[SunHELP] good or bad?

[sunhelp at sunhelp.org]

My thoughts are that its a good idea that Sun do this. I don't think its
good for Solaris, and I don't think it will help the bottom line profit
margin much. I think its good because Sun is becoming isolated and percieved
as "not in the game".

Any time a customer (or especially a Sun customer) installs a machine
running Linux/Intel, its a sale that Sun had nothing to do with. Sun doesn't
get to keep their salesmans face in front of the suits when its time to talk
about the services that the Linux boxen provide. Furthermore, its a machine
that will never be under a Sun maintenance contract (a big profit center).
The more irrelavent Sun becomes to the customer, the quicker they find a
reason to dump Sun.

>From personal experience at my current job I can tell you that the
cost/benefit ratio of Linux/Intel compared to Sun/Solaris is very
attractive. My company has spent the time and money to re-write our software
so that it is Unix-independant. When that was done, we started to deploy
Linux/Intel boxes and found that they run great and are almost disposable.
Now, however, we are buying beefier servers from top manufacturers and
paying for service contracts because the services that Linux provide are
becoming crucial. Sun could fill this need with a Sunbox and get the
services contracts instead of watching my company delete Sun Enterprise
after Sun Enterprise from the network.

Now, does that mean that Solaris/UltraSparc is dead? I don't think so. I do
think it will become harder for Sun to make money with Solaris/UltraSparc,
but there will always be a need for real Unix on top notch hardware. Case in
point, although my company is embracing Linux, we won't (can't) abandon
Solaris for our database servers (millions of transactions per hour on
Oracle requires Solaris on Sun hardware).

>From a manufacturers point of view, Linux is a great deal thats hard to pass
up. While Sun pays many millions of dollars per year in payroll and
laboratories to maintain and advance Solaris, Linux is maintained, developed
and available for free. This is the math that tipped IBM into Linux (plus
AIX is a distant runner in the Unix race). It is true that "Linux 'taint
Unix", but for the majority of applications, it is sufficient.

So now, when Sun has a foot in the door of a small company with SLinux
(SunLinux) and the customer is outgrowing its systems, Sun can say "well we
DO have this other O/S that is proven to work well in your application at
your scale". And, when SLinux users need support because they cannot compile
their latest software release, Sun techs can walk them through it at $150.00
per hour (or under contract).

In short, I would say that the Linux/Intel push by Sun is definately the
lesser of two evils. If they did nothing I suspect we would see Sun fall
like the rest.


~ -----Original Message-----
~ From: Paul Mitcheson [mailto:pmitcheson at iee.org]
~ Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 1:18 PM
~ To: sunhelp at sunhelp.org
~ Subject: [SunHELP] good or bad?
~ 
~ 
~ Dear All,
~ 
~ I don't know if this is the sort of thing you want to discuss on this
~ list, so please ignore if you think it is off-topic, or too heated(!)
~ 
~ However, If you haven't read this yet, it is worth a look.
~ 
~ http://www.sun.com/2002-0206/linux/
~ 
~ My initial thought was that in 5 years time you won't be able to buy a
~ decent computer, even if you are willing to pay for it, because such a
~ thing will not exist.  I dearly hope Sun is not going the way of
~ Silicon  Graphics.  How long before I can't buy a workstation?
~ 
~ Paul
~ -- 
~ --------------------------------------------------------
~       .---.
~      /     \     
~      \. at -@./     Paul Mitcheson
~      /`\_/`\     Control and Power Research Group
~     //  _  \\    Imperial College London
~    | \     )|_   mailto:pmitcheson at iee.org
~   /`\_`>  <_/ \  http://www.mitcheson.demon.co.uk/paul
~   \__/'---'\__/
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