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How would this have prevented Sun from “imploding”? Wasn’t Sun’s main issue that they were selling extremely expensive hardware and a proprietary OS that were

How would this have prevented Sun from “imploding”? Wasn’t Sun’s main issue that they were selling extremely expensive hardware and a proprietary OS that were completely overtaken by x86 and Linux? I remember getting to play with the very expensive hardware they’d handout to startups in the late 90’s and early 00’s. It was good hardware, but it wasn’t so much better than the slightly more buggy and much less costly Linux systems at the time.

smart_jackal 6y ago
Sun's main issue was that they failed to capitalize on all the wonderful tech they had including Java, VirtualBox and Openoffice/StarOffice. Even after open sourcing all of them, they could have kept the company running by marketing to enterprises and offering support. If they had learned these skills from companies like RH/SUSE/IBM, then Java would have been in much better hands today.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  First of all, Oracle and IBM have been part of Java world since the early days with their own Java implementations, and Oracle even jumped on Sun's boat regarding those Java based thin client workstations that were all the rage around 1998. Secondly, with Sun you would never had gotten AOT, because they saw it as something that 3rd party vendors like Oracle and IBM should care about, they were fully into "JIT or bust", and MaximeVM would have followed the same path as SPOTs, instead of turning into GraalVM.
Twirrim 6y ago
According to Larry Ellison, one of the biggest problems that Oracle discovered when they acquired Sun was that sales compensation was based solely on the value of the sale, with no requirement for the deal to make a profit. Their sales team had been merrily selling them to bankruptcy. [1] Geniuses with tech, but maybe not so good on the business side? https://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-TB-24039 https://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-TB-24039
- tehlike 6y ago
  Reminds of the saying: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Also a good read: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-190...
  - hassancf 6y ago
    Interesting. “But then there started to be curious sightings, all around town: Rats, alive and healthy, running around without their tails. It turned out the hunters would rather amputate a live animal’s tail than take a healthy rat, capable of breeding and creating so many more rats—with those valuable tails—out of commission. There were also reports that some Vietnamese were smuggling foreign rats into the city. And then the final straw: Health inspectors discovered, in the countryside on the outskirts of Hanoi, pop-up farming operations dedicated to breeding rats.”
- slgeorge 6y ago
  I'm sorry but first the majority of software companies focus their sales compensation on the contract value (TCV) rather than the profitability. It's not generally the sales teams job to evaluate profitability, that the product/commercial teams job by setting out the lines of discount. The reason is that for most tech companies you want to maximise your market reach. More importantly, I wouldn't trust a word that Larry Ellison says - particularly when the primary purpose of the article was to boost the Oracle share price by explaining that Sun would be additive to that quarters profits. I'm not saying that Scott McNeally or Jonathan Schwartz were great execs - I have no idea - but I think you have to look at the goal of the article.

smart_jackal 6y ago

Sun's main issue was that they failed to capitalize on all the wonderful tech they had including Java, VirtualBox and Openoffice/StarOffice. Even after open sourcing all of them, they could have kept the company running by marketing to enterprises and offering support. If they had learned these skills from companies like RH/SUSE/IBM, then Java would have been in much better hands today.

pjmlp 6y ago
First of all, Oracle and IBM have been part of Java world since the early days with their own Java implementations, and Oracle even jumped on Sun's boat regarding those Java based thin client workstations that were all the rage around 1998. Secondly, with Sun you would never had gotten AOT, because they saw it as something that 3rd party vendors like Oracle and IBM should care about, they were fully into "JIT or bust", and MaximeVM would have followed the same path as SPOTs, instead of turning into GraalVM.

Twirrim 6y ago

According to Larry Ellison, one of the biggest problems that Oracle discovered when they acquired Sun was that sales compensation was based solely on the value of the sale, with no requirement for the deal to make a profit. Their sales team had been merrily selling them to bankruptcy. [1] Geniuses with tech, but maybe not so good on the business side? https://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-TB-24039 https://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-TB-24039

tehlike 6y ago
Reminds of the saying: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Also a good read: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-190...
- hassancf 6y ago
  Interesting. “But then there started to be curious sightings, all around town: Rats, alive and healthy, running around without their tails. It turned out the hunters would rather amputate a live animal’s tail than take a healthy rat, capable of breeding and creating so many more rats—with those valuable tails—out of commission. There were also reports that some Vietnamese were smuggling foreign rats into the city. And then the final straw: Health inspectors discovered, in the countryside on the outskirts of Hanoi, pop-up farming operations dedicated to breeding rats.”
slgeorge 6y ago
I'm sorry but first the majority of software companies focus their sales compensation on the contract value (TCV) rather than the profitability. It's not generally the sales teams job to evaluate profitability, that the product/commercial teams job by setting out the lines of discount. The reason is that for most tech companies you want to maximise your market reach. More importantly, I wouldn't trust a word that Larry Ellison says - particularly when the primary purpose of the article was to boost the Oracle share price by explaining that Sun would be additive to that quarters profits. I'm not saying that Scott McNeally or Jonathan Schwartz were great execs - I have no idea - but I think you have to look at the goal of the article.