Frank Sommers
Posts: 2642
Nickname: fsommers
Registered: Jan, 2002
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Re: The End of Sun Microsystems?
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Posted: Feb 18, 2003 10:17 PM
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I don't think it's a particularly deep article.
I do believe that the trend is away from big server machines, and towards building computers out of many inexpensive, off-the-shelf (commodity) parts.
But the author of this article somehow missed Sun's latest strategy - which is exactly aimed at building highly reliable systems out of inexpensive computers. Most of the high-end Sun systems are, for all practical reasons, clusters - they contain many independent partitions that can be pooled together for larger computing tasks, or can be dedicated to independent activities. Those partitions might be housed in the same case, or might be shipped in their own encasings (as with "blade" servers).
A lot of people that have real business problems to solve (read: people who have real money), can't afford the time to assemble such clusters themselves and fiddle with configuration, management, etc. So they can just buy one of these clusters-in-a-box or blade-clusters, from Sun, and start running their businesses. Designing and selling those systems makes a compelling business case, even if the current economy does not afford Sun to collect a tidy premium for those systems (but their margins are still in the 40% range).
I do think, though, that Sun's marketing has really failed to deliver the message of what the company is all about: They're still talking about "friggin' big Web switches" (to quote Scott McNeally), whereas they should be talking about the ability to pay-as-you-go for computation, or "computing by the slice," etc. They need to be able to communicate the company's strategy much better, i.e., come up with "Sun by the Slice" or "SunBricks" etc, etc.,
They also would need to embrace a much bigger part of the open-source development community - a lot of corporate IT folks are either a part of that community, or are "sympathizers." Sun should be their best friend. In other words, they need a marketing strategy. And they would also need to regain the passion of a start-up, and put the buzz back in the com... (or NET?)
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