santiago538@yahoo.com <santiago538@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Shares are down 20% this morning. I see all around migration from
> Solaris to Linux, but have yet to see the reverse. Usage of Solaris
> x86 seems to be confined largely to enthusiasts, much as OS/2 and
> BeOS. Most young computer savvy people I know love Linux and despise
> Sun.
>
> Every indication is that Solaris is moribund :-(

(First of all, yes I realise it's a troll)

Fascinating. Migrations may be going in one direction, but that has nothing
to do with new growth and installations. Sun is selling gear--I know,
because we're buying it and the oil patch is buying it. Besides, migrations
to Solaris _are_ happening, mostly from Windows. eHarmony (the dating site
with the obnoxious commercials--oh wait; that's all of them!) switched from
Dell/Windows boxes to Sun/Solaris-x86 a year ago.

Basically, Sun has two products: Solaris and Sparc, and the only directly
make money off of the latter. Traditional Sparc is definitely facing
extinction sooner or later, but Niagra has given them some strength for
a few more years. (Of course, AMD and Intel are going to go down that
route as well, now that they've figured out how to put more than one core
in a CPU die. It may be another three years, but we'll see it.)
Sun's purchase of Montalvo will be very interesting--x86 asymmetric core
CPUs could be massively useful, but as near as I can tell, the OS would
need some knowledge of the asymmetry to be useful. If Sun owns them, then
they can certainly build this into Solaris, but Microsoft won't touch
the idea with a ten-foot pole, which means that it'll be another fantastic
niche technology. Of course, that's assuming that they'll actually get out
the door with these things. Montalvo couldn't, so can Sun? Good question.

From a financial point of view, Solaris only exists to sell Sparc boxes
and service contracts from Sun. This is important.

Now from a business point of view, Sun is really NOT holding themselves
together. Great product, good support (as much as we complain, it's still
well above average in this industry), and a remarkable ability to screw
things up. In tough times with a lagging stock, the idiot at the top has
managed to do such critical things as changing the stock ticker symbol to
JAVA, and force through a 1:4 reverse split so there's more room to fall.
How about fixing the actual business model? How about fixing your money
bleed before buying speculative companies?

I'm quite concerned about Sun's future, and am afraid that it'll get worse
the longer that Schwartz is in charge. However, today's sell off is WAY
over the top--in another week or two, it'll have made back half of what it
lost today. This is just panic selling.

In the meantime, Solaris is going to revolutionise the computer industry.
Memory management and kernel are better here than in the alternatives, and
they'll learn from it, even if they can't incorporate the code because the
GPL is incompatible with every other license on the planet. ZFS is likely
going to become part of the generic infrastructure in another ten years.

Whether or not Sun will be around to see that, I don't know.

Colin