On 26 October 2010 00:30, Alexander Koponen <[email protected]>wrote:
My reseller just gave me his last Sun Ray 2:s second hand, CHEAP! > > He is muscled out from the business by Oracle, all his clients are left > hanging. And now Oracle wonders how to get new customers... > As an ex Sun-reseller, I am in much the same situation. My small and highly technical company was an entry-level Sun Partner Advantage member. We put together a desktop virtualisation solution for SMB's using Sun x64 servers, Sun Rays, point-and-shoot-VDI, and VMWare ESXi. The Sun Ray server, Windows Small Business Server, and Windows desktops all virtualised on the same Sun x64 hardware. Our customers really love the hot-desking cool-factor, even though they don't really need it. The feel (justly) that they have gotten a sophisticated system for a good price. I can't talk much to the latest pricing of the DTU's and associated licensing, except to note that the recent 'product use rights' from Microsoft requires that virtualised desktop OS's only be accessed from a device which also has a Windows OS on it - or else one is up for 'VDA' license just a few dollars *more* than a full licence for Windows. So Oracle can't entirely be blamed for the shift in viability of the solution as a whole. (The commonly-used Wyse/HP/et-al terminals generally have an OEM Windows CE on them and dodge this hit ... and actually suggests something that Oracle could do (license WinCE OEM without using it!) ... to increase the attractiveness of the solution pricing). However, I've so far elected not to jump to the 'Gold' partner level with Oracle. (Every confused Oracle bureaucrat I spoke to before my Sun agreement expired assured me that I wouldn't be able to sell Oracle Virtualisation gear on the Silver level, despite no Virtualisation 'knowledge zones' existing at the time). Sure, if we were 'serious', we would obviously weigh up our unique opportunities with the unique Sun^H^H^H Oracle gear and factor the US $2.5K annual partner fee (NOT pegged to the real AUDUSD exchange rate!) in to our business plan. I'm not saying the fee is 'too much' - it's just not easy to make a business case for it on a handful of SMB deployments. It feels that we are too small to do business with Oracle - that $2.5K means shipping another $20K of gear each year - an extra SMB deployment per year - just to be 'allowed' to participate in the ecosystem. Oracle apparently aren't in to the 'volume' message that Schwartz re-built Sun around they're going to stay in their ivory Enterprise market and not take the trouble to be mainstream. It's a shame, since I (still have) a lot of good ideas based around SRSS, and I'm still a fan of the technology. I keep delaying the decision to move my customers to a pudgy-client. But I just can't re-commit to the Sun Ray platform at this point in time. Aside from the cold-hard-light-of-day financial questions, there is the emotional question of investing in a product that's obviously going somewhere. Pre-acquisition, SRS/VDI was just biding its time before it went mainstream and took the Windows++ VDI market by storm. Now it's hard to see that Oracle's vision for where Sun Rays will run will ever create the necessary disruptive forces, and it's hard to want to be part of a non-revolution. On the financial front, something like a 'Bronze' partner level with Oracle might allow us to specialise in just desktop virtualization on x64 and *grow* my partnership as we succeed in bringing good-tech to the SMB space (but more attention to USB-passthrough, please). It would also signal that there was some kind of thought-processes in Oracle which looked at the whole world as a market for the SRS products - not just the niche crowd that have massive user counts to equip with consoles. Not that it matters, or helps me to get my work done, to preach to the choir ... cheers, David.
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