Correction and some other info

Story: Rant Mode Equals One: What if Sun is the next SCO?Total Replies: 3
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cjcox

Mar 22, 2005
11:29 AM EDT
1. Sun started out on low end "iron". Sun started out as a workstation company. Didn't really start to get into servers until the late eighties.

2. It is far more interesting to look at Sun of the late eighties and how they teamed up with AT&T to attempt a knock out punch of their competition (remember Microsoft was just getting to Windows 3.1 at the time). The convenience partnership of Sun with AT&T (Sun effectively using AT&T if you will) to conquer their competition is similar to what Sun is doing now by partnering with (their enemy) Microsoft in an attempt to knock Linux out of the way. However, this is the marketspace of the Highlander... and in the end, there can only be one. Look for Sun and Microsoft to do some stealth positioning behind each others back for when the 10 year agreement terminates.

2a. One of the first fruits of the strategic partnership with Sun and Microsoft is the production of AMD based equipment that is fully certified to run Windows.

2b. Then the establishment of the Sun/Microsoft research center (done). http://blogs.msdn.com/eec/archive/2005/03/03/384874.aspx

2c. The somewhat "secret" technology acquisition made by Microsoft on Sun's behalf to help with the LDAP/AD bridging technologies... if that doesn't show how serious this venture is, nothing does. (I misplaced the link to that one.. .sorry)

2d. The joining of J2EE and .Net (complete interoperability).

Remember the goal here is to kill Linux. Now in all fairness Sun will tell you that you "can't kill Linux" and that "they don't want to kill Linux", but the reality is, Sun wants Linux OUT of the corporate workspace, they have no problems with it existing purely as a hobbiest OS, just as long as it is recognized as junk in the workplace.

3. SCO (Santa Cruz Org) inherited Unix (tm) and merged their "Unix" with SVR4 (SVR4 is what Solaris is based off of... regardless of what Sun says.. which indeed is the reason for paying SCO). Now it could be that OpenSolaris could face some struggles depending on just how much the SCO "license" covers. Indeed, Sun is examining every bit of code as we speak here... which is why OpenSolaris has been reduced to a trickle currently.... Sun is trying to be very, very safe.

4. There is a TON of confusion at Sun internally. Of course this often happens when you introduce an entirely new platform into the mix (Opteron). Not only does this "addition" cause internal factions, it causes stress for the hardware, software and ISV markets for Sun. The only thing Sun will tell you is that they are "100% behind SPARC" and "100% behind AMD".... might as well say... "we really don't know what we want to be and were hedging all of our bets right now."

#4 is the one that is the most interesting. This is why I predict an eventual Dell buyout. But that's a VERY big prediction and I may have to change my mind on that. But after talking with Sun a bit, though the underlings don't know anything, their responses make me believe more and more that one of Sun's hedged bets involves them selling out. We'll see.

tadelste

Mar 23, 2005
7:13 AM EDT
Chris, most of your information is correct with a stretch here and there.

I see your points on the buy out scenarios of Sun, but by the time it's feasible - they'll be too far gone.

The Microsoft cooperation is smoke. They did a blog on me recently condeming an article written by another author about something I said. The managers push those guys to blog. So, take those blog entries with a huge amount of skepticism. At Sun and at MSDN. It's a hideous way to move disinformation onto the Internet.

The internal craziness exists in ways no one can imagine. I have never seen an organization so demoralized and I was at IBM in 1994.

Frankly, I don't see what they have to offer a buyer.



peragrin

Mar 23, 2005
10:51 AM EDT
Sun has control of the Java 'Community' Remember all those discussions we had on which is more evil. IBM or Sun.

Yes IBM is in linux for money, vengenance, & a few other things I don't know yet. But IBM has learned that you get more for your money if you don't force people to your will but go with the flow.

Sun still doesn't know what the hell it wants. Solaris on Sparc, Solaris on opteron, the Java Desktop that doesn't really need Java, and is named like Javascript. Sun's downfall will not be failure to devleop great tech, but trying to market it like it's 1999.

Hey maybe prince can do a commericail for JDS? Let's Market it like it's 1999.
cjcox

Mar 24, 2005
7:49 AM EDT
I just went to an NDA presentation with Sun... can't say anything detail about what was presented, but with regards to the Microsoft stuff, it's closer to what I've said.

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