Call it emblematic of Sun's scattered business models. If this week ends
with IBM in possession of Sun, they'll have picked up the biggest and
most exciting scrap yard in the computer industry. Sun has its
fingers in just about every computerized pie there is: from hardware
servers to storage systems, from software development tools to
software development frameworks. Sun has databases. It has Java
technologies. It has a huge research arm that seems to, less and
less, bring marketable products to the table.
I've spent a lot of time at Sun over the years, especially in its
labs, and I think the idea of IBM snatching them up is, really, the
only option at this point. Sun has some of the smartest brains in
computation these days. Unfortunately, they tend to lock them in
rooms and allow them to do whatever cool project they'd like. That's
why Sun has so many internal lab projects that sound closer to
academic research projects than actual investigations into improving
the company's bottom line.
To quote the Big Lebowski: "That's cool, man... That's cool." But
with Sun's bottom line slowly rising, and its top line still struggling to remain above that bottom line, there weren't many
options left.
You have to remember that Sun is a company with around US$13 billion in revenues, with only around $400 million in profits out of that. Nevermind the fact that the company turned in yet another unprofitable quarter at the end of last year.
So, if you were IBM, what would you keep? What would you throw
away? I've got a quick little list, myself:
Keepers:
-
Storage Unit - This unit, if
managed properly, should be able to grow with a fairly hands-off
approach. Everyone needs more storage, and EMC is really the only
major competitor for IBM here. Hewlett-Packard fights here too, but it doesn't
have the reputation of EMC, IBM or StorageTek... I mean Sun.
-
Glassfish - WebSphere is the
undisputed king of the app server market. But Glassfish is the
upstart with all the cool new ideas. Put them together, and
Oracle's acquisition of BEA looks like a finger in the dam.
-
JavaME - More focus here brings
IBM into the mobile business like nobody's business.
-
MySQL - Hopefully, IBM can make
things right here. Sun sure has botched this acquisition by rushing
out unfinished updates and generally not "getting it."
-
Ian Murdock - Perhaps the single
most important person at Sun, right now. The creator of Debian
survived the bloodbath last year and was moved off of Solaris to
help the company's other ailing software units. Murdock knows what
developers and admins want. Sun only knows what department of
defense admins and developers want.
-
Work Station - There's something
cool here, and Sun never figured out what it was. Maybe IBM can.
-
Patrick Curran - Head of the JCP, he was actually making a
big difference here.
- Open Office - I hate it with a passion because I use it every day. But it's still an important technology that needs to be loved and cared for.
Throw Aways:
-
Solaris - Give it up. Let it die.
It's useless, old and will still make money from service and
support contracts for the next 20 years.
-
OpenSolaris - A waste of time and
energy. Just release it to the wild as its own, unsupervised
project. The die-hards will keep it alive: no need to spend money on
life support or make-overs.
-
Servers - Is there really a need
for designer hardware in the data center? Yes, but it's mainly
needed for storage, or routing, or control. The run-of-the-mill
servers are all comoditized now, and Sun's premium pricing on Intel
and AMD servers is just pointless. Slowly, over the next 10 years, IBM will probably replace those Sun contracts with their own hardware, and no one will notice the diffference. Until then, however, IBM will make money here.
-
JavaFX - Waste of time and effort
for a company like IBM.
-
The Entire Sales Team – Sun's biggest problem over the past
few years has been its inability to close deals. Contrast that with
a company like HP, where sales are supreme king, god, all-father. At
Sun, sales seems to be more about getting to know customers and
making them feel comfortable than it is about getting them to sign.
Certainly that's not IBM's business model. IBM prefers to sell once,
and never, ever, under any circumstances, leave the building. IBM
global services is with you forever once you sign on the dotted
line. Sun, however, is gone until you ask for another order. Plus,
much has been said of Sun's sales folks' inability to sell the
really compelling aspects of their products, like the ability to run
Windows on SunRays Workstations.
-
Jonathan Schwartz – Cut him loose, IBM. Let him go and
build the startup he's been waiting for.
-
NetBeans – Not that I think it's bad, or that it should go
away. But if IBM gets Sun, you can bet this IDE is toast.