“Sun recently announced its 12th consecutive quarter of falling revenues, not to mention 3,300 more layoffs to add to the 8,500 employees it has fired over the last two years. Standard & Poor’s has downrated the company’s credit rating to ‘junk.’ It is no longer enough to blame the high-tech recession for all of Sun’s blues; other companies — including some even worse hit, like Yahoo! and Cisco — are making strong comebacks,” Michael S. Malone writes for E-Commerce News. “Companies, even big ones, often die. Some quickly, most slowly. But few companies ever kill themselves Maybe they should.”
“Call it Corporate Euthanasia. And in this fast-moving new world of business, that option should be a serious one for any board of directors in fulfilling its responsibility to shareholders. We have grown used to technologies, products, even markets bursting on the scene like supernovas — and then just as quickly evaporating,” Malone writes. “Why shouldn’t the same be true for companies? Why should they fade into the perpetual twilight of Chapter 11 or in an eternal, shriveled corporate coma sucking on the life support of patent lawsuits and royalties?”
Malone writes, “A case in point is Sun Microsystems. Sun was once a great company — dynamic, gutsy, and innovative. In hardware it pioneered the server industry, in software it developed the Java language — and was duly rewarded for both, becoming one of the greatest high-tech business stories of all time. Chairman Scott McNealy was one of the most memorable business executives of the ’90s, and at its peak, Sun was so powerful that it was even rumored to be contemplating the purchase of Apple Computer. But that was then.”
Full article here.
What a waste, eh?
Be careful counting Sun out just yet. There was an explosion of sales due to Y2K, then it slowed down. Guess what, we are now going into the 5th year since. So there are maintenance issues that will require customers to start upgrading again. Where else will they go? MSFT? I think not. Sun has a lot going for it with with this new upgrade cycle starting. Cisco is already starting to experience similar upgrades and backlogs due to the Y2K product cycle effect.
Maybe Apple should buy them.
Stingerman: RE: Where else where they go?
The answer to your question is Linux.
Propietary UNIX on big iron is dying. Sun is evidence of this.
Chris
Thinking the speed at which Apple’s GUI and Unix were intertwined, possibly there are some innovative technologies from Sun that Apple possibly could be interested in…Office killer anyone??
“Maybe Apple should buy them.”
Um, no thanks…
Maybe Apple should buy the rights to Java?
I don’t think that Sun is necessarily dead yet. I hope not. I see them as part of the “good guys” against the evil MS empire.
Sun is not going anywhere. They still fill the gaps that most other companies just can’t fill… namely Microsoft!
I’m hoping that Java Desktop places a few nails in the Windows coffin for the sake of computer freedom versus the wrath of Redmond!
Sorry, but I’m not interested in runninga fourth company (you can guess what my third one will be).
Sun will be strong. A new line of processors is coming that will put them way ahead of Intel. Up to 130 times faster than current processors – out in 2005 or 2006.
I’m betting Sun is going to be here for the long haul.
Microsoft on the other hand? Well, if they keep Steve Ballmer, they’ll suffer like AOL with Steve Case!
Sun will most like become like SGI – once a titan of the industry, but relegated and eventually satisfied being a niche player catering to esoteric and highly specialized markets.
Sun is not out and I don’t believe that they will… just matter of time until they do a come back… unfortunately this will take off of Apple server share.
So, Mr. Steve Jobs, what new line of processors? Read the news, they’ve given up on SPARC and are going with AMD64. SPARC is going to be for very high-end, specialized servers. They should have never killed Solaris for PowerPC. You could have been running Solaris on your Mac right now. As it is, choosing NeXTstep for the next Mac OS was the right choice (BSD feels more natural than System V).
Their biggest asset at this point is Java, and they should concentrate on making it fast for all platforms possible, and strengthen their relationships with other Microsoft competitors (like Apple).
Oh, by the way, have you missed more news? Sun and Microsoft are now in bed together. It’s a sad day when Scott McNealy and Steve Ballmer are on the same stage together. Really sad. I thought I was living in Bizarro world when I saw that.
One last point: Linux is ugly. I hope it dies an ugly death. Long live BSD.
Personally, I think Vitaboy is correct.
Sun’s problem is the schizoprenia caused by working out whether it sees Opteron as its future or Sparc – this is similar to sgi’s issues with MIPS and Itanium.
Sparc has problems with regards to economies of scale, when compared to something like IBM’s PowerPC efforts: PPC’s penetration into the games console market with Sony and Xbox will, when combined with a more complete migration to 9xx from Apple, amortise the R&D and production costs across a much larger base than MIPS, Sparc and Itanium combined.
Two more years of strong contributions from Apple’s music operations are likely to see our favourite fruit-based computer manufacturer return to a market capitalisation of anywhere between $20 and $30 billion. Whilst Sun are actually more likely to degrade further to around $8-10 billion as their market gets predated by increasingly sophisticated Linux offerings from HP and IBM.
However, Apple and Sun do share a common technology, namely BSD Unix and Sun do have credibility in the server industry whilst Apple – through Xsan – now has truly innovative storage architecture.
contd. ->
MCCFR wrote:
> However, Apple and Sun do share a common technology, namely BSD Unix
Yes, but it’s been so long since Sun has done anything with BSD. They’ve been on System V UNIX since they went to Solaris 2.x.
But I agree, Sun would be stupid not to work more closely with Apple and give up on that stupid Java Desktop, err, JavaLinux Desktop, and port StarOffice to Mac OS X.
Apple should buy Sun, migrate Sunfire from Sparc to PPC, create hyperthreaded support for both Solaris and OS X so customers can run the apps of their choice in the BSD environment of their choice.
Apple gets instant credibility in the datacentre, Sun gets a lifeline, Sun shareholders don’t have to worry about their pensions.
Sun customers get continuity and stability, Apple customers get a place to grow. In addition, StarOffice, Java and Jini get to survive as do iPlanet.
Sounds right to me.
To:vegemite
Linux is not evil. BSD is. BSD encourages corporates like MSFT to “steal” code and yet keep a straight face due to the “obnoxious” BSD license that allows you to take things for free without promising anything in return. If it weren’t for the stolen networking code from BSD, MSFT would still be doing NetBEUI or some such crappy protocol! And look what they’ve done now — taken code from the “Free” community and ramming it up the community’s a***. Linux or GPL if you please, prevents such misuse and that’s exactly what’s gonna hurt MSFT eventually!
Maybe Apple should buy the Java technology & patent. Who knows.
Sun working will Apple. Oh, that’s funny.
Sorry, the only place you’ll ever see ‘Sun’ working with ‘Apple’, will be in the Okanagan and the Cascades.
Guys, what’s worse than hate. Indifference. McNealy hates M$, but Apple isn’t even in his peripheral vision.
Enemy of my enemy, my @$$!
PaintedReality: Vegemite didn’t say Linux is evil, he said it was ugly.
Or, as Bill Joy said in Wired 11.12: Hope Is a Lousy Defense.:
[Wired]And yet you’ve been famously cool about Linux.
[BJ]Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me personally. For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great way to cut your teeth. It’s a cultural phenomenon and a business phenomenon. Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that’s beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux.
That’s essentially how I feel about Linux and Mac OS X, too. And I was “there” in 1979, but that’s another story…
Maybe they’ll do an Apple and pull out of the mess they’re in by some more clever innovations and great products. Doubt it though, if they keep culling their staff by the thousands. Who’s left? Sales/marketing guys or engineers?
Their cost is the main factor. Apple should keep this in mind. When viable alternatives are available the consumers tend to pick based on the lowest cost. Sun’s OS are much more reliable than Microsoft and the Sun hardware is more reliable than Dell but guess who is selling all the boxes. Linux is a free and competitive alternative running x86 hardware as well. The best does not succeed in the marketplace unless it is also the cheapest.
what if M$ buys Sun? and then precedes to close java off to the Mac? at the moment this seems like a more probable move because Sun needs the jack–M$ could finally have java to help complete there pyramid scheme..
vitaboy says: “Sun will most like become like SGI – once a titan of the industry, but relegated and eventually satisfied being a niche player catering to esoteric and highly specialized markets.”
hey, just like apple…
innovation brings longevity.
stagnation brings death.
makes me wonder why longhorn hasn’t killed off microsuck yet…