[PLUG] Sun's salvation?

Richard Langis richard.langis at sun.com
Wed Sep 25 16:08:23 UTC 2002


Take this off the record, since I'm obviously biased.  ;)

Sun still sees Solaris as the OS for the higher-end systems.  Why, you 
might ask?  Well first of all, Linux STILL doesn't scale well past 2-4 
processors.  At least, that's what I'm still hearing.  This may change 
with the 2.5->2.6 kernel series, or perhaps HURD when it matures, but 
until then, Sun still has a viable product to stick on those systems, 
and isn't going to ship customers something that 'may or may not work'.

To date, I've seen ONE port of Linux to the E10k (64 250-464mhz U3 
procs), and that was only with a 24(?) proc machine.  I don't think 
there was any *real* data on that, just that the guy HAD ported it and 
got it to function.  So far, nothing on the E15k (72-106 900mhz U3 procs).

I'm not sure what the corporate strategy for Sun ONE is, honestly.  I 
suppose I could look it up, but I wouldn't be able to share, regardless. 
  My initial thought however, knowing Suns animosity towards Microsoft, 
is that it is simply an alternative to Microsoft .NET.  If you don't 
want to buy into Microsoft, here's another option.

I think people look at the stock price (hovering at $3/share) for SUNW 
and think, "Oh, they're going down,"  Personally, I don't even look at 
the stock price.  People are buying Sun products MORE than they're 
buying HP, IBM or SGI.  The difference is that HP and IBM have a HUGE 
business to fall back on if the server market dries up.  SGI has the 
motion picture industry.  Sun...makes servers.  The whole Sun 
ONE/Java/etc is partially an attempt to diversify, IMHO.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.  :)

-R

Eric Jahn wrote:
> Only problem is Sun isn't offering linux as an available option for its
> higher end servers, and there are many others in the linux
> workstation/desktop space.  I think Sun is in trouble, and Sun ONE seems
> like every other web services strategy.  I don't know how java fits in
> with all this, but java isn't a major revenue source.
> 
> On Tue, 2002-09-24 at 22:11, Dirk Ouellette wrote:
> 
>><http://money.cnn.com/2002/09/23/technology/techinvestor/hellweg/index.htm>





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