Sun: Shame on us if we can't grow

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Sun's way to profitability.

The number given in this quote describing Suns plan is significant:

Sun can save $100 million by reducing the cost of goods sold...
[I believe this actually means ... reducing the cost of producing goods]

$100 million is the amount of annual revenue Sun sacrificed by open-sourcing Solaris.

And how will that $100 million be gained?

Continuing the quote:

by taking measures such as moving StorageTek product manufacturing to external partners

[layoffs from outsourcing production]

and having those products shipped directly to customers, he said.

[layoffs of those involved in shipping and handling]

Another $100 million will come from operating-expense "synergies" with the purchased companies, he added.

[layoffs of supposedly redundant staff in the merged companies]


Sun will eliminate employees and regain the lost revenue and more (maybe).

In this sense open-sourcing Solaris is being paid in jobs. And that's not counting the impact on employees who produce software.


But doesn't Sun have some justification for the loss of Solaris?

No:

"We shipped more licenses of Solaris in the past 12 months than we have in the combined history of the company," Schwartz said, estimating that the total was probably 100 or 1,000 times more than rival Unix products from IBM or Hewlett-Packard. That, in turn, attracts developers, software companies and ultimately customers, Sun argued.

Why should it attract customers to Sun hardware?

If Solaris ran only on Sun products, okay.
But, as it is, Solaris can be the most used software in the world (admittedly impossible) and gain nothing for Sun. The hardware has to sell itself without a software advantage.

If Sun had announced that it was open-sourcing nothing, but was going to use the efforts of all its employees to produce and sell great hardware with the best operating system of its kind available only from Sun, then I'd be more sanguine.

I hope Sun is not already too set in its disastrous ways.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 02/01/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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