The real answer is for Sun to have remained profitable. Unfortunately, due to their workstation focus, it probably wasn't possible. e.g. Digital was an excellent company, but also went down with (in their case) mini-computers. Christensen's frustration at how such a great company could get killed was part inspiration for developing his "disruption" theory.

I'd hate to think Sun's demise, in the alternative, was due to their hippy open-standards approach, which is very appealing to engineers...