I've received a tour of the sun facilities in the valley, and spoken to a few VPs, and sun knows what they are doing. The economy sucks, and, yes, they still get most of their profit from selling big irons, which is a horrible business to be in this quarter.
The point is, they aren't clinging to their sinking ship. This is remarkable; virtually all companies that had a large and reliable cash- cow that got made irrelevant by technology couldn't even understand that there could be a world where their product is as out of place as a pork pie at a bar mitzvah. Instead they dump tons of money in advertising, spend as much money as they can muster on lobbying efforts, cry to the government that they are 'indispensable', and start suing competitors. (*cough*GM*cough*RIAA*cough*). Just like amazon had the forethought to move away from selling information by-the-byte (a clear loser, and amazon gets that, so they launch S3, ebook readers, and many other efforts), sun is moving away from selling big iron servers in a world where Moore's law and its variants are rapidly outmarching humanity's need for the power. Rome wasn't built in a day. It would be somewhat unfortunate if sun has cashflow problems and needs to sell off some assets to survive their transition. I'd be far more scared if sun was rolling in dough but stubbornly persistent about their market share. That way lies a company that'll inexorably bleed to death. On Nov 20, 6:16 pm, "andrew.bruce.law" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Disclosure: I used to work for Sun and despite myself (like Joe I > think) I still don't want to see them die. > > @Karsten. I follow your reasoning if the future is shrink wrapped > software and you're right, Sun don't follow this. > > However, check out Simon Phipps on FLOSS Weekly 39 [1] to see what Sun > *do* think it is. I honestly think things are changing in the > marketplace. Just look at the rise of cloud computing, IBM trying to > change the way it works with Jazz (which I know went down badly among > that audience but try it out and more importantly look at how they're > running the development) and MSFT slowly getting more and more OSS > friendly. Sun might be ahead of the curve too much and die before > this all comes to fruition (think "the network is the computer") but > even if this happens I think history might be kinder on them than Wall > Street is now... > > Or perhaps I'm dreaming. ;-) > > Regs, Andrew > > [1]http://twit.tv/floss39 > > On Nov 15, 11:41 pm, Joe Data <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Nov 15, 2:01 pm, Patrick Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Java, broken out in terms of revenue, has brought in around $220 million > > > per > > > year for the last couple of years (no details before that). Not > > > knowing the costs involved, and just guessing, it seems like a pretty > > > tidy sum of money, which should more than cover the costs involved. I > > > think it must also be pretty clear to Sun that ignoring or "letting > > > Java die" in some way would be killing one of the golden geese at the > > > company, if nothing else in terms of branding. I can't imagine it, > > > anyhow. > > > It's a general assumption that Sun doesn't make money from Java, other > > companies do (like IBM or Oracle), and the numbers support this. Sun > > has an operating system, a database, Java, and middleware and made > > $124mln the last quarter from all its software group. IBM has > > operating systems, a database, system management software, and > > middleware and makes 5.2 bln last quarter (42 times as > > much,http://www.ibm.com/investor/3q08/presentation/3q08.pdf, slide 8) with > > a gross margin of 84.7% (that's pretty nearly a Microsoft Windows or > > Office margin). Nothing in the IT industry is as profitable as selling > > "shrink-wrapped software", a business that Sun got out by giving its > > software away. > > > Karsten --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
