4 ms·

Sun CEO Jon Schwartz to Resign

22 points by alexandros 17y ago

patrickgzill 17y ago
While I personally liked him, I couldn't figure out their strategy, leading me to believe that they didn't really know what they were doing. You used to be able to buy low-end SPARC systems for $995 (v100, Blade 100) now the cheapest system is much more than that - the same pricing strategy that ruined SGI: as their market share declined they retreated to higher end customers, which led to more market share declines.
- ssp 17y ago
  Companies that are getting eaten from below have very few options. Do you really think Sun could have made a profit selling equipment at PC margins? That requires an entirely different cost structure. If they had tried, you could have written a slightly different comment: Sun used to make really high-quality equipment, but now they are making crappy PCs like everyone else - maybe they should have focused on the customers willing to pay for quality. Schwartz's task was essentially impossible, and selling to IBM or Oracle was probably the best outcome he could have hoped for.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > Companies that are getting eaten from below have very few options. Companies die if there isn't an entry point that makes sense for customers. It doesn't have to be at the same price point as the folks eating them from below, but it does have to be some place where customers are willing to enter. The mid/high-range sun systems are about as expensive as comparable PC based systems. However, the PC systems have a low cost option for development. Suns, not so much. It doesn't have to cost $500, but it can't cost $10k either.
    - bonaldi 17y ago
      Sun had pretty great entry points on 1U servers around the $1-2k mark. The Fire X2xxx line was price-competitive and worked well with Solaris
- rbanffy 17y ago
  > ...which led to more market share declines. Which lead to decreased network effects that, in turn, hurt the viability of their whole stack (SPARC+Solaris+apps) You have to sell something entry-level unless you want to be servicing legacy customers forever. I believe IBM is making with POWER/AIX exactly the same mistake Sun made. Fortunately for them, their legacy customers are less loyal than Sun's were. In order to sell servers a year in the future, you must captivate developers right now.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Oops... IBM's p, i and zSeries legacy customers are more loyal than Sun's were...
- thras 17y ago
  Here's a helpful tool for figuring out Sun's strategy on any given day: http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.media/sunstrategy.gif http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.media/sunstr...
JunkDNA 17y ago
"...leaving the company in the hands of new owner Oracle (ORCL) and its very profit-minded leadership" Maybe I'm reading too much into the above statement, but the point of a company is to make profits. There are these things called "charities" for cases when you don't want to do that. That said, Sun's approach in recent years has certainly been a mess. They have failed to really make open source work for them as a strategy in the same way companies like IBM and Apple have.
- davidw 17y ago
  Apple's open source strategy is well defined, but not, shall we say, integral to their company. They take what works for them, give a bit back here and there, and mostly do proprietary, closed software and "ecosystems". In some ways that's better than a mess (Nokia), but they're not really big open source boosters in the way IBM are. Sun has given a lot to open source, but they don't seem to have gotten as much back as IBM. I think once again the issue is that there wasn't a particularly clear strategy.
  - andrewljohnson 17y ago
    Yep, it sucks being the company that owns Java and puts open source on a pedestal, but gets beat badly in creating the ecosystem for Java development... i.e. Eclipse. NetBeans was never even a contender.
    - kls 17y ago
      >Eclipse. NetBeans was never even a contender The sad part is that it is far superior now. A friend of mine converted me 8 months ago and I am petrified that it will get lost in the shuffle now. The thought of going back to Eclipse is mortifying after having such a consistent experience with Netbeans.
      - noarchy 17y ago
        I'll concur, as I've been getting quite comfy using Netbeans. If Netbeans gets hung out to dry, it does mean going back to Eclipse (I'm not really into the idea of buying an IDEA license).

22 points by alexandros 17y ago

While I personally liked him, I couldn't figure out their strategy, leading me to believe that they didn't really know what they were doing. You used to be able to buy low-end SPARC systems for $995 (v100, Blade 100) now the cheapest system is much more than that - the same pricing strategy that ruined SGI: as their market share declined they retreated to higher end customers, which led to more market share declines.

ssp 17y ago
Companies that are getting eaten from below have very few options. Do you really think Sun could have made a profit selling equipment at PC margins? That requires an entirely different cost structure. If they had tried, you could have written a slightly different comment: Sun used to make really high-quality equipment, but now they are making crappy PCs like everyone else - maybe they should have focused on the customers willing to pay for quality. Schwartz's task was essentially impossible, and selling to IBM or Oracle was probably the best outcome he could have hoped for.
- anamax 17y ago
  > Companies that are getting eaten from below have very few options. Companies die if there isn't an entry point that makes sense for customers. It doesn't have to be at the same price point as the folks eating them from below, but it does have to be some place where customers are willing to enter. The mid/high-range sun systems are about as expensive as comparable PC based systems. However, the PC systems have a low cost option for development. Suns, not so much. It doesn't have to cost $500, but it can't cost $10k either.
  - bonaldi 17y ago
    Sun had pretty great entry points on 1U servers around the $1-2k mark. The Fire X2xxx line was price-competitive and worked well with Solaris
rbanffy 17y ago
> ...which led to more market share declines. Which lead to decreased network effects that, in turn, hurt the viability of their whole stack (SPARC+Solaris+apps) You have to sell something entry-level unless you want to be servicing legacy customers forever. I believe IBM is making with POWER/AIX exactly the same mistake Sun made. Fortunately for them, their legacy customers are less loyal than Sun's were. In order to sell servers a year in the future, you must captivate developers right now.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Oops... IBM's p, i and zSeries legacy customers are more loyal than Sun's were...
thras 17y ago
Here's a helpful tool for figuring out Sun's strategy on any given day: http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.media/sunstrategy.gif http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.media/sunstr...

JunkDNA 17y ago

"...leaving the company in the hands of new owner Oracle (ORCL) and its very profit-minded leadership" Maybe I'm reading too much into the above statement, but the point of a company is to make profits. There are these things called "charities" for cases when you don't want to do that. That said, Sun's approach in recent years has certainly been a mess. They have failed to really make open source work for them as a strategy in the same way companies like IBM and Apple have.

davidw 17y ago
Apple's open source strategy is well defined, but not, shall we say, integral to their company. They take what works for them, give a bit back here and there, and mostly do proprietary, closed software and "ecosystems". In some ways that's better than a mess (Nokia), but they're not really big open source boosters in the way IBM are. Sun has given a lot to open source, but they don't seem to have gotten as much back as IBM. I think once again the issue is that there wasn't a particularly clear strategy.
- andrewljohnson 17y ago
  Yep, it sucks being the company that owns Java and puts open source on a pedestal, but gets beat badly in creating the ecosystem for Java development... i.e. Eclipse. NetBeans was never even a contender.
  - kls 17y ago
    >Eclipse. NetBeans was never even a contender The sad part is that it is far superior now. A friend of mine converted me 8 months ago and I am petrified that it will get lost in the shuffle now. The thought of going back to Eclipse is mortifying after having such a consistent experience with Netbeans.
    - noarchy 17y ago
      I'll concur, as I've been getting quite comfy using Netbeans. If Netbeans gets hung out to dry, it does mean going back to Eclipse (I'm not really into the idea of buying an IDEA license).