause for optimism than they've had in years." Of course, Sun's problems are still out there - dealing with projects like Geronimo for some of their base infrastructure, and of course other companies promoting Linux as the solution.
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New Hopes From Sun's Idea Factory More

New Hopes From Sun's Idea Factory

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  • Back On Track? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by matr0x_x ( 919985 )
    What determines when a company is "Back On Track"? In my opinion Sun was doing things right months ago... yet if you look at their stock (what really matters to a company) you'd never know it!

    • Re:Back On Track? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jamesgamble ( 917138 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:17PM (#13810205) Homepage
      A good stock price and progressive growth can mean a company is "back" to investors. Good support of its user base and new products and services help to show users that a company is "back". I think the second area is where Sun is/was lacking, and I believe that's what this article was making reference to. :)

      • Re:Back On Track? (Score:5, Informative)

        by twiddlingbits ( 707452 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:28PM (#13810290)
        No, positive cash flow, debt reduction and PROFITS, as well as MANAGED growth mean a company is back on track to investors. You can have great growth and lousy financials, or vice versa so one area alone does not mean a company is "back". There are several different theories and models to determine based on the financials what the "target" stock price should be fora firm with given performance in a specific market. A "good stock price" is a result of the investors willing to buy/sell at higher prices due to thier models (or gut feeling) telling them the data indicates the price will increase due to the firm making (more) profits, the market growing, or the firm capturing more market share. Ideally, all of these occur at once and the stock "breaks-out" and the price goes up rapidly.

  • Hardware (Score:2, Funny)

    by xerid ( 235598 )
    "and of course other companies promoting Linux as the solution"


    I thought that Sun was a hardware company?

    • Re:Hardware (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ForumTroll ( 900233 )
      You thought wrong. It's very clear to anyone with any knowledge of the subject that they offer much more than just hardware. I'm not quite sure why you feel that a company needs to be a "hardware" company or a "software" company as plenty of companies can do both...
      • And well, as in Sun's case.
      • I don't see how Linux negatively affects Java or server sales. They can offer both flavors of unix like others do, at which point it comes back to hardware. I might be wrong (and I'm willing to admit it), but I fail to see how Linux can hurt their hardware sales.
        • I agree with you in that I don't think Linux negatively affects Java or server sales. However, from what I've seen (I'm no expert on this subject either) Sun really wants to sell a package. They want to package their hardware with Solaris, Java etc. than offer support. I agree that hardware makes most of their money but I think the entire hardware/software/support package is what they're trying to do most.

    • Re:Hardware (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spif ( 4749 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:34PM (#13810328) Journal
      They want to be a solutions provider - hardware, software and support. But their Kool-Aid is getting pretty stale. Their own platforms (Solaris and SPARC) are increasingly viewed as legacy stuff.

      They need to reinvent themselves as an end-to-end solutions provider for Linux and dump (or at least really heavily de-emphasize) the rest. Forget about OpenSolaris - salvage what little is still worth anything in Solaris, GPL it and help integrate it into Linux. Stop designing, making and selling new SPARC hardware - give the platform to Fujitsu or Toshiba or whoever is stupid enough to want it. Focus entirely on making the best AMD64-based servers money can buy. Become the new high end of the Linux server market. Be the vendor that can sell you the complete package. Have support techs that know more about Red Hat than Red Hat.

      But it won't happen, or it'll happen too little too late, because they have too much money, pride and identity invested in the legacy crap. What a waste.

      • Re:Hardware (Score:5, Informative)

        by Markus_UW ( 892365 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:44PM (#13810423)
        AFAIK, the banks and telecom companies are still buying mad quantities of Solaris on SPARC. Why in their right minds, would sun switch their primary platform, and thus alienate all their loyal customers, who would then be put in the position of having to choose a new platform (which might or might not be provided by Sun).

        Plus sun has some pretty revolutionary SPARC stuff coming out in the near future, Niagara and Rock being the two best examples. I have a funny feeling SPARC is here to stay for quite some time.

        Plus did I mention that sun has about 40% of the Unix server market, which if I'm not mistaken is about four times the size of the Linux server market?

        • Re:Hardware (Score:4, Informative)

          by Wiz ( 6870 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @03:05PM (#13811122) Homepage
          Plus did I mention that sun has about 40% of the Unix server market, which if I'm not mistaken is about four times the size of the Linux server market?


          Then you need to put down the kool-aid....

          IBM was the leader in worldwide Unix server revenue with 31% share, while HP and Sun were statistically tied for the number two position, with 30.0% and 29.5% share, respectively. [idc.com]

          The Linux market was $1.4 billion. Sun have 29.5% of a $4.3 billion market, which if my maths serves me correct is less than the Linux market.

          As for why switch from SPARC? Price/performance is the main thing. Being able to use any x86 manufactuer with Linux is more flexible than Sun (or Fuji at a push) as a SPARC supplier. Niagara would be good for quiet web servers, but for any sort of real performance it isn't going to be there yet. Rock maybe more interesting, but that is sometime away yet. Sun's sales are currently declining too (and have done for a few years), so it isn't like SPARC is selling that well.
          • Sorry, must have remembered a old stat or something, I guess I'm on Crack. But still, Sun's nowhere near dead, nor is the SPARC architecture.
          • So... if Sun has 29.5%, and HP has 30.0%, and IBM has 31%... how much does "Linux" have? 9.5%?

            Perhaps you just tried to compare to completely different numbers to come up with an entirely invalid argument for an unsupportable position. Click on your hyperlink again and read it more thoroughly, it does not say anything which supports your claim.

            Next.

            • Of Unix server sales? Linux has 0% because it is an OS not a tier 1 hardware provider!

              As is also clearly stated in the above link, Linux has a $1.4 billion market and is separate from the Unix market (which I presume means Solaris, AIX, HPUX, etc).

              Perhaps you should re-read it?

      • Re:Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

        by linguae ( 763922 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:58PM (#13810524)
        They need to reinvent themselves as an end-to-end solutions provider for Linux and dump (or at least really heavily de-emphasize) the rest. Forget about OpenSolaris - salvage what little is still worth anything in Solaris, GPL it and help integrate it into Linux. Stop designing, making and selling new SPARC hardware - give the platform to Fujitsu or Toshiba or whoever is stupid enough to want it. Focus entirely on making the best AMD64-based servers money can buy. Become the new high end of the Linux server market. Be the vendor that can sell you the complete package. Have support techs that know more about Red Hat than Red Hat.

        Great, we'll just lose some more operating system and (especially) platform diversity. OpenSolaris is the best thing that can happen to Solaris, and I would like to see more competition between Solaris, Linux, and BSD (because competition leads to more innovation between the three OSes). There are many nice things and advantages to the Solaris platform that Linux could learn from. Besides, Solaris is a real Unix (based off AT&T Unix System V), whereas Linux is just a clone. Why would Sun drop something based on the real thing for an imitation? If Sun were to drop anything, I'd rather Sun adopt Plan 9 rather than Linux. At least Plan 9 is unique and different.

        And with the SPARC platform, why would Sun drop that elegant platform for the inferior x86-64 architecture? (Don't get me wrong, I like the AMD64 a lot, but it is still based on that hideous x86 architecture, and the SPARC is much better designed). Over the past few years, we have lost a few well-designed platforms (Alpha, PA-RISC, PowerPC) to the x86, and the SPARC is the last holdout. I do not want to see an x86 monopoly on computing, but it looks like were heading for that. And when we're stuck with the x86 as our only platform, then innovation will slow down, and we might not see better platforms again.

        Sun should continue what it has been doing; be a Unix company selling a Unix variant and workstations, and promoting Java (let's not forget that important part of Sun). We don't need another Linux PC manufacturer. If Sun degenerated to just selling Linux PCs, then Sun would die faster than you can say a BSD or Apple troll.

        • Re:Hardware (Score:3, Informative)

          by bersl2 ( 689221 )
          Over the past few years, we have lost a few well-designed platforms (Alpha, PA-RISC, PowerPC) to the x86

          Who said POWER is dead? Netcraft?

          Just because Apple drops PPC doesn't mean that the architecture is dead or dying.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re:Hardware (Score:3, Insightful)

            by linguae ( 763922 )

            What meaning does this statement have at the end of the day ? Why do I care about an operating system's pedigree ? Either it does what I want, or it does not. In fact, it seems pretty silly to market something solely on the basis that it still has ten year old bits of code floating around in it.

            Solaris could do anything and everything that Linux could do. Why would Sun switch from Solaris to Linux if Solaris can do everything that Linux can do?

            "unique and different" are two words which describe Micros

        • Is AMD based on x86? I know it is compatable, but I thought it had a RISC architecture at its base, with the x86 as a compatablity layer?
      • There is a high end linux already and it's called Solaris.

      • Re:Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shmlco ( 594907 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @03:24PM (#13811284) Homepage
        Forgive me, but that's a dumb solution. They're well known in the high-end market, and they're pretty busy mixing up new batches of Kool-Aid.

        Your solution, however, would end up positioning them as yet another Linux X86 harware integrator in a commodity market, with little or no competitive advantage. And as much as Linux would like to think it's up to Solaris standards... it's not.

      • "Focus entirely on making the best AMD64-based servers money can buy"

        Ya cause you know selling low-end servers is where the money is at, especially with all the competitors. Just to let you know, there are a lot of companies that are laughing at you right now cause they wouldn't even bother touching a AMD based server.

        "Become the new high end of the Linux server market."

        That's actually really hard if all they are selling is AMD based servers cause AMD based servers are rarely if ever considered high end.

        "F
      • Huzzah! Well said, and append to your to-do list for Sun: they can take the damn chains off Java, already! It's just a hybrid programming language, not the Holy Grail.
      • Forget about OpenSolaris - salvage what little is still worth anything in Solaris, GPL it and help integrate it into Linux.

        Outside of Slashdot, Solaris is still a serious OS and in many ways better than Linux. You also cannot simply cut and paste code from one kernel to another. If you want a server which is reasonably stable, you go for an x86 box running Linux. If you want one that absolutely cannot ever fail, and will be running for a long time you go with SPARC and Solaris. Although x86 may have a bette

  • I dunno... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BJZQ8 ( 644168 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:18PM (#13810210) Homepage Journal
    I dunno if I'd count jumping on the Linux/Open Source bandwagon "back on track" or not...I'd like to see some new ideas from them, but I haven't seen anything original yet, besides, perhaps, using AMD in a big way.

    • Re:I dunno... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ForumTroll ( 900233 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:54PM (#13810492)
      Considering how long Sun has been working with Linux and how much source code they've released to the Open Source community I'd hardly classify them as "jumping on the bandwagon". There are few companies that give back as much to the community as Sun and yet they continue to do so even with hoards of people like you demanding more.

      Would you prefer companies not "jump on the bandwagon" and just ignore Linux all together?
      • It seems to me that people think Sun is jumping on the bandwagon because Sun insists on using its own vanity license, [sun.com] rather than any of the pre-existing open source licenses. This leads people to believe that Sun is only putting one toe into open source but reserving the right to jump out any time the water gets too hot for it. Sort of an "open source license hokey-pokey."

        I can't say whether that is or is not the intent of the CDDL; I can't speak for Sun. But from where I sit, the fact that Sun execs go ar
      • I'd much rather them get into Linux for the right reasons, ie getting actively involved in the community development process, rather than getting into Linux because it's the hot button of the moment. But in any case, yes, I'm VERY glad they are into Linux. As the old guard UNIX systems are taken offline one by one, I very much hope they are all rolled into Linux instead of walled off into Windows.

    • Re:I dunno... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by greg_barton ( 5551 )
      I dunno if I'd count jumping on the Linux/Open Source bandwagon "back on track" or not...

      This may be a bit simplistic, but I've got some recent experience navigating between the two. I just built my new dual core Athlon X2 system this weekend. Tried out Solaris 10 on it first. Took about 4 hours to install. Tried out the scimark java benchmark and was quite underwhelmed with a 263 composite score. Installed Gentoo 2005.1, compiling kde and the blackdown-jdk packages. Took about 2 hours. Scimark compo

  • I think that the StorageTek acquisition was a (Score:5, Interesting)

    by multiplexo ( 27356 ) * on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:23PM (#13810243) Journal
    good thing, especially since Sun is not going to fuck with StorageTek, they're going to run it as a separate division of the company and start selling StorageTek storage products with Sun servers and close out Sun's line of storage products (which were just rebranded from Hitachi and other vendors anyway). Sun's storage offerings were overpriced and underwhelming, with StorageTek in house they have a good thing becuase regardless of what platform wins out in the future (Linux, Solaris, Solaris x86, Windoze, Plan 9) people are going to need lots and lots of storage space for their pr0n, warez and MP3, oops, I mean corporate data. Now if Sun can only get rid of the shit ugly purple and grey color scheme they have on the Sparc boxen they might be able to stage a huge comeback.

  • Humility and Sun in the same sentence? (Score:4, Funny)

    by skitheboat ( 901329 ) * on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:23PM (#13810251) Homepage
    Does this include Scott McNealy or has he hired a CHO (Chief Humility Officer) to be humble for him? Maybe I need to start following Sun again, I gave them up for dead a couple of years ago.
    • For a while their over-inflated stock price (110:1 P/E, was it?) made them seem much larger than they really were, but they're still enormous and have a multi-billion-dollar warchest.
      They've also got a lot of technical talent, and even if the middle-management was positively cancerous in at the turn-of-the-century, hopefully the flattening that came with belt-tightening after the dotcom crash pruned that dead wood and they can become an engine of innovative technology applications once more. I think they'r
      • Well said, I have owned Sun stok a couple of times and did well with it. What dissppoints me is how their egos got in the way of some many opportunities to improve. They are in similar position that Apple was for so many years where they have tremendous brand equity and loyal customers but haven't been willing or able to do what it would take ot turn things around. It often takes a big ego to soldier through and be successful but it can take you down even faster if you don't shift your strategy when the ga
  • Sun already supports both Redhat and SuSE in addition to Solaris on their x86 hardware.

    They've got some interesting things on the way, though it's quite a big departure from business as usual for them. Will be interesting to see if they keep the vision and follow through.

  • Geronimo info (Score:4, Informative)

    by millette ( 56354 ) <robin@@@millette...info> on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:35PM (#13810345) Homepage Journal
    Maybe we want to know more about Geronimo [apache.org] before deciding to download it.

  • SUN is setting.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by katorga ( 623930 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:37PM (#13810355)
    I'm a long time Sun user from sparc1 thru my current F15s, and I think its over. Sun is starting the long decline so familiar to the workstation vendors. Think HP PA-RISC and SGI. Basically, I bought SUN to stay 5 years ahead of the PC technology curve.

    Sadly, Sun could not maintain the technology lead and as they move to x86 servers, the argument that low cost x86 systems are 90% as good for half the price starts to be felt. I pay a premium to be ahead of the curve.

    OSS is going to canibalize Sun on the software side unless they become a services and integration company of OSS stacks.

    • Re:SUN is setting.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zemplar ( 764598 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @02:56PM (#13811063) Journal
      Who cares about some "PC technology curve"?

      What really is important is the performance, power consumption, and price at which you can accomplish your computing goals. The Operton's have a great balance of all three factors and Sun is packaging, yes PACKAGING, some great hardware at a great price and very low power consumption in their x86 line. Who really cares if Sun has the chip designed/made from scratch when at the end of the day all you really should care about is results and not who made your machine so you can brag about it.

      If you really think you need Sparc, you could likely double your power by using Sun's high-quality x86 products in place, such as their amazing quad dual-core Opteron V40z servers [sun.com].

      For the record, I have a Sun W2100z x86 Opteron system but could care less about having Sparc as the current equipment is more than capable and provides excellent performance at a fraction of the cost of Sparc for my use. Sparc certainly is a great product and I welcome it and wished it were the standard instead of x86, but until that is ever realized, I'm simply results oriented.

      The apparent x86 motto: "Do more with less" [you define 'less']
      The apparent Sparc motto: "Work smarter, not harder" [and anyone/thing smart always costs more]
    • Our company used to be nearly a complete Sun shop. I see Sun's problem as hanging on to their beloved Sparc CPU technology and Scott McNealy too long. It didn't work out as they planned (open Sparc technology did not get adopted). Then Dell came in cut the legs from under Sun. Now we use NetApp filers. And Exchange (I know. I dislike it too. Our company is in so cozy with Microsoft that Melinda gets jealous.) The most recent Google/Sun media presentation left me with the feeling that Scott McNealy n
  • the start to great things for Sun. Right now, all they've announced is some small things like buying each other's stuff and including the Google Toolbar with JRE downloads. But if you think about it, who has Google announced a partnership (other than the AOL deal last week which was mainly a defensive move against MS)? So you really have to take this partnership seriously. Now, with Google Wi-Fi rolling out, what's the next thing for Google to offer? Well, what about Sun-Ray's? It might not be possible to offer a Sun-Ray that connects over Google Wi-Fi for free right now, but in 5 - 10 years it will be (Moore's law makes hardware about 30% cheaper every year). I believe Google will wait until the hardware is cheap enough to be funded by advertising and give it away. The question is which hardware will they use. Clearly with this partnership announcement, Sun's Sun-Ray platform has taken the lead.
    • I'm not quite sure if I would go with the Google/Sun-Ray machines idea, to possibly err on the side of economics. Maybe (and this is giant maybe) but maybe still, Sun could provide hardware resources to run Google's local Wi-Fi locations is my guess to start the partnership.

      And still, some of me wonders if this is just hype only for the fact that Google did partner with Sun for something yet to be disclosed and so investors assume that whatever they're going to do must be good.
      • Hmmm, but to run a Wi-Fi hot spot, you don't need a lot of hardware. In particular you don't need the kind of hardware Sun makes. You need wireless routers.

        Currently a Sun Ray is about $500. That includes a VERY nice 19" flat panel. This is not particularily over priced given that flat panel monitors can cost $500 alone. I'd imagine that they could make models even cheaper and if you're talking about selling kazillions of them, they could do it much cheaper by mass producing them. Also, as I mentioned in

  • Sun's new cheaper servers (Score:5, Informative)

    by gtoomey ( 528943 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:45PM (#13810424)
    Sun has some new AMD64 servers priced very aagressivly from $745 http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/ [sun.com]

    They are trying to take on Dell in the lower end, thru to the SMP "big iron" machines as well.

    • Not just that, but some suggest [cnn.com] Sun's new servers are also designed to be used by Google, which if I recall correctly, has over 100,000 estimated servers.

      Sun is also on the right track to target Developers with their very affordable Ultra 20 [sun.com] in addition to their higher performing, and more costly, workstations.

  • Sun the great equalizer!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HampiRocks ( 769257 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @02:21PM (#13810751)
    I will always have a soft corner in my heart for sun. Sun's java language made it possible for many developers from developing countries to compete in the commercial software market. Free JAVA meant that it was easy to learn the language. No question that the open-source tools like tomcat were the other barrier breakers.

    Sun always had been a company with a scoial conscience, dontaing hardware and software to colleges all over the world. It is nice that they have finally accepted the market trends (like x86) and decided to go with them.
    • If you want to restore credibility, follow through on the commitment you made 10 years ago and make Java into an ISO/ANSI standard, with no strings attached.
    • Stop worrying about Microsoft trying to take away Java from you--that has already happened, and you only have yourself to blame for it.
    • Stop interfering with open source projects and drop your compatibility requirements--they are unenforceable, nobody gives a damn, and you only hurt yourself by antagonizing people with them.
    • When it comes to Java tool

    • Re:some hints for Sun management (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      • If you want to restore credibility, follow through on the commitment you made 10 years ago and make Java into an ISO/ANSI standard, with no strings attached.

      Hah? Who at Sun said that and when? Link please.

      • Stop worrying about Microsoft trying to take away Java from you--that has already happened, and you only have yourself to blame for it.

      And again, hah? Microsoft spent $2B to make that problem go away; that's a nice paycheck to Sun for doing that particular bit of "worrying."

      • Stop interfering
  • Why exactly does this get a special mention? It's not like Sun makes lots of money (directly) off J2EE app servers - IBM WebSphere and BEA are the ones who would feel the most pain if average prices fell a lot.

    In addition, cheap/free J2EE servers have been around for a while. I think JBoss got proper J2EE certification recently too...

    Sun also has an Open Source J2EE server - GlassFish [java.net].
  • Alright, while I don't pretend to downplay the genious of a company who has always grabbed headlines since the inception of computing as we know today, there are more issues than innovation in which a CTO must underwrite. Trust is an important factor. How does Sun gain the trust of our CTO's? In today's "You better get it all done with this much money and have 99 percent uptime or it's YOUR ass" CTO job descriptions, CTOs get much more sleep at night on non SUN solutions. We once had sun replace a systemb
    • Holy crap, where do you live? This is EXACTLY the opposite of my experiences with Sun over the last decade.

      "CTOs get much more sleep at night on non SUN solutions."

      Wow. I can't dispute your experience, but it certainly clashes with mine. Sun solutions have been the reason most of my colleagues sleep peacefully at night.
      • I don't doubt that you speak from experience, but you have to admit, when a systemboard on a huge SUN server needs replaced this many times, there seems to be a little problem which might extend beyond the scope of hardware engineering. We still employ SUN Solutions, but I do think this was a major turning point with my company. Where possible we went with more Linux and IBM solutions as a result. Before IBM sold off it's PC unit, we were at one time IBM's Largest customer. The are people at my company th

  • SUN (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Heembo ( 916647 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @04:47PM (#13811950) Journal
    The google-sun partnership is a lot more than hype. Google buying up a lot of new SUN servers? Most anything that google touches or partners with turns to gold, this is the start of something huge. You think the dot.com revolution started a big rise of hardware purchases? What happens when Google blankets the earth in free wireless and uses SUN servers to make it happen? Great article with a positive slant on this partnership that few others noted. It's from CNN Money - where slashdotters do not roam? http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/14/technology/techinv estor/tech_biz/ [cnn.com]

  • Why is Geronimo a problem for Sun? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Can someone help me with the Geronimo reference in the head post? I can interpret it two ways: either Sun is having some problem with selling their systems with Geronimo, or that somehow the existence of Geronimo is bad for Sun, despite being a Java solution that would run on Sun kit as easily as anyone's. Neither interpretation seems to make sense.
  • I work for a well known FTSE100 company in the UK.. Sun have been dropped as a supplier by my employer in favour of IBM. Pain in the ass for me as I much prefer Solaris to AIX, but IBM had compelling price/performance figures that Sun couldn't match, and the micro partitioning that AIX 5.3 and Power 5 offers is attractive for a company fast running out of data centre space.
  • New Hopes From Sun's Idea Factory

    Sun could introduce some new brilliant talents who may spark them off to a brighter future.

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