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There are some very eerie parallels between Sun marketing and Commodore's in the 80's. The Commodore Amiga was a superior computer by far in the late 80's. US Ham radio operators were the first major group to adopt it, as it fit their needs perfectly. They used word-of-mouth through BBS sites to "market" it. As more and more (tech savvy) people heard about the Amiga, they started buying it. This gave a nice tidy profit - without advertising (or organized marketing of any kind).

Commodore never really advertised the Amiga (a few commercials during one X-mas season - I seem to remember a kid levitating his house ...), and rode that pony into the ground. They also did other stupid things like not putting much money into updating the product, and let 3rd party graphics "solutions" tear the community apart. But I digress!

Sun does the exact same thing as it relies on "Sun Bigots" - syadmins that not only disparage Windoze, but also any other *NIX solution (my work on HP-UX was marginalized and sabotaged on many occasions). So when it comes to soliciting opinions about future directions, these guys act like foaming-at-the-mouth, bug-eyed crazies that won't listen to reason. JUST the kind of guys that you would want to sway opinions (NOT!).

When FORD decided to pick a single vendor in the new millennium, they hired a CIO that was an IBM guy. It was a done deal until Sun and HP objected, and a hasty, rigged RFQ was set up. Even with the bias toward IBM, they still were able to show that IBM had both an UNIX and Linux strategy - while Sun did not. Needless to say, Ford now has P and X series all over the data center.

Sun used the word of mouth stuff for too long (strike one), and ignored Linux (and thus small business - strike two). Sun can't afford to take any more pitches! They need to MAKE more pitches . . .

Posted by: Roger Ramjet   Posted on: 11/24/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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