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Scott McNealy said early on that retreating to the Data Center was where companies went to die. And at the time was selling workstations on desks and crushing D

by hga 11y ago

Scott McNealy said early on that retreating to the Data Center was where companies went to die. And at the time was selling workstations on desks and crushing DEC.... Maybe. That was before cloud computing based on a much cheaper, faster and more pervasive Internet became such a big thing, plus there were at least 3 things that caused them to ultimate fail to where they "retreated" to: A problem with insufficient error checking and correction plus SRAM chips from IBM that Sun claimed had higher error rates than they anticipated was handled dreadfully, they wouldn't help customers without forcing them to sign NDAs, they initially blamed customer environmental conditions, etc., In short, they showed they couldn't be trusted, which ought to be fatal in the enterprise market. They consciously decreased the quality of their Intel servers, two things I remember was penny pinching by removing one tried and trusted Intel Ethernet chip and substituting a Marvell chipset one, and kept changing the lights out hardware without changing model numbers, which is what Joylent blamed for their stopping buying from them. If you couldn't charge it to a credit card, or bought enterprise quantities of stuff, like more than a couple million dollars, you simply couldn't buy their stuff back when it was higher quality, they insisted you go through a VAR or reseller, but few of those were really interested in selling the hardware, and many of the few that might were squirrelly. So before AWS et. al. became a thing, a lot of companies reluctantly bought Dell hardware simply because they could, and by the time they graduated to buying hardware at "enterprise" levels they already had the in-house expertise to manage cheaper but lower quality Dell systems. And the latter problem, making it hard to buy their stuff (which damages or kills more companies than you think, it's also been a big problem for HP and one reason they didn't get this business), is one of the things that killed DEC. So comparatively simple failures to execute can be a big part of a company failing at the same time it's facing the Innovators Dilemma.

paganel 11y ago
> it's also been a big problem for HP and one reason they didn't get this business This is a little OT already, but I have a friend who does IT purchasing and the horror-stories she tells me about how difficult it is to buy HP products scare me. On top of that their client-service is horrendous, and from time to time the local HP office even tries to "cheat" on its direct clients (among other things by "helping" other, preferred clients, to get lower prices and to win tenders). I'm still wondering how they're still in business.
- hga 11y ago
  I'm still wondering how they're still in business. A "least worst" enterprise vendor? Why is the dollar still strong? The theory I like is because all competing currencies are worse. And while I don't know the competing enterprise market as well, I don't get the impression that today HP has seriously better competitors in full service classic enterprise space (this of course ignores paradigm shifts like the cloud, where I'm sure AWS and company are eating the lunch of various enterprise categories, storage for one). Who's noticeably better than them? Sun and DEC weren't, IBM sure doesn't sound like they have been any time recently (and for service service they've joined the race to the bottom), who else is there? I don't know, it's not a field I follow anymore.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    ... this of course ignores paradigm shifts like the cloud, where I'm sure AWS and company are eating the lunch of various enterprise categories, storage for one HN has its own distortion bubble here. It takes a long (decades) time for new technology / best practices to penetrate into large organizations in stable, established markets. But I think two things are changing that. One: upstream vendor migration to cloud / more modern solutions (e.g. Salesforce). Which decreases in-house footprint. Two: younger talent that's more familiar with modern ways of doing things (working with AWS, cattle services on commodity boxes, etc). I think one of the greatest failures of enterprise companies is that they've historically done a terrible job at making their hardware / software available to students. Which means no reasonably-priced supply of knowledgeable potential employees. And if the TCO of a mainframe / COBOL solution includes scouring the globe for the one remaining person who knows how to work on it and then paying them a premium to do so...? Well, that'll get enterprise (still slowly) moving.
    - collinmanderson 11y ago
      cattle services?
      - ethbro 11y ago
coredog64 11y ago
Sun was killed by the confluence of a poorly timed loan and the GFC. Their revenue/cash reserves were insufficient to cover payments on loans taken at the peak before the crash. When GFC happened, their primary Wall Street customers suddenly turned cost conscious. I think that if they had negotiated slightly better terms on the loan they'd still be around today.
- hga 11y ago
  That sounds like a final straw; if they'd been well managed and healthy, would that have necessarily been a killing blow (I don't know about those details of their fall, just the decline that preceded it and made it inevitable).

by hga 11y ago

paganel 11y ago

> it's also been a big problem for HP and one reason they didn't get this business This is a little OT already, but I have a friend who does IT purchasing and the horror-stories she tells me about how difficult it is to buy HP products scare me. On top of that their client-service is horrendous, and from time to time the local HP office even tries to "cheat" on its direct clients (among other things by "helping" other, preferred clients, to get lower prices and to win tenders). I'm still wondering how they're still in business.

hga 11y ago
I'm still wondering how they're still in business. A "least worst" enterprise vendor? Why is the dollar still strong? The theory I like is because all competing currencies are worse. And while I don't know the competing enterprise market as well, I don't get the impression that today HP has seriously better competitors in full service classic enterprise space (this of course ignores paradigm shifts like the cloud, where I'm sure AWS and company are eating the lunch of various enterprise categories, storage for one). Who's noticeably better than them? Sun and DEC weren't, IBM sure doesn't sound like they have been any time recently (and for service service they've joined the race to the bottom), who else is there? I don't know, it's not a field I follow anymore.
- ethbro 11y ago
  ... this of course ignores paradigm shifts like the cloud, where I'm sure AWS and company are eating the lunch of various enterprise categories, storage for one HN has its own distortion bubble here. It takes a long (decades) time for new technology / best practices to penetrate into large organizations in stable, established markets. But I think two things are changing that. One: upstream vendor migration to cloud / more modern solutions (e.g. Salesforce). Which decreases in-house footprint. Two: younger talent that's more familiar with modern ways of doing things (working with AWS, cattle services on commodity boxes, etc). I think one of the greatest failures of enterprise companies is that they've historically done a terrible job at making their hardware / software available to students. Which means no reasonably-priced supply of knowledgeable potential employees. And if the TCO of a mainframe / COBOL solution includes scouring the globe for the one remaining person who knows how to work on it and then paying them a premium to do so...? Well, that'll get enterprise (still slowly) moving.
  - collinmanderson 11y ago
    cattle services?
    - ethbro 11y ago

coredog64 11y ago

Sun was killed by the confluence of a poorly timed loan and the GFC. Their revenue/cash reserves were insufficient to cover payments on loans taken at the peak before the crash. When GFC happened, their primary Wall Street customers suddenly turned cost conscious. I think that if they had negotiated slightly better terms on the loan they'd still be around today.

hga 11y ago
That sounds like a final straw; if they'd been well managed and healthy, would that have necessarily been a killing blow (I don't know about those details of their fall, just the decline that preceded it and made it inevitable).