A detente between longtime rivals Microsoft and Sun Microsystems has resulted in more money changing hands and soon will produce more details on the companies’ cooperative work. Elsewhere, SCO gives Sun blessings to open-source Solaris. Despite all that, Sun misses revenue, profit targets.
Sun gets second Microsoft patent payment
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Sun’s latest financial report.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5671353.html?tag=zdfd.newsfeed
Whoops, sorry. Its already mentioned in the first link.
i hope sun turn there loosing streaka round and comes back in a big way….they have so much potential…..
The way I see it, Sun might have had some problems with their offers, not like they didn’t offer a lot of services, but it’s become A-LOT clearer what their USP are. Like they’re the cheapest for building a rock-solid serverenvironment with one of the best Unix systems on the market. Their JDS has come through pretty well in terms of quality. They finally support more HW like in these Opterons with Solaris 10. It takes time for the market to adjust.
Coming to think of it, if you’re in a situation today choosing between Red Hat/Novell/Sun/MSFT…. in terms of quality and TCO I’m confident that Sun will be the best choice in 7/10 situations. That’s been the case for a couple of months now… if people start realizing this, migration is near. Especially since Linux has had some serious quality issues for quite some time.
Look forward to see your figures go up Sun =)
” Especially since Linux has had some serious quality issues for quite some time. ‘
vague accusations are not uncommon for SUN supporters.
“Linux has had some serious quality issues for quite some time.”
I’d question a statement that vague even if it were made against MS. Give some examples!
I do think Sun is moving in the right direction, though.
perhaps: people worry about Sun’s economic outlook so they aren’t buying Sun’s products which impacts their economic outlook so then people worry about Sun’s economic outlook…
I’ve always liked the company from what I’ve seen and find their site more “approachable” than the IBM site and I like Java so I really hope they don’t go under.
”
I’ve always liked the company from what I’ve seen and find their site more “approachable” than the IBM site and I like Java so I really hope they don’t go under.
”
You like a company because they have a better website than another company??? And then the Java point is kind of dumb, considering IBM has their own version of Java.
1)You like a company because they have a better website than another company???
Hmm, should I point out the obvious thing that all our mother’s taught us “How you present yourself has a lot to say about who you are” (yes looks cn deceive but they can also reveal. Or should I reference Marshall McLuhan’s famous “The medium is the message”? I think my point is made.
2)And then the Java point is kind of dumb, considering IBM has their own version of Java.
Well Sun invented it and they have kept Java true to it’s initial spirit by rejecting IBM’s SWT. Well SWT is not without merit, it has issues that upset purists like me.
Considering your shallow criticism and lack of any positive contribution to the thread in your comment I can safey conclude you are a troll. So I guess I.H.B.T…. well H.A.N.D..
“Well Sun invented it and they have kept Java true to it’s initial spirit by rejecting IBM’s SWT”
and the spirit is called fascism while upholding fake PR that java standards are a “community” process called JSP?
it’s a world of alphabet soup.
JSP.. JCP.. confusion is everywhere
(esp if you going to comment on something, without enough background)
off topic i know,i like their w2100z workstation with the dual opterons though.
serious:
Law suits and desputes must be pretty boring i guess.Most of the times they end in a pirhus victory.
Considering your shallow criticism and lack of any positive contribution to the thread in your comment I can safey conclude you are a troll. So I guess I.H.B.T…. well H.A.N.D.
Why would he be a troll? It’s more like you don’t know what you talk about and he presented the truth.
Well Sun invented it and they have kept Java true to it’s initial spirit by rejecting IBM’s SWT. Well SWT is not without merit, it has issues that upset purists like me.
Not to be trolling, but in my case would be that whole java upsets purists like me (not the sun or imb question, its more like question where people would like to put java. I wasn’t not even nearly upset until java kept for standalone things like piece of user software. But now people are writing system services, and that upsets me. Same goes for .Net. Something handling memory so bad and being interpreted is a pain to server and not a godsend). I simply don’t like java taking part of the core system. But that’s just me and my opinion.
Considering your shallow criticism
Guess, you’re not even reading what you write. YOour comments was shallow
site accessibility??
Both, IBM and Sun are equaly unfriendly and both could be done a lot better.
Sun as put considerable time and money into their Java web site.
And, it’s written at an approachable level.
More times then not, IBM writes articles from one Phd to another.
It’s harder to get as much benefit from the site if you don’t have an IQ of 140 or above. Sadly, If I were to possess that kind of IQ, I wouldn’t need to peruse their web site in the first place.
More times then not, IBM writes articles from one Phd to another.It’s harder to get as much benefit from the site
Not my experience,i like their layout and it’s depending on the subject easy to follow.
Great OS, sucky management. Their engineers are world class, though. Friendly, approachable and quick to respond to issues.
It is obvious McNealy hasn’t learned his history. . . .
<historylession>
Once Germany and the Soviet Union signed the non-agression pact it was only to buy time. Both sides knew it and unfortunately the Soviet Union paid a huge price for it.
</historylession>
I feel this is the exact same scenario. Microsoft is buying their time and once Microsoft is done using Sun for bashing Linux and the open source community at large, Microsoft is going to go after Sun and crush them.
Secondly, I feel there are two camps in Sun, the open source supporters and the propriety folks. The Open Source folks, support the Linux platform and the propriety folks only support Solaris and are really into the Microsoft-Sun detente. My feeling is that Schwartz has been fed garbage by Uncle Bill and the Dancing Monkey Ballmer and its obvious they are very misinformed. As a result, Schwartz makes Sun look bad and McNealy does nothing about it. Wait until Uncle Bill and Co. back stab Sun, McNealy is really in for a surprise!!!!
“Well Sun invented it and they have kept Java true to it’s initial spirit by rejecting IBM’s SWT. Well SWT is not without merit, it has issues that upset purists like me. ”
just out of curiosity, what are those issues?
SWT isnt the greatest thing in the world, but swing is an overengineered pile of ass.
>>Great OS, sucky management. Their engineers are world class, though. Friendly, approachable and quick to respond to issues.<<
I agree with all of that. One thing I would add: as a tech company goes downhill, they lose their top technical talent. I think that is already happening at Sun.
JMHO.
> as a tech company goes downhill, they lose their top technical talent. I think that is already happening at Sun.
Who left?. Gosling?, Andy Bechtolsheim?, Bryan Cantrell? Tim Bray?
Bill Joy.
Regarding IBM’s website; just try to navigate to get a patch for Lotus Notes or downloading a trial version of Lotus Notes; same goes for trying to understand the license that comes with the trial version – does the software itself get disabled after 90 days? does the 90 day license simply stop, meaing that since you no longer have a valid license, you must voluntarily unload the software?
As for the larger issues at play; isn’t it ironic that the largest Linux fanboy in the marketplace, IBM, can’t be even figged either opensourcing or even porting a native version of Lotus Notes Client or Lotus Smart Suite to Linux. Isn’t it also funny that when fanboys here scream “one billion dollars”, they fail to realise that there was one billion dollars changing hands – it was simply a matter of intellectual property being either made available free of charge to the OSS ‘community’ either via access to patented technologies or simply opensourcing code as the case of JFS and Eclipse.
As I said to a friend, if IBM wanted to do something *really* useful with one billion, they should have gone aroune to every major software company, found out the cost to port software to Linux, and simply paid those companies to do it – that would have been a better way to spend one billion rather than market double-speak we see today.
IBM:
IBM reported a profit from continuing operations of $1.41 billion (pounds 750 million), or 85 cents a share, compared with $1.36 billion, or 79 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts had expected profits of 90 cents a share.
Overall, revenues from continuing operations rose 3 percent to $22.9 billion from $22.2 billion a year ago, well below Wall Street analysts’ expectations.
IBM’s stock dropped 4 percent to a 20-month low in after- hours trading.
——————————
Sun:
Revenue dropped 1 percent from $2.65 billion a year ago to $2.63 billion.
Excluding several unusual charges and gains, the company had a net loss of $61 million, or 2 cents per share. On that basis, analysts surveyed by First Call had expected break-even results and also had expected revenue to increase to $2.74 billion.
Sun shares closed at $3.96, but dropped 18 cents to $3.78 in after-hours trading.
—————————————-
Putting things into perspective it looks like IBM is 10 times the company Sun is, literally.
I personally doubt Sun’s long term viability because they still seem to be afflicted with a serious case of corporate multiple personality disorder and there are grave consequences of this which go far beyond Sun’s usual PR gaffes.
One contingent at Sun seems to have finally read the writing on the wall, and swallowed the bitter pill of commodity harware, but I’ve seen no indication that Sun is willing to undergo the kind of fundmanental structural changes necessary to compete in that space against the likes of Dell. If Sun is really looking to transform itself into a commodity harware vendor, its going to have become a much leaner organization and seriously scale back the size of its engineering department (among other equally painful measures). Or, as I believe is true, is there a contingent among among the upper level executives who, despite the evidence of Sun’s past two miserable failures to pull this off, still believe that Solaris x86 can be used as a wedge to get in the door and then “up sell” to Solaris on SPARC? If Sun is left counting on SPARC for profitablity, it’s toast.
And if Sun really has seen the light and embraced its future as a commodity hardware vendor, is it planning on trimming its operations? Or do they have in mind an IBM like services model? If so, how are they going to assemble a channel which can compete with IBM, CA, etc… Right now all they seem to be doing is gunning for Redhat, but even if Sun completely displaced Redhat, Redhat simply doesn’t have earnings sufficient to support an organization this size of Sun.
So where is the money going to come from? And if the answer is SPARC, you need to put down the kool-aid and come to terms with reality. IBM’s Power architecture is superior to SPARC in every way, it has far broader support among independent vendors, and it’s finally getting produced in numbers that will allow Intel like economies of scale tkick in. SPARC is still just Sun, a dminishing presence in the market, and Fujitsu, who, iirc, just announced their plans for a future Power architecture and an Itanium one as well.
Sun improved their bottom line by something like _a_billion_dollars_ since last year, they basically broke even for the quarter, they have the best product line they’ve ever had, they’re pretty much fully recovered from the Internet bust, and they’re pretty much the only game in town for UNIX and sell Linux, too. What are investors looking for?
“…I’ve seen no indication that Sun is willing to undergo the kind of fundmanental structural changes necessary to compete in that space against the likes of Dell”
You haven’t been paying much attention, then. Sun’s Opteron servers are set up to go head-to-head with Dell and HP.
“…still believe that Solaris x86 can be used as a wedge to get in the door and then “up sell” to Solaris on SPARC?”
Sun doesn’t sell Solaris, anymore. Pay attention–it’s free. All they care about now is moving boxes (SPARC or x86) and doing support contracts on them.
“Right now all they seem to be doing is gunning for Redhat…”
Not really. Sun is gunning for Wall Street, major corporate datacenters, HPC, etc. Red Hat isn’t quite upto Sun’s installed base, yet.
So where is the money going to come from?
Hardware, Java licensing, support contracts, non-Solaris software sales, etc. Financially, they’re tons better now than they were last year, so it seems they’re doing something right.
BTW, Fujitsu has long-term plans for SPARC, not just POWER or Itanium, as you imply. Sun and Fujitsu’s Advanced Product Line is their joint project on future datacenter-class SPARC servers.
You’ve missed my point.
You haven’t been paying much attention, then. Sun’s Opteron servers are set up to go head-to-head with Dell and HP.
Technically, yes, Sun’s Opteron boxes are very nice indeed, but I’m talking about restructuring their organization to survive on the vastly reduced margins of commodity hardware when compared to the traditional proprietary hardware market. Sun is currently a bit player in the x86 market, and even if they increase their share significantly, they still won’t be able to support their organization on the margins they will make.
Sun doesn’t sell Solaris, anymore. Pay attention–it’s free. All they care about now is moving boxes (SPARC or x86) and doing support contracts on them.
Please don’t assume I’m an idiot. I’m very well aware of the fact that Solaris is free of charge. The “up sell” I spoke of is about hardware. Specifically, from x86 to SPARC, where Sun’s margins are a lot better. My claim is that this won’t work. Sun really hasn’t been losing its large datacenter customers to Linux, it’s been losing customers desperate to switch to commodity hardware. The edge server market is another matter as there it really is Linux that is driving the market.
Hardware, Java licensing, support contracts, non-Solaris software sales, etc.
I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m not hoping to see Sun fail, actually I’d love to see them get their act together and come back strong. But I’m highly skeptical of Sun’s ability to move into the services market at a level that would keep them afloat. There are some very well heeled competitors in that space with an awful lot of inertia keeping them in place.
Financially, they’re tons better now than they were last year, so it seems they’re doing something right.
Less blood, yes, but their revenues are still shrinking.
Fujitsu has long-term plans for SPARC, not just POWER or Itanium, as you imply. Sun and Fujitsu’s Advanced Product Line is their joint project on future datacenter-class SPARC servers.
I didn’t intend to suggest that Fujitsu was cancelling its SPARC achitecture at this point. But I do believe that their recent announcements about Power and Itanium strongly signal some hesitance about the future of SPARC. Think: exit plan.
And if Sun really has seen the light and embraced its future as a commodity hardware vendor, is it planning on trimming its operations? Or do they have in mind an IBM like services model? If so, how are they going to assemble a channel which can compete with IBM, CA, etc… Right now all they seem to be doing is gunning for Redhat, but even if Sun completely displaced Redhat, Redhat simply doesn’t have earnings sufficient to support an organization this size of Sun.
1) They’re trying to embrace the commodity market, but the fail to grasp the reality of the situation; they are trying to improve hardware support and yet they’re firing their developers – sounds like a stupid plan to me.
Want to save money, get rid of the papers shufflers behind the scenes. Put up a bloody big website where ALL orders can be taken, regardless of where you are in the globe; get rid of sales staff that are no longer needed so that the *only* people left are the ones who CAN bring in the money, and are only required for the big clients – the rest can easily order via the site – millions do this already with Dell – why hasn’t the “dot in dot com” woken up to that reality?
2) They would never become a services company; it *WOULD* save them, but they won’t. The fact is, they spent 10 years screaming and bashing IBM for having a services wing, and it would mean going back on 10 years of ranting – it would be the equivilant of Microsoft accepting that NT kernel is architecturally crap and embracing UNIX as the core of their next OS – it wouldn’t happen – too many ego’s.
3) SUNs marketing is crap. They make DIGITAL’s marketing back in the 1980s look absolutely WONDERFUL. They’re a computer company run by engineers – NOT a good thing to occur. They need to STOP advertising in computer rags, and start aiming their marketing squarely at those who make decisions, and making SURE their ads are in media that these decision makes read.
Decisions makers DO NOT read slashdot, so why advertise there? decision makes DO NOT read development journals, DON’T ADVERTISE THERE!
In the 20 years they’ve been around, I have not seen *ONE* advertisement in the NZIM Management magazine – this is a magazine on the coffee table, desk and in the boardroom of every C*O of every company in New Zealand – why haven’t they advertised on it?
SUNs marketing is crap.
I think the problem with their marketting is its target audience seems to be children or people without any computer background. “We’re the dot it dotcom..” These statements don’t make me want to rush out and buy them or recommend their products/services to anyone. They’ve been riding this Java thing for the last decade. They used to have world class hardware that was rock solid and stable. But after Java took off you saw a shift in the company’s attitude toward technology. They dropped SCSI support in their low-end equipment, and still tried to pawn it off in the same price range as their Ultra-2 class systems. They want to get you hooked on Java/Javasoft. If I didn’t know any better I’d think they were considering selling coffee.
And here I used to think they were an open hardware and software company. If they are then why be against open software like the GPL? Because they have vendor lock-in in mind. They forgot their way, no longer trying to develope the best technology to keep up that image they acheived while they were competing with SGI. SGI was the toy making company back then, remember? Now its Sun, when compared with RedHat and Novell. Not to mention IBM who has been building business machines for almost a century and seems to still be somewhat focused on their market.