
Sun Microsystems Reports $1.7 Billion Loss and Falling Sales - markbao
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/technology/companies/31sun.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
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nailer
I've watched Solaris boxes slowly being replaced by Linux when they reach
their end of life over the last decade. And Linux is starting to become the
default for new projects at a lot of places. But there's a few industries you
still expect Solaris to be popular: London banks and funds.

The other day I applied for a job at a London hedge fund - a household name to
a lot of folks in the UK. 20% Solaris, 80% Linux. Unusual right now, but I
think it's a sign of things to come.

Sun is too big to become just another x64 vendor. They're not making money
from Java, and Solaris revenue is going to go down, because a great tracing
framework and a filesystem aren't enough to tempt people from a platform which
uses generic hardware (a 32 core x64 is more than enough for most people, a
256 core SPARC is very, very niche) and runs both OSS apps and the proprietary
crapware they used to run on Solaris SPARC.

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hedgehog
This marketing video from NeXT back in 90 or 91 is informative:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9dmcRbuTMY>

They were pretty right about where the workstation market was going.

Linus started Linux at about the same time.

In the 17 years since NeXT evolved, NT was born, and Linux begat RedHat,
Ubuntu, and Google. Meanwhile Sun just hasn't adapted enough to stay
competitive.

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bayareaguy
I think Sun is doomed, but I've been saying that for the past 15 years.

Has anyone here seriously recommended any Sun purchases in the last 5 years?

Of those who answered yes, would you make the same recommendations now?

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jwilliams
> I think Sun is doomed, but I've been saying that for the past 15 years.

I think Sun as we know it is doomed, but they still are sitting on a ton of
amazing IP - Current generation of SPARC, Solaris, Java, MySQL, etc.

Question is where do they go from here? There are strategic mergers with
outfits like IBM and Fujitsu, but I don't think they are compelling enough...
I think those will only really come about if Sun detonates and needs to be
sold off - which I don't think is likely right now.

They also appear to have bypassed the whole "cloud" bit entirely. Even if
you're skeptical on the cloud it might be a risk worth taking for Sun. It's a
new market at least, and it's a growing market. They've got the hardware
experience, Java and MySQL. These would all make a good basis for a cloud
play.

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amix
Kind of sucks they bought MySQL.

