4 ms·

Surprised? The company that was selling very specific hardware and at the same time created popular programming language that was multi-platform, so customers c

Surprised? The company that was selling very specific hardware and at the same time created popular programming language that was multi-platform, so customers could use cheap Intel-based servers instead of that "very specific hardware" (that was also very expensive) to run this software. What could have gone wrong? The SUN tragedy was that it moved into service/support model too late, this move could not have saved them in the time-frame that all the investors wanted to see their money. For me, personally, it was very, very sad, as SUN people, including sales, marketing were very nice, willing to cooperate even with small companies, there was a lot of "feeling" of the company run by tech-aware people who did not care about counting every cent. SUN had a lot of really state of the art software for what support was selling pretty good, Glassfish server, Message Broker (one of the best on the market, really hard to beat) and many others... Still not enough money. I hoped for some other deal, like selling hardware part to Fujitsu and keep working on Software/Cloud, etc. but, as I said, greedy people wanted their money right away. Oracle had big hopes for suing Google and winning a lot cash. Business is hard, not always the good guy wins.

Twirrim 4y ago
Larry Ellison mentions one of the most startling things they found was that Sun's sales org was literally selling the company to bankruptcy. Those nice sales people had commission based on sales contract value, with no requirement for profitability. That meant they would just keep selling contracts that lost Sun money, hand over fist.
- Tostino 4y ago
  I have a hard time taking anything he says at face value.
the_biot 4y ago
That's a pretty one-sided view of Sun in their prime. They were also horrendously overpriced, and when Linux came along their overpriced hardware and software was obsolete. They were much too late to wake up to that, and climb down from their castle. I liked their hardware, and some of their software was amazing (DTrace, ZFS), but there was just no way to justify buying Sun hardware when any old PC running Linux would blow it out of the water.
whartung 4y ago
Sun, IBM and the other Unix companies were in a bitter fight with MS, especially at the mid-tier. Java, notably Enterprise Java, became the teeth of that fight. With Java, it let the hardware makers do what they do best -- make hardware. It let the OS designers do what they do best -- design OSes. While the Unix "shell" experience was commoditized, the kernels certainly were not. The management of the systems still had proprietary magic pixie dust to help distinguish the products. The fact that Java per se couldn't necessarily directly take advantage of these OS developments isn't germane since the bulk of the work, especially at the time, was in the back end databases. And those COULD take advantage of the platforms. But all of them could leverage the management capabilities of the platform. Java was just the high level, portable business logic layer. Java was the safe solution that didn't require total commitment to a platform. Java was the rising tide to lift all boats that let the hardware folks sell and compete at the hardware level, especially against a company with monopolist, "lock in" tendencies such as Microsoft. Write your software in Java, pick all of these platforms to deploy on, each shining in their own special way. By developing and promoting Java, which was not just Sun, IBM and others did a lot of Java work as well, it expanded the overall market for their hardware. Sure, it opened the door to Intel et al, but Intel wasn't able to compete at the high end where Sun and IBM were able to compete. Later, of course, as CPUs improved, there was less and less need for larger computers. Especially when "the network is the computer", allowing diverse, smaller computers to compete with larger monolithic systems. Where Sun struggled was turning around from a hardware company to a services company. Oracle and IBM are both service companies. One happens to make a popular database, the other happens to make some, today, niche hardware. Sun, with its engineering core, wasn't really able to make that leap. HP tired to do the same thing, perhaps with less success. But Java wasn't what killed Sun. Java helped them all rally and fight against MS, and thrive.
hestefisk 4y ago
GlassFish server was a reference implementation for Java EE. It was quite slow. I’d say the best to come out of Sun was Java and ZFS.
- xbar 4y ago
  I was a fan of the NetScape Directory Server. And the physical design language of the Sparc 5/10/20 & lunchbox IPC/IPX workstations.

Twirrim 4y ago

Larry Ellison mentions one of the most startling things they found was that Sun's sales org was literally selling the company to bankruptcy. Those nice sales people had commission based on sales contract value, with no requirement for profitability. That meant they would just keep selling contracts that lost Sun money, hand over fist.

Tostino 4y ago
I have a hard time taking anything he says at face value.

the_biot 4y ago

That's a pretty one-sided view of Sun in their prime. They were also horrendously overpriced, and when Linux came along their overpriced hardware and software was obsolete. They were much too late to wake up to that, and climb down from their castle. I liked their hardware, and some of their software was amazing (DTrace, ZFS), but there was just no way to justify buying Sun hardware when any old PC running Linux would blow it out of the water.

whartung 4y ago

Sun, IBM and the other Unix companies were in a bitter fight with MS, especially at the mid-tier. Java, notably Enterprise Java, became the teeth of that fight. With Java, it let the hardware makers do what they do best -- make hardware. It let the OS designers do what they do best -- design OSes. While the Unix "shell" experience was commoditized, the kernels certainly were not. The management of the systems still had proprietary magic pixie dust to help distinguish the products. The fact that Java per se couldn't necessarily directly take advantage of these OS developments isn't germane since the bulk of the work, especially at the time, was in the back end databases. And those COULD take advantage of the platforms. But all of them could leverage the management capabilities of the platform. Java was just the high level, portable business logic layer. Java was the safe solution that didn't require total commitment to a platform. Java was the rising tide to lift all boats that let the hardware folks sell and compete at the hardware level, especially against a company with monopolist, "lock in" tendencies such as Microsoft. Write your software in Java, pick all of these platforms to deploy on, each shining in their own special way. By developing and promoting Java, which was not just Sun, IBM and others did a lot of Java work as well, it expanded the overall market for their hardware. Sure, it opened the door to Intel et al, but Intel wasn't able to compete at the high end where Sun and IBM were able to compete. Later, of course, as CPUs improved, there was less and less need for larger computers. Especially when "the network is the computer", allowing diverse, smaller computers to compete with larger monolithic systems. Where Sun struggled was turning around from a hardware company to a services company. Oracle and IBM are both service companies. One happens to make a popular database, the other happens to make some, today, niche hardware. Sun, with its engineering core, wasn't really able to make that leap. HP tired to do the same thing, perhaps with less success. But Java wasn't what killed Sun. Java helped them all rally and fight against MS, and thrive.

hestefisk 4y ago

GlassFish server was a reference implementation for Java EE. It was quite slow. I’d say the best to come out of Sun was Java and ZFS.

xbar 4y ago
I was a fan of the NetScape Directory Server. And the physical design language of the Sparc 5/10/20 & lunchbox IPC/IPX workstations.