Sun reported a small quarterly net profit of $19 million, reversing a year-earlier loss as lower costs offset a slight revenue decline. Jonathan Schwartz has interpreted the results, and uses his chance to bash IBM on open-ness.

But what's been really interesting is noticing who's not necessarily been so supportive of helping us drive more opportunity with our financial services customers: IBM. Yup, IBM's deployed in a number of customer accounts we share, and with the rapid uptake of Solaris 10 in early access, some customers have been running into dependencies - from MQSeries to Tivoli, Rational to DB2 - that stand in the way of their deploying Solaris. What's IBM's stance on Solaris 10? "There's no demand." Please. We know groups of our customers have called in directly to IBM seeking Solaris10 porting dates - and heard the same story, "you're the only customer that wants it."

Which frankly, is pretty infuriating. A few of those customers have said it feels like the "old IBM," the anti-competitive monolith that attempted to "lock and block" customers into proprietary IBM solutions. So if you run into an IBM representative, make sure to let them know you, too, would like to be considered the "only customer that wants it." More seriously, that they shouldn't attempt to lock customers in.

Come on, IBM, you've got nothing to fear - Solaris is open source, it's cross platform. It's even indemnified. And here's some free advice: you can't lock customers in. They always, always, have a choice. Personally, I wouldn't tempt them to exercise it.

Sun Q2 Earnings Announcement

Jonathan Schwartz interprets Q2

Sun ekes out profit, but revenue slide returns

Sun: Lead-with-innovation strategy pays off

It's interesting to note how large IBM is, and this whine fest is a great example.

IBM, the same company that brought you Eclipse, is the same company who still thinks it's the 1970s in large system sales.

Which goes to show, that it's next to impossible to have a singluar corporate vision when you have so many moving parts with their own distinct needs and goals.

spend time to port there applications to Solaris when they can support the linux movement instead. They make more friends that way and don't give any of there market share to SUN.

But probably just an excuse to blame IBM instead of bashing linux that probably take most of the buissness.

spend time to port there applications to Solaris when they can support the linux movement instead. They make more friends that way and don't give any of there market share to SUN.But probably just an excuse to blame IBM instead of bashing linux that probably take most of the buissness.

One of the killer applications on Linux desktops is Open Office - with source code from... Sun! Sun ships Linux - as Java Desktop. Sun has not been bashing Linux (well, not that much)- they have been bashing sellers of commercial Linux distributions, like Red Hat. Without Sun, Linux would probably not be a valid office desktop system.

One of the killer applications on Linux desktops is Open Office - with source code from... Sun!

please, just read the quoted sentence as :

One of the killer applications on Linux desktops is Open Office - with source code from the German Star Division company... bought by Sun.

One of the killer applications on Linux desktops is Open Office - with source code from... Sun!

please, just read the quoted sentence as :One of the killer applications on Linux desktops is Open Office - with source code from the German Star Division company... bought by Sun.

StarOffice wasn't free or even OpenSource before Sun bought its manufacturer. Buying a company is no criminal act. Yes, the original manufacturer gets the credit for producing the office suite - a clear act of bravery in a market dominated by the MS suite. But Sun gets the credit for making it free, you cannot deny it. And they did it when they were still light years away from accepting Linux as a viable alternative to Solaris for their UNIX desktops!

Without Sun, Linux would probably not be a valid office desktop system.

It is true that open sourcing StarOffice was a great event for Linux and many other operating systems (including Windows). On the other hand there was big lack of Open Source office suite and there were alternatives available at that time. For example KOffice was very promising. But OOo caught all attention and developers decided to prefer OOo rather. We can just guess, what would happen if OOo had not been created. I bet that KOffice would have more developers and it would be much better than it is now.

Without Sun, Linux would probably not be a valid office desktop system.

It is true that open sourcing StarOffice was a great event for Linux and many other operating systems (including Windows). On the other hand there was big lack of Open Source office suite and there were alternatives available at that time. For example KOffice was very promising. But OOo caught all attention and developers decided to prefer OOo rather. We can just guess, what would happen if OOo had not been created. I bet that KOffice would have more developers and it would be much better than it is now.

I like KOffice, but it was always years behind OOo - just look at the lack of database connectivity for example. OOo caught the attention because it did the job!

I agree.

By supporting Solaris I can see what's in it for Sun, but do not see a benefit worth the effort for IBM.

Given the costs an benefits that might be involved, it would make more business sense for IBM to concentrate the efforts on Linux rather than on Solaris.

Hey, but then again, this is just my opinion.

Regards,

Nelson.

I agree.By supporting Solaris I can see what's in it for Sun, but do not see a benefit worth the effort for IBM.Given the costs an benefits that might be involved, it would make more business sense for IBM to concentrate the efforts on Linux rather than on Solaris. Hey, but then again, this is just my opinion.Regards,Nelson.

IBM already supports Solaris, as its the #1 commercial UNIX, so IBM already has lots of customers using their software on Solaris. What IBM is doing is dragging their feet on supporting Solaris 10 on Sparc and Intel. Customers are deploying Solaris 10 beta for testing but without the needed IBM software applications they're not getting very far.

Linux has absolutely nothing to do with this. IBM already has paying customers of their software running on Solaris 2.6, 8 & 9.

Sun is just putting pressure on IBM to do sooner than later what IBM will have to do in the end, support Solaris 10. And IBM's going to have to do that not because of Sun but because IBM has *paying* customers using its software under Solaris.

spend time to port there applications to Solaris when they can support the linux movement instead.

It's pretty funny to watch how many folks think IBM is an open source company simply because they favor Linux. This despite the fact that virtually their entire software line is closed source and extremely expensive and lockin-centric. Their hardware is proprietary too. If IBM had their way you would be running Linux on POWER. They use this nice "free and open" operating system and then promptly lock you into their proprietary hardware and software. How many non-IBM apps will actually run on Power?

They make more friends that way and don't give any of there market share to SUN. But probably just an excuse to blame IBM instead of bashing linux that probably take most of the buissness.

When it coms to IBM it is more likely that their larger customers are using serious hardware running AIX.
IBM is in denial over Solaris 10.

Why would someone want to use RedHat over Solaris 10 x86 on the server when:
-Solaris 10 is free and RedHat is not.
-Solaris 10 has a more advanced filesystem
-Solaris 10 has DTrace
-Solaris 10 supports more advanced partitioning options
-Solaris 10 is faster
-Solaris 10 has military grade security
-Solaris 10 offers native support for Linux apps
-You don't have IBM trying to con you into using Power-based hardware.
-etc.

Linux is a better desktop OS than Solaris and a better server OS than Windows, but you are kidding yourself if you think it is in the same league as Solaris 10.

IBM is simply hiding their proprietary lockin stratey behind a Linux facade.

I haven't claimed that IBM is an open source company, only that I believe they would benefit more by supporting open source. Easier to implement services with a large stack of free tools & open standars.

Long term plan & visions for new deployment would probably not include a lock in to vendor dependent software & hardware. Not claiming gnu/linux is the best option know, but with an open development model more people are likely to benefit from it.

Can't understand why anyone would like to use RedHat either, except for where customers demand to have a certified platform. Gentoo is more fun & better community around it.

I haven't claimed that IBM is an open source company

Good!

Open standards are a good thing, I just think IBM is trying to associatate themselves with Linux. A sort of "cool by association" thing.

Can't understand why anyone would like to use RedHat either, except for where customers demand to have a certified platform. Gentoo is more fun & better community around it.

There are nice alternative distros, but certification is very important for serious data centers.

I have to say I'm not surprised. IBM is so big that each division kinda goes their own way. I'm bias towards linux, so if IBM ports their stuff to linux, Sun can use it too.

The place where this argument falls down I think is in situations where a company has a ton of E10K, E15K and E20K servers. As good as Linux is today, it still doesn't do many of the things Solaris does for really big boxes. This is especially crucial for Telco's that can't brind down a E10K. If a CPU or RAM is bad, they have to be able to reconfigure the OS to run without it, swap it out, test it and then reconfigure the server. If i was a Telco and had licenses of IBM stuff, I'd demand IBM port that stuff to solaris.

1. Sun needs distribute the cash and liquid assets by giving a dividend to the investors.! The board is going to act here. Like MS Did.
Even IBM - a 10x larger company, has less % liquid assets then Sun.
(Swartz also had some interesting comments during the election, that maybe his clients should know, if they care to read his blog. )

2. Then they need to show a return on the assets (that the investors gave them). Right now IBM has 8% return on assets; Sun is negative return on assets according to finance.yahoo.com ratios.

3. “the server and software company's revenues once again declined” - from linked News.com article.
How can they do this conistently for years? Their server does not show up on top ten TCP.org price/performance when I looked.
The software did not show up in market share study in the recent SDTimes article nor in Netcarft.

4. There are many admin, legal, evangelists and EG at that company telling us how to do things. PetStore comes to mind. Can they demonstrate by revenue for themselves? Who there is generating revenue? The sales people in all the remote offices?

There are still some very smart people that work at Sun… what I imagine is that one of them has to be in a meeting w/ Swartz…. Bla, bla, bla. Yuck.

Can we pretend that Swartz has nothing to do w/ Sun Java?... there, that’s better.

Fedora is sweet. I think Apple servers are nice, you can just get a rack. JDNC is the play.


.V
http://www.sandrasf.com/node/24

1. Sun needs distribute the cash

deep

 Their server does not show up on top ten TCP.org price/performance when I looked.

Last I checked they held the number one price performance position on spec.org with their Opteron servers.

Swartz

The correct spelling is Schwartz. But then again you seem to already "know" everything about him :)

Fedora is sweet. I think Apple servers are nice, you can just get a rack.

Fedora is a nice project. However, Nobody in their right mind deploys Fedora in a major financial services institution.
Apple servers are nice, but what software will you run? SAP? ORACLE? WebLogic?
I think not.
besides: What's the rack density of Apple servers?

Jack Jackson (real name?; w/ Sun I assume),

Quiz:
A. Sun is 2 times the size of Apple?
B. Apple is 2 times the size of Sun?

Hint:
"In the next 12 months we will buy an OSX computer/ SlowLaris computer?"

Correct ANSWER is:
http://tinyurl.com/4oqu5


.V
(lets not talk of HP or Dell size. Also, what's wrong w/ a divident? Oh yeah, the float operations on AMD Opteron is fast ... does that mean Sparc will be given to Fujitsu finaly? Inside info?)

Jack Jackson (real name?; w/ Sun I assume),Quiz:A. Sun is 2 times the size of Apple?B. Apple is 2 times the size of Sun?Hint:"In the next 12 months we will buy an OSX computer/ SlowLaris computer?"Correct ANSWER is:http://tinyurl.com/4oqu5.V(lets not talk of HP or Dell size.

Vic, I see your going with the BIGGER is BETTER theory and we all know that the better your stock is doing the better your technology! Just look at Microsoft! :)

Why do I care that Apple has been making tons of money selling iPods? Or selling laptops to college students?
You act like Apple is making all this money from selling Mac OSX based servers. Unfortunately in the enterprise server space, Apple just doesn't have any presence. The opposite is true of Sun.

As for Solaris, if your going to make fun of something at least have some respect and actually USE the product. If you used Solaris you realize that Slowaris got its name from the 2.0-2.3 timeframe. Since Solaris 2.4 things have been fine performance wise.

I love how biased techies are when it comes to technology. Linux Rules. Apples Rules! Being well rounded prevents this...

w/ Sun I assume

Nope, I don't work for Sun.

Quiz:
A. Sun is 2 times the size of Apple?
B. Apple is 2 times the size of Sun?
Hint:"In the next 12 months we will buy an OSX computer/ SlowLaris computer?"
Correct ANSWER is:http://tinyurl.com/4oqu5.V

What does this have to do with IBM? I also like Apple, just don't see what they have to do with servers in major financial institutions.

"SlowLaris": Actually the original insult was "Slowaris" and dates back to the previous century ;)

Considering the Solaris 10 is the fastest operating system on the planet for x86, AMD64 and SPARC I'd hate to know what you would call a slow operating system ;)

(lets not talk of HP or Dell size. Oh yeah, the float operations on AMD Opteron is fast ... does that mean Sparc will be given to Fujitsu finaly? Inside info?)

Again, what does this have to do with IBM?
General Motors is larger than all of them, but that doesn't mean they know how to build servers.

Inside info from where? Certainly not me as I don't work for Sun!

I observed one thing. Sun chief officers are always complaining about something or other. Till few months back they used to complain about microsoft, recently they are complaining about Redhat and IBM.
I think Complete Solution comes first compared to Opensource or Open standards or free.(Microsoft and IBM already proved it, and recently Apple-iPod)
Sun One server,Studio Creator dont have good market share.
They dont have a Database. I dont know if they have a Queueing product.
I think only H/W and O/S plays only small part in entire solution.(Even though they are crutial parts)
Naturally IBM downplays Sun what is so surprising and why is he complaining.

soon to set...
nothing really working out .... all great players at the top also leaving...

they should stop BEING CRY BABY AND DO SOMETHING

Couldn't they have made Solaris 10 more compatible with 2.6, 8 and 9 and not break MQSeries, Tivoli, Rational and DB2?

(I'm a Sun employee).

Alex: Solaris 10 is compatible with previous versions on each HW platforms it supports (Sparc, x86-32, there was no x86-64 before).

The Solaris problem is: IBM SW is available only on Sparc HW, and not on x86 HW. Some people want to run IBM SW on Solaris x86 platform for obviuos cost and price/performance reasons (a dual Opteron box clearly outperforms any other 2-way offering on the market, and Solaris 10 will be cheaper (costs 0 without support) and have better observability and reliability than enterprise grade Linux distributions).