Too true
I still think Sun makes some of the better kit out there. I'd use Solaris over just about anything else if it really mattered. Sorry to see such an innovative company take it on the chin.
14 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Apr 2007
So, let me get this straight. Cisco, who operates in a high-margin networking hardware business wants to muscle in on IBM/HP/Dell/Sun who operate in a cut-throat low-margin world (at least for HW) with an integration play?
Got to give them credit for trying to monetize their customer base by hurting the other players, but in the process there's a good chance they'll expose their own cozy market economics to increased scrutiny and increased competition from those same players.
Economics is the most inexact of sciences. In what other field can you be wrong 100 percent of the time, get the Nobel prize and be utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of living beings on the planet? (Oh, I just described Al Gore, didn't I.. Oops!)
Seriously, economics makes sociology look like the hardest of sciences by comparison. I'd love it if the current environment elevated the field and caused investment (ha!) in quantitative methods and allowed accountability to be introduced into economic models.
Ah, but this all sounds so familiar. To those who spout "visualize world peace" I reply, yes, and ignore world history. Every time there's a lull in world conflict (believe it or not, now's such a time) there's a tremendous uproar on the expense of weaponry. Fast forward a few years or decades and it's always been prudent to remember how to fight and have the means to do so.
So, make choppers, not war is a great slogan but will help little when the next warlord armed with oil money decides his kingdom is too small. Times change, people don't. We'll always need this stuff. Fatalistic? Maybe. Historically accurate? you bet.
One reason is that Sun has so many commercial customers with large installations that would likely rank in the top 500 but they aren't focused on HPC, only on their work. It's a huge bit of work qualifying a system for the list - not much profit in that.
I would say Sun does a terrible job getting their large customers interested in the list.
Interesting seeing all the blathering about the death of Sun and how Solaris/SPARC sucks, etc. Every few years this reaches fever pitch as Sun comes out with yet another nice box that addresses customer needs in some new way.
Is VF the right tool for every workload? No. Is X86 the right architecture for every workload? No. Certain workloads will simply run better elsewhere. No one's forcing or even suggesting that Niagara family machines are best in all cases.
The Niagara 1 boxes were a real eye opener for lots of Sun customers in that they gave many applications incredible throughput and at a reduced size and power footprint. The Niagara 2 boxes were even more performance in the same size box.
Nice to see Sun trying something different from the other lemming box makers.
Interesting that folks feel free to take whacks at companies that promote OSS like Sun while ignoring IP monarchies like Apple and Adobe for keeping their stuff totally proprietary.
To say this is a double standard is obvious, but what's behind it? Even MS is making OSS noises these days. User experience is a sacred cow for some, but these companies are hiding behind that cow.
Hollywood could have owned the content explosion that is the web today. By their actions and inactions, they have relegated themselves to the trash heap of history. Too bad the MPAA, under Mr Valenti, failed to grasp this.
So long Jack, we knew ye all too well..