
Sun Laying Off Workers as Crisis Hits Tech Companies - smoody
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/technology/companies/15sun.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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smoody
I personally believe Sun's problems began way before the downturn, but the
downturn provides a great excuse for them to report really bad earnings and
lay off people. And, as a bonus, they get to drag down confidence in the tech
sector in general!

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josefresco
Agreed, see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=364245>

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larryfreeman
I used to work at Sun. The major problem is that they don't understand how to
make money from open source. Their business model has always been high price
contracts with big companies. Unfortunately, that model no longer works for
them and despite great wordage and brilliant engineers, they haven't been able
to reinvent themselves.

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davidw
Making money from open source is not an easy proposition. There are some ways
to do it here and there, but it requires some very creative thinking, great
skills at managing the open source community, and on top of that, good
technology.

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startingup
Sun's current cost structure doesn't begin to be supported by revenue. It has
~32,000 employees, and makes $12 billion in hardware revenue, with declining
gross margins (Dell, Rackspace etc. are commoditizing servers). Their
"strategy" for growth is open source, but after 10 years, they still haven't
shown how they will make money out of Java. MySQL is a $100 million a year
business, respectable, but there is no way to see how it grows to billions
without pissing off and driving away the very users that made MySQL
successful.

If I were them, I would cut deep, real deep, like 50% lay-off, _assume_
further drastic erosion in their margins (and plan to be profitable with such
drastic erosion), and crucially, with a slim-but-sharply-focused R&D division,
focus on coming up with innovations that people are willing to pay for.

Apple did it, Sun could. It has the heart of a great company faintly ticking
somewhere deep inside, but alas, current leadership hasn't shown it is up to
the job.

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shabda
> with a slim-but-sharply-focused R&D division, focus on coming up with
> innovations that people are willing to pay for.

Let me know when you find a repeatable way of doing it.

Apple did it, everyone is trying, Sun might.

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tjr
I believe Sun can, but they have to decide to try.

