I do agree that Sun and the US would be better served by Sun getting assistance from the US government. And that money should go directly into marketing, sales, getting channel partners up to speed, and keeping engineering teams intact (and bring back those that were lost). Then Sun should swiftly consolidate groups, reduce management layers, and ensure things are aligned properly. Have milestone and target dates set in stone and push for delivery of products and updates "on-time" and "on budget". One thing I've seen is that the R&D budget is always targeted by Wall St. for being too big, I think it definitely gives Sun an edge. However, I think the number of developers should be shifted around to get projects done sooner with higher quality. That means putting head-count where it should be.
I've seen too many groups at Sun understaffed and that only leads to slower progress and few folks to do QA work. The same goes for support engineers, soo much has been cut back over the past few years that it has affected the quality of technical customer support. I remember when some folks in charge of SunSolve of all things were axed. It's those kinds of cuts that should never happen. You just don't do stupid things like that, unless you really want to shoot yourself in the head. One of the things I get the distinct impression of on the OpenSolaris development side is that soo much focus has been on the desktop and the x86 end of things that SPARC has been neglected. Regardless of what Schwartz says, Sun is really a hardware company that uses software to make the sale. Realistically, most Sun customers are buying SPARC hands down. Just look at the number of CMT servers outpacing x64 gear sales. All of this focus on the desktop is nice, don't get me wrong, but the fact that it's taken soo long to get a Indiana build on SPARC is really sad and customers have noticed. To that end, the top priority for Sun should be to get the commercial version of OpenSolaris on SPARC and x64 done ASAP with a higher quality level than when Solaris 10 was released. Next should be the UltraSPARC-T3 and UltraSPARC-RK servers. On top of that the next version of LDoms to support those platforms, xVM Server for x64, and xVM Opscenter to manage it all. If Sun delivers on that, they'll get some good sales going. Most Sun customers are looking to upgrades and virtualization. Focusing on that will give the biggest ROI for Sun in this market. Well enough of what I would do. Hopefully Sun management will shape up and get back into gear. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Octave J. Orgeron Solaris Virtualization Architect and Consultant Web: http://unixconsole.blogspot.com E-Mail: unixcons...@yahoo.com *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ----- Original Message ---- From: Tim Scanlon <t...@uprising.net> To: opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2009 3:11:22 AM Subject: Re: [osol-discuss] The IBM deal is dead, so... ooreron said: "One led by Schwartz who believes Sun should sell and the other led by McNealy who doesn't." I agree with Mr. McNealy based on the concrete understanding that this would be in the best interests of the national security of the United States. This is why I suggested Sun seek out fiscal continuity assistance from the US government rather than have IBM pull a bucket move with the same money, and injure the country in their execution of the deal through their patented methods to transfer technology to hostile nations. I don't expect Mr. Schwartz to fully comprehend the implications of a sale, but I do expect that from Mr. McNealy. Tim -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
