Bruce Barton. "When you're through changing, you're through." [Quotes of the Day]
7:12:49 AM    

Cringely on Sun.

A few days ago, Robert Cringely wrote a piece called "Sunset" about the troubles facing Sun Microsystems. Sun's in trouble, and it's interesting to think of why it's in trouble and how the company can get out of it. Cringely does a good job of both.

Sun and Apple are very similar companies. Both have survived for years on high-margin niche markets, differentiating themselves by their avoidance of Intel processors and one other major factor -- usability for Apple and reliability for Sun. In the past few years, they've faced similar challenges -- Intel's massive R&D has made the computers from both companies seem slow, and at the same time both have been attacked from the bottom. Apple has had to fight for its share of a consumer market that increasingly tilts towards low-cost (and therefore low-margin) machines, while Sun has battled against the lower-priced alternatives of Windows NT and Linux that can finally compete with Solaris in reliability and performance on the low end of the market.

With all of this, though, Apple is doing well and Sun isn't. Why is that? Apple has managed to transform itself to match the times. Usability used to be the primary reason why people bought Macs, though the hardware didn't stand out in a sea of beige boxes. Now it's design -- the iMac and Titanium PowerBooks catch your eye and make you wonder what's inside. At the same time, Apple has shifted its market, losing market share in education but picking up a number of Unix users who wouldn't have even looked at a Mac a few years ago.

Sun, on the other hand, hasn't really changed at all. The company doesn't have a response to Linux, and it can't present a compelling hardware offering for the low-end market. As Dell and others have driven prices for low-end servers down, Sun has been pushed into a high-end market, where it can wait its inevitable swallowing from below. Java won't help, either; a cross-platform runtime has never made much sense for Sun. Java runs better on Windows and Linux than it does on Solaris, so why would you buy Sun hardware for it?

I wish I could think of something Sun could do to extricate itself from this hole. It seems like every direction is blocked by some combination of Microsoft, IBM, Dell, and Red Hat. Sun needs to find a market in which they can be the best, in which business customers will be willing to pay more for superb hardware and software. I'm not sure where that is, but I wish them luck in finding it.

[Eric's Weblog]
7:07:53 AM    

*. [Archipelago]
6:59:04 AM    

God's Blog

"I think I'll make one more minor change before I go. I'm going to designate one of the new Mammal species as the Planet caretakers during my absence. I'm going to program them a slight appendage modification, called an 'Opposable Thumb' and I'm going to boost their CPU capacity a little. 

With these enhancements, this species (which I've decided to call 'Primates') will have dominion over the rest of the Planet so they can keep things under control while I'm gone. 

Oh, and blogging will be light for a few millennia until I get back from the Seventh Dimension." [via Jarrett House North, via McGee's Musings]

[The Shifted Librarian]
6:45:29 AM    

Sidney J. Harris. "Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." [Quotes of the Day]
6:43:13 AM    

Intel shows mesh networking: In one swoop, Intel has validated the notion of mesh LAN and MAN (metro area) networking by demonstrating a lab version of it and discussing the uses they expect (and are obviously planning for).

[80211b News]
6:42:20 AM    

George Bernard Shaw. "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." [Quotes of the Day]
6:35:56 AM