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1) What could Sun have done differently to monetize Java? Or was there no opportunity? 2) Sun was one of the true pioneers of the cloud, but they couldn't capi

by panabee 12y ago

1) What could Sun have done differently to monetize Java? Or was there no opportunity? 2) Sun was one of the true pioneers of the cloud, but they couldn't capitalize and lead this next generation of computing. (They should have created AWS, for instance.) Was it due to Christensen's innovator's dilemma, or was there another reason?

angersock 12y ago
I have a few theories--I'd love to be corrected. 1. "Cloud" basically didn't matter until we had widespread broadband internet access. Around the beginning of the 00's, that still wasn't the case for many businesses. 2. Consumers hadn't really accepted that the 'net was going to be a big deal, because there really wasn't a lot of stuff there yet that put them in contact with it every day--maybe, for younger people, Xanga or LiveJournal, or whatever, but the massive publishing empires you see today hadn't really formed yet. 3. Sun was very invested in workstation and server hardware, big iron stuff. That core business supported a whole lot of growth, but once Linux and comparatively cheap commodity server hardware became available, that core business got eroded hardcore. 4. Computers were still pretty weak, as were phones and wireless networking. Technology just wasn't primed for mass adoption yet.
rbanffy 12y ago
Sun never decided whether it was in the hardware or software business. They made outstanding hardware but made software that ran on good-enough x86 commodity boxes. Niagara was way ahead of its time and Solaris was probably the best Unix you could get. The worst error, IMHO, was to kill the workstation business. If they wanted people to develop for SPARC, the only way was to put a SPARC machine on developer's desks. We write software on the machines we have on our desks. If my machine is a x86, I probably won't be very interested in exploring an architecture I don't have access to.

by panabee 12y ago

angersock 12y ago

I have a few theories--I'd love to be corrected. 1. "Cloud" basically didn't matter until we had widespread broadband internet access. Around the beginning of the 00's, that still wasn't the case for many businesses. 2. Consumers hadn't really accepted that the 'net was going to be a big deal, because there really wasn't a lot of stuff there yet that put them in contact with it every day--maybe, for younger people, Xanga or LiveJournal, or whatever, but the massive publishing empires you see today hadn't really formed yet. 3. Sun was very invested in workstation and server hardware, big iron stuff. That core business supported a whole lot of growth, but once Linux and comparatively cheap commodity server hardware became available, that core business got eroded hardcore. 4. Computers were still pretty weak, as were phones and wireless networking. Technology just wasn't primed for mass adoption yet.

rbanffy 12y ago

Sun never decided whether it was in the hardware or software business. They made outstanding hardware but made software that ran on good-enough x86 commodity boxes. Niagara was way ahead of its time and Solaris was probably the best Unix you could get. The worst error, IMHO, was to kill the workstation business. If they wanted people to develop for SPARC, the only way was to put a SPARC machine on developer's desks. We write software on the machines we have on our desks. If my machine is a x86, I probably won't be very interested in exploring an architecture I don't have access to.