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Yes, workstations were gone -- and they had been replaced by server revenue. Contrary to your assertion, server revenue (and associated service revenue) was th

Yes, workstations were gone -- and they had been replaced by server revenue. Contrary to your assertion, server revenue (and associated service revenue) was the lion's share of Sun's revenue; if you add up all Java revenue (primarily Java ME) and subtract all Java NRE, Java was -- pathetically -- net neutral to Sun. So to those of us who actually brought in revenue instead of dining out on it, the ticker change was the embodiment of the persistent delusion that we were something other than a computing systems company...

tptacek 14y ago
My point was that the reason people bought Sun servers was to run enterprise Java apps. (In case this makes it clearer: what percentage of large Sun server customers used the majority of those servers to run some kind of Java container server? Do you think maybe over 75%? From working with F-500 companies as a consultant in the mid-00's, my observation is closer to 100%; if you were a bank with Sun servers, the reason you had them was that Sun provided the can't-get-fired-for-choosing platform for J2EE.)
- dsl 14y ago
  I think thats just an observational bias of companies that went the consultant route. Java was the hot new technology that consultants could bill lots of hours for, so you started to see it everywhere with weak internal IT/systems groups. Working in the manufacturing/CAD industry at the time, I ran a Sun and SGI shop. Business applications that ran only on Solaris were a much larger demand generator for Sun hardware than some new fancy runtime that at the time could be confused for a passing fad. We also liked Sun hardware for internal apps because they could literally run for 10+ years in a room filled with a constant mist of machine oil and coolant.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I'm not a Java consultant. The CAD Sun buyers were workstation customers, weren't they? I do not think Java web applications were a smaller demand generator for Sun than Motif applications were.
kyrra 14y ago
Agreed. Sun bought StoageTek somewhere in there. Which was fun for me as both companies were resellers for my former employer. Sun was still selling a decent amount of server gear, they just sort of fell out of the consumer space.

tptacek 14y ago

My point was that the reason people bought Sun servers was to run enterprise Java apps. (In case this makes it clearer: what percentage of large Sun server customers used the majority of those servers to run some kind of Java container server? Do you think maybe over 75%? From working with F-500 companies as a consultant in the mid-00's, my observation is closer to 100%; if you were a bank with Sun servers, the reason you had them was that Sun provided the can't-get-fired-for-choosing platform for J2EE.)

dsl 14y ago
I think thats just an observational bias of companies that went the consultant route. Java was the hot new technology that consultants could bill lots of hours for, so you started to see it everywhere with weak internal IT/systems groups. Working in the manufacturing/CAD industry at the time, I ran a Sun and SGI shop. Business applications that ran only on Solaris were a much larger demand generator for Sun hardware than some new fancy runtime that at the time could be confused for a passing fad. We also liked Sun hardware for internal apps because they could literally run for 10+ years in a room filled with a constant mist of machine oil and coolant.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I'm not a Java consultant. The CAD Sun buyers were workstation customers, weren't they? I do not think Java web applications were a smaller demand generator for Sun than Motif applications were.

kyrra 14y ago

Agreed. Sun bought StoageTek somewhere in there. Which was fun for me as both companies were resellers for my former employer. Sun was still selling a decent amount of server gear, they just sort of fell out of the consumer space.