- John Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 07/05/01 09:51:14 -0400:
> Abigail wrote:
>> One should realize that Sun isn't in the business of selling Operating
>> Systems. I don't think any Unix vendor really is. They sell hardware,
>> that's where they make their money from.
>
> Far be it from me to contradict Abigail, but, I don't see how
> this can be. If it were true, Sun would be giving away their
> OS for their own hardware, and charging $$$ for it for other
> hardware platforms. But the opposite is the case.
They sell both. Hardware sales and service contracts [where the
money really is] are an important part of their business. Solaris
is part of the way in which they differentiate their hardware: it
runs Sun's O/S, HP's doesn't. If they can make the O/S "nicer" for
some people then those people will keep buying Sun hardware.
Sun in smart in realizing that they can do more, and they sell
Java, etc, as ways to make more money. They make significant
amounts of money from Java, development enviornments, compilers,
etc. These are ways of milking the market for more than just
hardware dollars and also help differentiate their products ("We
wrote Java, sure it runs on Solaris. Wanna buy a runtime env?").
Part of it is just the mentality that if someone else sells the customer
something then that much money didn't go to Sun -- IBM, HP, DEC
are[were]n't any different in that regard.
sl
