On Sun’s fortunes
Aug 27th, 2008 by sharps
I left Sun on good terms and I still think it’s a great company full of super-smart people that have done great, no, “amazing” things. I still have many friends who shared the Sun experience (a few of whom are still enjoying employment at Sun). I mention that because I don’t want to sound like I’m being unduly critical of the place I spent (and enjoyed) over half my working life.
But the reality is - no amount of progress with Open Source Java and GlassFish, sales of MySQL, Solaris or Web2oh coolness is going to move the needle enough to make a material difference to Sun’s fortunes as long as it lags the competition in selling servers. Because Sun is still dominantly a hardware company - and that’s where the revenue comes from.
And the issue is, and the reason I’m ranting is that this is fundamentally the same problem that Sun faced 8 years ago as Wintel and Linux started to creep onto Sun’s turf. From the recent IDC WW Server Tracker - that issue still hasn’t been addressed and I’m no longer confident it will be addressed adequately or quickly enough to save Sun. And that is a real shame - but if you’ve been staring at the oncoming steam train for 8 years and still get flattened - no-one is going to sympathize.
I hope I’m wrong.
You must really hate the fact that Glassfish is gaining steam - I look at the adoption rates, and JBoss is getting blown away. I understand that makes you mad at Sun, it would make me mad, too. If I hadn’t already moved my apps off JBoss three months ago.
Marten thanks for the comment.
The fact that GlassFish (and other OpenSource projects at Sun) are doing very well does not make me mad; proud might be a better word. I was a strong supporter of many of those projects and invested significant time in (for example) the early days of GlassFish. Red Hat actually collaborates with many of those projects and enjoy a good working relationship. many of those projects are good for OSS adoption in general and that’s good for Red Hat too.
No, what makes me mad - and was the point of my post is that the company that supports all of those great projects (MySQL, GlassFish, OpenJDK, OpenSSO, etc.) does not seem to have adequately addressed the fundamental problem - the same problem it faced 8 years ago. That’s what makes me mad and if I was still a stock holder it would make me *really* mad. Sun has to address the fundamental problem or it is going to get really ugly, really fast.
As things stand - software at Sun isn’t a sufficiently large revenue stream and Sun still lacks the ability to actually make money from software (especially Open Source) for software to be considered as the thing that will save Sun.
I just hope the Sun sponsored Open Source projects are insulated against whatever fate awaits Sun.
- Rich