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I worked at EMC at the time that Sun was aquired by Oracle. There were rumors that EMC was considering purchasing Sun to gain the final toe hold in the DC that

I worked at EMC at the time that Sun was aquired by Oracle. There were rumors that EMC was considering purchasing Sun to gain the final toe hold in the DC that they eventually filled by merging with Dell. I am sure if EMC had bought Sun I'd still be there. Sun & EMC were both engineer led organisations in the old days, and the two cultures would have worked well together. (IMHO based on my experience working at EMC and with many many Sun alumni).

jabl 5y ago
> Sun & EMC were both engineer led organisations in the old days Isn't that exactly the problem? Server and storage HW were rapidly getting commodified. That's why the "vacuum cleaner salespeople" of the IT world (Dell, Compaq etc.) won, there's little value add in server HW engineering except at the bottom of the stack (Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, etc.).
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  Thats a little harsh towards Compaq. They inherited industry leadership with the 386 and their stewardship of the PC in that time was pretty damn good. Dell, the cow people etc...not so much.
- simonh 5y ago
  It's also why HP, the actual engineer led scientific instrument manufacturer HP, left the computer industry and became Agilent leaving the vacuum cleaner sales people part behind. It's a crying shame, but you're right, PC manufacturers were and still are in a brutal race to the bottom. For a while I though HP might have a chance on mobile, when they took on webOS. If they could have established a compelling platform stack with hardware, operating system and a decent dev environment they could have had a chance to grow their margins a bit. The problem is I suspect the PC side of HP just wasn't up to it. I had an HP digital camera around that time and it was a bulky, blocky uninspiring lump of a device.
  - rjsw 5y ago
    HP had plenty of handheld/mobile experience, from their own work and aquired with DEC and Compaq.

jabl 5y ago

> Sun & EMC were both engineer led organisations in the old days Isn't that exactly the problem? Server and storage HW were rapidly getting commodified. That's why the "vacuum cleaner salespeople" of the IT world (Dell, Compaq etc.) won, there's little value add in server HW engineering except at the bottom of the stack (Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, etc.).

smackeyacky 5y ago
Thats a little harsh towards Compaq. They inherited industry leadership with the 386 and their stewardship of the PC in that time was pretty damn good. Dell, the cow people etc...not so much.
simonh 5y ago
It's also why HP, the actual engineer led scientific instrument manufacturer HP, left the computer industry and became Agilent leaving the vacuum cleaner sales people part behind. It's a crying shame, but you're right, PC manufacturers were and still are in a brutal race to the bottom. For a while I though HP might have a chance on mobile, when they took on webOS. If they could have established a compelling platform stack with hardware, operating system and a decent dev environment they could have had a chance to grow their margins a bit. The problem is I suspect the PC side of HP just wasn't up to it. I had an HP digital camera around that time and it was a bulky, blocky uninspiring lump of a device.
- rjsw 5y ago
  HP had plenty of handheld/mobile experience, from their own work and aquired with DEC and Compaq.