Sun Microsystems will begin compensating its sales staff for Solaris deals that involve hardware from other manufacturers, as part of the company’s efforts to fend off competition from low-cost servers running Linux.
Sun sales tactic targets Linux
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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39 Comments
2004-09-01 3:17 am
Anonymous
Too little too late they should have recognized Linux as their competetion years ago(when they thought Microsoft was their competetion). Again just more thrashing around from a dieing company <shakes head>
2004-09-01 7:08 am
Anonymous
can Sun Studio 9 compile the linux kernel? Most of the 2.6 kernel (AFAIK) is C99 compliant, the Sun Compiler should be able to compile the kernel and instead of gcc benchmarks, Sun should compare their compiler to Intel’s Compiler and VS2005, I would rather not see Sun’s compiler beat an open-source compiler, instead S1S9 should be compared to their money-making brethren. And if you find bugs, why not fix them? 
I know sun engineers read this forum (judging from the response to the dtrace post), why not support the linux kernel on x86 compiled with your S1S9 compiler. And then you could “gift” it to to RedHat competitors if you so desired. I think the open source community may be impressed if the S1S9 compiler can compile a working linux kernel that runs faster than the same kernel compiled with gcc||icc (*icc is Intel’s linux compiler*)
IBM,HP,SGI,Intel,etc are paying people to work on the linux kernel … has sun’s contribution been as large?
2004-09-01 7:10 am
Anonymous
Frankly I welcome Sun onto my desktop. I think that while open source is nice open standards is the most important. I think what Sun can really bring to the table is proprietary drivers. I can still run my libre software on top of that. If they can offer better hardware support than Linux and offer a decent pri e then I don’t mind paying a reasonable fee.
2004-09-01 8:40 am
Anonymous
“The market reality is that Solaris has a big uphill climb in order to compete with Linux in most areas, except for the biggest of big iron.”
What do you mean by most areas?. Where do you think Solaris
cannot compete with linux?
“Why would customers choose a more closed, more expensive OS over a more open, less expensive, and usually just as capable OS? Sun isn’t asking themselves that question, thinking that customers just don’t know what’s good for them, or desperately hanging on to past Solaris glories. ”
More closed yes although it absolutely IS being open
sourced. More expensive, no. Linux is only ‘free’ if you
just want the software and don’t mind being a beta tester.
Red Hat now costs more than a Solaris subscription.
If you want Linux then Sun does that too. The opteron
boxes are all qualified to Run Solaris x86, Linux and
even Windows. And they are cheaper than Dell. More and
more of Suns software stack will be available for Linux.
2004-09-01 10:41 am
Anonymous
IBM,HP,SGI,Intel,etc are paying people to work on the linux kernel … has sun’s contribution been as large?
No, Sun doesn’t develop the Linux kernel. That’s their fair right. They profit from something else, obviously Sun does contribute to FOSS projects such as OpenOffice, GNOME and others.
2004-09-01 11:18 am
Anonymous
IBM,HP,SGI,Intel,etc are paying people to work on the linux kernel ..
the first three names just have to have something to replace their AIX, HP-UX, and Irix.
the last name, you can see very obviously why. as most of general-purpose Linux boxes sales is based on x86 cpu.
Of course, Sun do sale GNU/Linux system.
But I don’t think Sun see any benefit of Linux-as-a-kernel for themselves.
And that’s why the next version of JDS could be a GNU/Solaris system (SunOS as a kernel + several Solaris backends + GNU tools and user environments).
2004-09-01 11:24 am
Anonymous
Hi,
Oh boy, here we go again =) – unleash the rabid linux attack-dogs. Strictly speaking, that includes me, since I’m a Slackware user normally, but I’ve got study-leave from my trolling responsibilities *grin.
I’d have to concur with John Anderson though, about RH’s pricing – for those too lazy to bother researching before trolling, the link is [url=http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/purchase/]www.redhat.com/software/rhel/purchase/[/url]. It’s like some nightmarish version of Orwell’s Animal Farm – as soon as one of the OSS player’s rises to the top, well…
Oh yeah, and in case someone says what I know they’re going to say – Fedora is *not* enterprise ready. Furthermore, IMHO, it’s a laggy, bloated, buggy, purely-for-testing pile of rot (that last part is purely my opinion, of course). And before you ask, yes, I have tried it (although admittedly not Core 3).
And a lot of the OSS crew seem to forget Sun’s contributions – Java, OpenOffice, parts of Gnome, HIG etc.
Bye,
Victor
2004-09-01 11:50 am
Anonymous
Fedora is *not* enterprise ready.
Duh. Does RedHat claim otherwise? If you claim so, please provide some reliable sources.
Java
Huh? Java what? Oh, you mean the ports of the various Java components…
2004-09-01 12:15 pm
Anonymous
> Too little too late they should have recognized Linux as their competetion years ago(when they thought Microsoft was their competetion). Again just more thrashing around from a dieing company
Get a clue before you start bleating about Sun dying and read some news for a change. Sun is not dying by a long shot, just recently Sun reported the highest growth in server shipments out of all top server vendors. According to IDC Sun just stole back the title of #1 Unix vendor from HP and is the only vendor out of top 5 that reported consistent growth in server shipments quarter over quarter and year over year. If anything I see Sun growing with its current product line and especially with Solaris 10 coming out soon.
> Why would customers choose a more closed, more expensive OS over a more open, less expensive, and usually just as capable OS? Sun isn’t asking themselves that question, thinking that customers just don’t know what’s good for them, or desperately hanging on to past Solaris glories.
Says someone who has absolutely no clue about Solaris. Solaris even at version 9 has got everything Linux has got a bus load more and is still being cheaper than Linux at the same time (compared to RedHat/SuSE). When Solaris 10 comes out Linux will be so far behind that it won’t be even funny. There is absolutely nothing on the horizon in the Linux front to counter Dtrace, Zones, or ZFS. The only thing where Linux is superior to Solaris is wider support for crappy PC hardware — as a server OS Solaris is still miles ahead of Linux and I don’t forsee it changing in the near term, actually the gap will most likely widen with Solaris 10 coming out.
2004-09-01 1:01 pm
Anonymous
Hi,
dpi: I was actually referring to certain posters (no names) on /., osnews etc. who claim otherwise. And yes, you’re right that Redhat make no such claim. On http://fedora.redhat.com , it says “a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc.”.
Fedora is not a stable, usable, well-tested distro – and it never will be (although it seems as if Fedora Legacy is trying to change that.) So unless you feel like slogging out hard dollars for RHEL, your choices for a economical linux-based enterprise distro are somewhat limited.
That’s the point I was trying to make – that Sun *does* have a chance, in fact, quite a good chance of competing against Linux on this front. Of course, for my desktop, I’ll stick to Slackware =) (although I’ve been trying out the Solaris Express builds every couple of months).
Bye,
Victor
2004-09-01 1:27 pm
Anonymous
What do you mean by most areas?. Where do you think Solaris cannot compete with linux?
In terms of absolute performance and capabilities, it can. However, Solaris offers power and features that hardly get utilized, except for in the biggest of big iron. Sun itself has said that Solaris customers typically only utilize 10-20% of it’s capabilities. So, in areas ranging from small servers up to medium and medium/big servers, Linux does just fine, thank you very much. And Linux usually costs less (Red Hat notwithstanding), has more driver support, and more available software. Plus, with Linux being open, there are multiple vendors and ISVs that one can go with. If you get Solaris, you are beholden to Sun.
2004-09-01 1:42 pm
Anonymous
>>Get a clue before you start bleating about Sun dying and read some news for a change.<<
Wait a minute. Is sunw dying? Practially every computer company is down after the dot-com crash. For example, IBM is down from $120 to $85. But sunw is down from $64 to $4. Even $2B from msft didn’t seem to make much difference.
Sunw’s server shipments may be up, but how about profits? You can sell anything if you price it right, and market hard enough – but making a solid profit is the tricky part, also the important part.
Of the companies that really depend on UNIX for their existance: scox, sunw, and sgi; sunw is holding up the best. But, really all of those companies are, or are becoming, niche player.
That’s how it looks to me anyway.
2004-09-01 2:03 pm
Anonymous
Of the companies that really depend on UNIX for their existance: scox, sunw, and sgi; sunw is holding up the best. But, really all of those companies are, or are becoming, niche player.
What SUN is agressive marketing – along the lines of what Microsoft does. They have great servers, quad Opteron servers, with 8 ways just around the corner, throw Solaris 10 ontop once ready, along with JDS that will make setting up and managing a Solaris server childs play.
SUN’s main problem has always been marketing; just like Digital, great products maketed poorly. If they sold Sushi they would call it “raw fish rolled up in rice and sea-weed paper”.
2004-09-01 2:13 pm
Anonymous
Victor, no problem, we agree on that. Comparing Fedora or Debian to RHEL or Solaris is just apples and oranges.
The Anonymous dyn.iinet.net.au
“When Solaris 10 comes out Linux will be so far behind that it won’t be even funny. There is absolutely nothing on the horizon in the Linux front to counter Dtrace, Zones, or ZFS.”
..takes zeal to a new dimension though. It’s not as if these are some “magic” which make it 100/0 or something (Linux has a simple DTrace-like utility. Ever considered that’s enough? What about all the other aspects?) but its sure something to keep an eye on, and interesting.
People like this should go work on some marketing dept. Fits right in as a puzzle piece. Or perhaps that’s the case anyway ;^)
PS: Is there any news on JDS? I thought a new version would come out Soon by this time?
2004-09-01 2:18 pm
Anonymous
In our shop it’s a draw between Linux and Solaris. We use magnificent Sun hardware for our serverplatform and run FreeBSD on it. Fantastic combination. Our Solaris licences therefore share the shelves with our SuSe Linux box-kits. Looking at the boxes, I say it’s a draw. The blue/white/yellow of Solaris doesn’t look more prettier or uglier than the White/green SuSe boxes. I do like that red deamon though….
2004-09-01 3:43 pm
Anonymous
Sun is comfortably entrenched in a variety of market niches, and whatever dumb thing they do is not going to change much.
One more, one less…
2004-09-01 4:12 pm
Anonymous
In terms of absolute performance and capabilities, it can. However, Solaris offers power and features that hardly get utilized, except for in the biggest of big iron. Sun itself has said that Solaris customers typically only utilize 10-20% of it’s capabilities. So, in areas ranging from small servers up to medium and medium/big servers, Linux does just fine, thank you very much. And Linux usually costs less (Red Hat notwithstanding), has more driver support, and more available software. Plus, with Linux being open, there are multiple vendors and ISVs that one can go with. If you get Solaris, you are beholden to Sun.
Unless you’ve got the source for these statistics, you’ve misunderstood or perverted the actual statistics. To my knowledge, it was reported that some customers have extended periods of low server CPU utilization that ranges around 10-20%. This is completely different from feature utilization, each Solaris customer is going to use their features differently. I would imagine that each Linux user does the same. With these low CPU utilization numbers in mind, Sun has actually done a lot of work to improve the situation with features like Zones, which would allow you to run a number of virtual application environments on one computer, thereby putting your CPUs to better use. I don’t see this feature in Linux, so I think your comparison is inaccurate. If you’d like to continue to have underwhelming server utilization, then sure, stick with Linux.
A commercial deployment of Linux does not cost less. You’ve already admitted this.
Also, your claim that if you get Solaris, you’re beholden to Sun is simply wrong. Solaris is fully UNIX compliant, so you can use any other UNIX(tm) OS, something that is certainly not the case with Linux. Further, Sun goes out of their way to develop to and participate in open-standards bodies. The same can’t always be said for other software vendors. Sun is also open-sourcing Solaris, so it’s unclear how you can claim that Linux has them beat in this respect.
SUN’s main problem has always been marketing; just like Digital, great products maketed poorly. If they sold Sushi they would call it “raw fish rolled up in rice and sea-weed paper”.
Hehe…Probably. Although with the current marketing strategies, they might be called, “N1 Grid Fish Cylinders(tm)”.
..takes zeal to a new dimension though. It’s not as if these are some “magic” which make it 100/0 or something (Linux has a simple DTrace-like utility. Ever considered that’s enough? What about all the other aspects?) but its sure something to keep an eye on, and interesting.
… takes uninformed posting and missing the original poster’s point to a new low. Your comparison of DTrace and whatever you consider the Linux equivalent to be is not much of a comparison. It’s akin to saying that DTrace and an expensive microwave are similar enough because both of them use probes as part of their instrumentation. The Linux “equivalents” do not come close to the design goals in DTrace. Perhaps you should consider reading the DTrace paper that was published recently?
You’ve also missed the original poster’s point that Linux hasn’t done a lot to create new features, rather most Linux development centers around re-implementing existing features from other operating systems. You have yet to give an example of Linux’s uniqueness in this regard.
2004-09-01 5:46 pm
Anonymous
MJ, you are obviously a Sun / Solaris zealot, so having a decent conversation with you is going to be hard.
My main point in these postings is that Linux is simply “good enough” for most server usage. Sure, when comparing Solaris to Linux head to head, Solaris would win out on features and capabilities. But most customers won’t use many of those extra features and capabilities that Solaris offers. It’s just like MS Office, which keeps adding features that only a small percentage of power users actually utilize, and the rest of the users are stuck with something that is too expensive and has too much bloat.
In a budget conscience world, why buy a $70,000 Mercedes (Solaris) when a $20,000 Honda (Linux) will get you there just fine?
Solaris can compete directly with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the Mercedes on price of the Linux world) on price. There’s no doubt about that. But Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not the only Linux choice. There’s SuSE, Debian (obtaining support through an ISV), Mandrake, and tons of Red Hat knock offs (which are cheaper and have the same code base as RHEL).
Look, I’m just pointing out market reality. The fact of the matter is, Sun has been loosing money for 12 straight quarters, and it’s stock is near “junk stock” status. This is all thanks to competition from Linux, where companies and websites started lapping up cheap Linux servers running on x86, replacing ultra expensive Solaris servers running on Sparc. Sun is still banking too much on Solaris. Solaris should remain in Sun’s product porfolio for a long time. After all, all car manufacturers keep their “marquee” model. But they still base their bread and butter on less featured and more affordable models.
And none of my posts have been anti-Solaris. As far as I know, Solaris is the most capable and highly regarded high-end proprietary Unix flavor out there. For that, Solaris gets my utmost respect. But for most server (and desktop) jobs, Linux does just fine, thank you very much.
2004-09-01 6:30 pm
Anonymous
Linux is a non-competitive OS. That is to say the purpose of the Linux is not to dominate the world but to make something better than what is available now. You’d have to be an ol’ schooler to know this. You’d have to have been around back at the beginning or close. Before Novell, before SCO, and before M$ took Linux serioulsy. It’s greed and ignorance that creates this “Competitive ” edge for Linux not he OS.
-Nx
2004-09-01 6:49 pm
Anonymous
>MJ, you are obviously a Sun / Solaris zealot, so having a decent conversation with you is going to be hard
Well, it sounds like you are Linux zealot so I would call that a draw. 🙂
I agree with your point that at a time when money was scarce
Linux on commodity hardware, which was fast, looked like a
damn good deal compared to expensive solaris licenses
runningon expensive hardware, which in a lot cases was
slower than x86. The problem that I see is that linux per
se has condensed into one or two (i.e RH, Suse) distros
which now have a virtual monopoly on enterprise customers
or those customers that typically aren’t interested unless there is a support contract. In the meantime, Sun has being
slowly dragging the oil tanker back on course and looks
fitter and better positioned to be competitive than it
has for a long while. The situation today is that Sun
has a viable x86 OS in Solaris 10 (which has some truly
differentiating features), can you sell you linux if you
want and can also sell you opteron based hardware that
rips. It can do all of this at a very competitive price
with the gravitas of a big company with a decent reputation
(wrt support services) behind it. Now, I admit there are
customers (they are the minority) who really need the
source which is why they love linux. Well, when Solaris
open sourced you will get that too.
I am sorry but I see no basis for your Mercedes/Honda
argument, especially when you look at TCO which real
businesses make their decisions on (as opposed to purchase
and setup costs in isolation).
Don’t get me wrong, I think Linux is great for webservers,
cheap clusters etc. (i.e. google) and it definitely has a
great future.
2004-09-01 7:35 pm
Anonymous
The Linux “equivalents” do not come close to the design goals in DTrace.
That’s why i wrote “simple”, but somehow that’s not Good Enough for a zealot?
Perhaps you should consider reading the DTrace paper that was published recently?
I did. While doing that, i stumbled upon the earlier mentioned information straight from a sun.com blog.
A commercial deployment of Linux does not cost less.
So, according to you, Google’s cluster really could be replaced just as well by Solaris because the commercial deployment is the same. How about the licenses for Solaris? Don’t start about some kind of support contract. That doesn’t apply here.
See, that’s what you get when you miss nuance, MJ. When you’re blind. Its getting boring, its always the same in Sun discussions here on this website…
2004-09-01 9:12 pm
Anonymous
“So, according to you, Google’s cluster really could be replaced just as well by Solaris because the commercial deployment is the same. How about the licenses for Solaris? Don’t start about some kind of support contract. That doesn’t apply here.”
No, I don’t think that googles cluster could currently be
replaced by and kind of Solaris installation. Currently.
Google is not a typical site though really is it? (or a
typical customer for that matter.) They are possibly
unique and certainly one of the minority where a support
contract is not a factor.
I know a lot of people, particularly linux advocates, would
rather that everyone did business like this. However,
the facts are (personal opinions are irrelevent) that the
majority would rather pay somebody to take care of all that
hard stuff (maintenance and development). If things go
wrong they know they can pick up the phone, blame it on
somebody else and get it fixed.
2004-09-01 10:23 pm
Anonymous
> So, according to you, Google’s cluster really could be replaced just as well by Solaris because the commercial deployment is the same. How about the licenses for Solaris?
Sure Linux could be easily replaced with Solaris in Google’s cluster and more than likely Google would have gotten a better deal on licensing and support from Sun than from RedHat, that’s for sure.
2004-09-01 10:55 pm
Anonymous
Well, it sounds like you are Linux zealot so I would call that a draw. 🙂
Fair enough. 🙂
I suppose that in calling MJ a zealot, I came off as a zealot myself – not my intention.
You make some good points about Sun slowly putting the Solaris oil tanker back on course. They do seem to be trying to (finally) react to the market, and deliver what it demands. In many cases, Solaris can go head to head with Red Hat and SuSe in price.
I wonder why it is, then, that Amazon (for instance) recently completed a complete conversion from Solaris servers to multiple Linux clusters. According to them, they are now running completely on Linux servers, where they used to run Solaris. It’s probably because the their TCO was substantially less, and they could still get the kind of performance and up-time the world’s largest e-tailer demands.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Linux is great for webservers,
cheap clusters etc. (i.e. google) and it definitely has a
great future.
Bingo. This used to be Sun’s big cash cow. Through the Dot Com bubble years, Solaris was THE server OS of choice for web servers. But, as you said, Linux is great for web servers, and in many cases cheaper.
2004-09-02 1:42 am
Anonymous
> I wonder why it is, then, that Amazon (for instance) recently completed a complete conversion from Solaris servers to multiple Linux clusters. According to them, they are now running completely on Linux servers, where they used to run Solaris.
Check your sources, Amazon.com was never a big Solaris deployment, it was mostly HP-UX environment, so that was HP-UX that was mostly getting the boot in favor of Linux (I wonder why).
2004-09-02 2:29 am
Anonymous
lol.. Sun posted profit last quarter. They haven’t done that in a LONG Time. All of a sudden people aren’t going crazy that they actually had a profitable quarter since Schwartz became president… They rather want a dissapointing one so they can bash em.
Hmm.. regarding the JDS.. JDS runs on Linux and Solaris. It’s been a in beta for solaris for awhile. They plan to sell the desktop for multiple OS’s (so they are thinking about)… anywho solaris dosent have that many desktop drivers… which is the problem.
Ah, I love capitolism.
2004-09-02 2:31 am
Anonymous
well.. Google has their own version of linux that they are running that’s fine-tuned to their systems. It’s not your regular distro.
2004-09-02 2:32 am
Anonymous
Check your sources, Amazon.com was never a big Solaris deployment, it was mostly HP-UX environment, so that was HP-UX that was mostly getting the boot in favor of Linux (I wonder why).
Well, I could be entirely wrong. I could swear that it was Solaris, and not HP-UX, according to the article I read last month. But then, I spend a lot of time programming and browsing forums like OSNews, so perhaps my memory is strained. 😉
That being said, HP-UX is also a very, very highly regarded proprietary Unix, that is great for the biggest of big iron (which HP sells it for, as well as their own cpus).
I’ve read studies (probably Gartner or IDC … can’t remember which – ya know, that memory thing) that ranked HP-UX at or above Solaris is many benchmark tests. Now, benchmark tests can be notoriously biased and unreliable. But they can also be decent indicators for would be buyers.
But the ultimate point is, HP-UX is another industrial strength Unix with lots of features and capabilities and is very comparable to Solaris. And I don’t want to hear arguments of “But Solaris has x feature and HP-UX doesn’t”, or “I’ve used both, and HP-UX sux”. Nit-picking about direct comparisons of features is not relevant. HP-UX is a great Unix, just like Solaris. Many long time Unix admins think so.
So if it’s HP-UX that Amazon ditched for Linux clusters, the point still remains that Linux supplied a better TCO for Amazon. It would most likely be the same with Solaris, although I know that Sun is now aggressively pricing Solaris to compete with Linux in such situations.
HP realizes that HP-UX is best suited for their biggest of big iron, and aggressively markets Linux on Intel (along with Windows). They try to be platform nuetral, and try to sell lot’s of hardware and services. I really really think Sun should do the same with Solaris.
2004-09-02 9:48 am
Anonymous
“I wonder why it is, then, that Amazon (for instance) recently completed a complete conversion from Solaris servers to multiple Linux clusters. According to them, they are now running completely on Linux servers, where they used to run Solaris. It’s probably because the their TCO was substantially less, and they could still get the kind of performance and up-time the world’s largest e-tailer demands.”
OK, I could be wrong but the google references (ooh the
irony) I can find to this indicate that it was costed and
announced in late 2001. I would assert that the market is
a very different place today (i.e. most businesses have
caught up/caught on with linux and linux now (virtually) =
Red Hat (if you want apps and ISV support)):
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-275155.html?legacy=cnet
And this:
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5145482.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj…
Makes it sound like they are still doing pretty well with
Linux. I would be interested to find out what their costs
are though and whether Sun/IBM/HP/MS could be competitive
in todays market.
2004-09-02 9:52 am
Anonymous
No, I don’t think that googles cluster could currently be
replaced by and kind of Solaris installation. Currently.
Google is not a typical site though really is it? (or a
typical customer for that matter.)
We agree on this and this illustrates my point the original author was wrong with his overly enthusiast assertion. I wouldn’t claim the opposite either. E.g. assume DTrace is valuable for one whereas the alternatives Linux provides aren’t valuable enough; what happens next is debatable. The choice could be Solaris.
..but that doesn’t count for everyone.
However, the facts are (personal opinions are irrelevent) that the majority would rather pay somebody to take care of all that hard stuff (maintenance and development). If things go wrong they know they can pick up the phone, blame it on
somebody else and get it fixed.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean Solaris is the solution there. That’s what marketing dept. wants you to believe. That there ain’t an alternative.
2004-09-02 12:51 pm
Anonymous
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean Solaris is the solution there. That’s what marketing dept. wants you to believe. That there ain’t an alternative.”
Sorry, I wasn’t referring to Solaris explicitly here. It
was a more general comment on the differences between
running a ‘free’ development OS (whereby choosing to deploy
on it you are also choosing to also be in the OS
development business) vs. buying an OS with a support
contract. This would also include RHEL, IBM, HP etc.
I guess the underlying point is that the market dynamics
have changed. ‘free’ os is not really free anymore as
people in suits try and make money out of them and
formerly proprietary vendors try and drop in on the linux
wave (kooks).
Quit smoking from that one!, look at todays sun’s home page http://www.sun.com, anyway here a little more FUD, as most proprietary UNIX vendors like to spread against GNU and Linux
http://www.sun.com/2004-0831/feature/
I don’t see anyone having a problem with Sun using Solaris to go head to head with Linux. I would guess that 99.9999999999% of Linux users, providers, developers, advocates or anyone else would welcome the competition from Solaris.
But I would also guess that those same people think that Sun is stupid for doing so.
The market reality is that Solaris has a big uphill climb in order to compete with Linux in most areas, except for the biggest of big iron.
Why would customers choose a more closed, more expensive OS over a more open, less expensive, and usually just as capable OS? Sun isn’t asking themselves that question, thinking that customers just don’t know what’s good for them, or desperately hanging on to past Solaris glories.
I’m not knocking Solaris, nor do I want Sun to fail. But they really seem to be putting their head in the sand. If I were in their shoes, I would keep Solaris around for the biggest of big iron and their own hardware (like IBM does with AIX, and HP with HP-UX), then dive in heavy with cheap Linux servers, and sell JES and JDS, and sell services to go with it. Then they might be able to turn things around.
Benchmarks showing the superior aspects of Sun’s technology.
At least its not Schwartz incoherently ranting about how much Redhat sucks.
But where is the benchmark showing a the 100% speed bost running Java GUI applications on Solaris x86 compared with Linux?
Where is the benchmark showing Java Server applications running 100% faster on Solaris x86 compared with Linux?
Why isn’t Sun tuning Solaris x86 into the ‘Real Ultimate Java Platform’ – to me this is the one and only area they can actually out-engineer the open source world in the short-to-medium term.
I don’t understand why Sun thinks that YACOULOS (Yet Another Crufty Old UNIX-Like Operating System) will turn anyone’s head, especially when its from one of the companies most directly reponsible for the total stagnation and abandonment of proprietary UNIX as a workstation/low end server solution in the 1990s.
Don’t start on with the ‘But Solaris is Real UNIX’ – thats a ball and chain round the customers ankle, not a good thing.
For sun, Linux is on the desktop and in big business volumes (UK NHS is the latest) and the server room is solaris. Solaris because it’s then easier to keep tabs on what the clients are doing with their machines and when the opportunity arises, try to sell hardware as well. And for that to work, they need clients to implement applications on Java. For server stuff, it’s easier.
The model is less convincing if the OS they ship is Linux since the client can just say, “ok then, buy now” and live their life.
Now there has to be something more because that alone won’t cut it. If a client is already prepared to use “standard” hardware, then they are already on their road to linux or BSD….
That’s exactly what they are doing, except they are also pushing entry-level Solaris/SPARC and /x86 systems. Sun’s x86 servers and workstations are very aggressively priced, and you can get them with Linux or Solaris.
At least its not Schwartz incoherently ranting about how much Redhat sucks.
This is another major problem with Sun – they keep making themselves look like directionless dears in caught in a headlight thrashing about looking for a business plan while spewing off idiotic nonsense.
One moment they are mouthing off about Red Hat being proprietary. The next they’re mouthing off about open sourcing Java, then saying they won’t, then saying they will again. The next they’re mouthing off about open sourcing Solaris, then they’re not, then they are again. Then Sun is great buddies with MS (a $2 billion friendship), then they say MS sucks again.
Whatching Sun thrash about and listening to Sun mouth off, how can any CTO or IT manager who wants to keep their job take Sun seriously as a potential IT vendor?
Where is the benchmark showing Java Server applications running 100% faster on Solaris x86 compared with Linux?
It can’t be found because one of Sun’s own internal memos (which was leaked) states that Java runs like crap on Solaris:
http://www.internalmemos.com/memos/memodetails.php?memo_id=1321
I want Sun to survive. They’ve invested lot’s of R&D $ and provided some good products. They have also made great contributions to open source, with OpenOffice, contributions to Gnome, and Project Looking Glass. Plus, making Java a free download, and having the JCP, has been great for the IT business. And finally Sun has traditionally been a great thorn in MS’s side.
But they need to get their act together, fast.
Check out that header on the Sun’s Feature Story page:
Boost runtime performance and application delivery on Solaris and Lunix with Sun’s new Sun Studio 9.
Subtle troll or Freudian slip?
Quit smoking from that one!, look at todays sun’s home page http://www.sun.com, anyway here a little more FUD, as most proprietary UNIX vendors like to spread against GNU and Linux