"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later.

Re:"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later. by SwellJoe on Saturday May 03, 2008 @05:02PM (#180446)

So I think the jury is still out on Jonathan Schwartz, even with yesterdays disappointing earnings statement. The previous three quarters were profitable for Sun (which was a pretty amazing turnaround--Sun was in deep trouble before Schwartz took the helm).

The thing that a lot of folks haven't realized is that the nerds have recaptured the flag within Sun. And, you know what happens when a bunch of nerds are on a mission. That's right: http://tinyurl.com/67user

OK, so maybe putting the nerds in charge isn't a guarantee of success, but it is a prerequisite in a tech company.

Everybody can probably think of one cool thing Sun is doing, because it touches on your specific area...but when you do an aerial survey of the whole Sun "cool stuff" landscape, it looks really impressive:

Zones - A sweet elastic computing solution. More efficient than Xen (due to different model...more like vservers on Linux, but it's actually stable enough to use), allows quite impressive run-time configuration like scaling resources up and down, etc.

JVM for dynamic languages - Sun has drunk the Koolaid on dynamic languages, and is actively contributed to a bunch of them. I think they are beginning to understand that Java is not the important thing to come out of Sun, but the JVM and that huge library is.

Cheap hardware - Really, you can buy Sun boxes for not too much more than equivalent Dell systems. And, Sun boxes are nice. They don't have as many low-end options as Dell, of course, but once you get into high end gear where Dell loses its huge quantity advantages, Sun is a viable option.

MySQL - Most popular database in the world. Hard to top that for importance in the industry. During web 1.0 they had to team up with Oracle to offer the whole solution...now they've got the full stack.

Caroline - Utility computing, elastic computing, "App Engine", call it what you will...Sun is building a commodity solution to the problem.

Will all of this make up for years of resting on their laurels? I dunno...but it's too early to count them out, and Schwartz seems to have played an important role in the change.

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Re:"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later. by rglullis on Sunday May 04, 2008 @08:22AM (#180759)

  call it what you will...Sun is building a commodity solution to the problem

The problem with Sun is precisely that. They are turning everything into a commodity. This is good if your strategy is to make money on a complementary product.

The thing is: they forget to make money from complementary products. They are commoditizing the software, the hardware and everything they do... but where are they going to sit when the dance stops? Where do they intend to make money?

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Re:"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later. by SwellJoe on Sunday May 04, 2008 @04:47PM (#180964)

I just listened to Schwartz speak at Startup Camp a few hours ago and he discussed just that issue...I was surprised by how many folks were questioning him on the subject from different angles. Basically, "why have you made everything free?" (Because they have...nearly everything Sun builds is Open Source, all the way down to the CPU designs.)

His answer was, "because you [startups] wouldn't use it if we didn't". He went on to explain how startups using Sun means that in a year, maybe two or three, when those startups grow into big companies they will need the kind of infrastructure that only Sun (and maybe a couple of other companies) can provide. It made sense when he said it.

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Re:"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later. by DenisM on Saturday May 03, 2008 @05:19PM (#180450)

Speaking of Caroline, are there any news? It seems to me this page was not updated in quite a while. http://research.sun.com/projects/caroline/

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Re:"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later. by SwellJoe on Sunday May 04, 2008 @04:20AM (#180719)

They've got a guy talking to startups here in the valley about it for the next several days, and they'll be talking about it at Startup Camp. I must assume that means they are taking it all very seriously.

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Re:"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later. by DenisM on Sunday May 04, 2008 @05:07PM (#180973)

They should really push it out the door rather than talk about it.

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Re:"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later. by rms on Saturday May 03, 2008 @06:31PM (#180470)

So do you think NASDAQ:JAVA is a good buy right now or it is too risky?

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Re:"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later. by ivankirigin on Sunday May 04, 2008 @12:41AM (#180648)

Interesting but irrelevant: "good buy" and "goodbye" are homophones and close to antonyms. I said goodbye to Java a while ago.

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Re:"10 people who don't matter" -- 2 years later. by sabat on Saturday May 03, 2008 @05:31PM (#180453)

Schwartz has never mattered. Ever seen anything by him? It's astonishingly obvious that he has no idea how to make money. He does know how to use hip buzzwords, though.

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