Re: Stop Dreaming
I'm not sure that was directly related to anything I wrote other than you stating why you think they should cut 50% of the Sun staff. What makes you think Sun hasn't cut overlapping organizations like marketing? What makes you think the Sun executives are going to last? What makes you think that that senior management who were worried about their future in the new Oracle/Sun company haven't started to leave (http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/10/01/hp_randy_seidl/) and taken his lackies with him?
What makes you think Sun didn't make money off of Java toward the end (http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/investor/earnings_releases/call_slides_enlarge.html?5)?
Oracle is in the business of making money. I think you can forget about the free lunch software.
Do you think Sun can compete with IBM, Dell or HP in terms of units shipped as far as any system nevermind specifics like SPARC or x86? Their value is in their unique engineering value-add like Sun Unified Storage 7000 series, F5100 Flash, F20 Flash HBAs, Sun Flash Modules, Sun Fire x4540s, Exadata v2. They're not going to outship HP on their DL380 G6s or 580 G6s. Sun can and does make their own networking, server, and storage technology (forget about the OEM'ing of HDS and LSI in the high-end and mid-range traditional FC storage space). Oracle owns the middleware stack and the DMBS space. Why do you think Oracle can't do the same thing as Exadata for the other stuff they sell so that you can just buy it, wheel it in and just run it with one throat to choke? What makes you think that won't be compelling to an exec who is tired of running the parts of his business completely in-house as far as racking, stacking, monitoring, managing, decommissioning, etc? It's very expensive...especially if it's not your core business but just stuff you need to support your business.
What makes you think that Linux and Solaris aren't on the same footing? Currently Linux is on a better footing. Until Oracle purchased Sun, they were promoting Linux, especially OEL and offering support directly for RHEL from Oracle. Sun was re-selling RHEL and SUSE with their systems and providing basic support with their x86 systems even if it was mediocre. But seriously, would you buy Linux support from Sun? Why wouldn't you just get it from RHEL or SUSE?
Solaris currently isn't at the same footing as RHEL or OEL, but will likely be soon. See Oracle Metalink doc 742060.1. You can start to see the change here with Oracle's database use of SSD/Flash technology. OEL and Solaris can use it, but RHEL/SUSE can't. An example can be found here with respect to the use of OEL and Solaris for Smart Flash Cache: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e10595/memory005.htm#BABCBAFG.
Again, Oracle is in the business of making money.
Get over McNealy and Ponytail. When was the last time Ponytail blogged: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/. That's right May 18, 2009. So what does that tell you about his influence in the new company?
Who has been talking a lot like during systems announcements like Exadata v2? John Fowler, EVP of systems. So get over the past. They didn't rob your baby or anything. Stop taking it so personally.
If you think Solaris should be axed, then you don't know what you're talking about. Just because I don't use RHEL, SUSE, Debian, Gentoo, OEL, or Ubuntu I don't say any of the Linux distros should be axed. They all provide some value and have cool features and functionality in their own right. If you look at Solaris 10, you'll see:
-Solaris Zones (free virtualization)
-Solaris Resource Management (free resource management)
-Solaris FMA (free intelligent fault diagnosis engine)
-Solaris SMF (replacement for traditional UNIX start up and shutdown run scripts, plus more really)
-DTrace (dynamic tracing capabilities of Solaris and applications to diagnose performance issues and bugs without impacting system load i.e. can be used live on prod environments).
-ZFS - (free filesystem and volume manager that doesn't suck i.e. replace that expensive volume manager you're paying for i.e. VxVM/VxFM or that crappy free one you're using today i.e. SVM/UFS).
-MPXIO - (free multipathing software that just works. Go ahead and test it in terms of performance against all the other load balancing algorithms from those fancy for-fee multi-pathing software...it is on par or is better in terms of performance with what it has).
-Solaris security - top notch
Then you look at what's in OpenSolaris already and how it is enabling the Sun Unified Storage 7000 series to do cool things. I mean look at Time slider, project Crossbow, COMSTAR, Look at project D-Light with Sun Studio. Look how some of these things have helped BSD or even the MacOSX (like DTrace)
The only public statement we really have that goes product by product is the FAQ they provided: http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/documents/webcontent/038563.pdf
That's why I said the UBS analyst fails. He doesn't know. He's just pulling random stuff out of his butt. In the meantime, he's a jerk because now I'm sure a bunch of Sun engineers are probably a little nervous about the future more so than before because some clueless idiot in a position of possible credibility decided to just make a supposition. All I'm saying it was an irresponsible prediction from an irresponsible individual from an irresponsible industry.