The Sun sets for Open Systems stalwart

The turn of the century was a bad omen for computing industry stalwart Sun Microsystems. Once seen as leading the pack in the Unix server market, its decline in fortune may have stemmed from its refusal to accept early on the potential of the Intel x86 platform as a viable, computing workhorse for all but the most demanding of applications.

As far back as 2002, Sun faced quarter-upon-quarter of revenue decline even as analysts estimate the market was actually picking up steam with rising server revenues by most vendors (except Sun).  And so it was that nearly 8 years later, Sun finally conceded defeat accepting an offer by database giant, Oracle, to be acquired for US$7.4 billion at 2009 levels.

Should the industry mourn the death of Sun? I don’t quite revenue the atmosphere during the days when Digital Equipment closed it’s doors following the completion of its acquisition by Compaq (itself eventually gobbled up by HP).

Will the sunset for a veteran hardware vendor mark the official beginnings of the dawn of the software age? It can be argued that for many years most industry observers swooned to the music of hardware vendors. Even today we applaud with each new processor by Intel, or the new lineup of Thinkpad laptops, and tomorrow – January 27, 2010 – the much anticipated Apple tablet device (or whatchamacallit). Sure, we turn our heads when Microsoft launched the latest incarnation of its much despised yet very popular Windows operating system. Yes, enterprises raised their hands to view the latest SAP ERP software. And definitely, businesses are listening more intently on how Software-as-a-Service will reduce their CAPEX cost considerably and make them look better on the accounting books because OPEX doesn’t hurt their market positioning as much as CAPEX.

Its hard to figure out when the software revolution started. But you can bet that just as Apple revolutionized the MP3 market not with a neat, flashy, fancy music player (on the contrary it defined convention by being overly simple) but with software, so too will we finally see the years ahead as the period when software defined how consumers and enterprises will use technology.

For the moment, we bid fond adieu to one of the pioneers of hardware-based computing solutions – Mr Scott McNealy. He is, by many reckoning one of the more colorful characters of Silicon Valley. Hopefully his legacy will somehow survive under the watch of Oracle CEO, Mr Larry Ellison – another industry stalwart.

CEO farewells are fun to read because they are often drafted by wordsmiths who don’t fully understand the emotional turmoil that accompanies an executive’s departure. I am not sure if Mr McNealy hired a professional writer for his farewell but it certainly paints a sad story of the rise and fall of an icon. So before you take out that tissue to wipe away the sadness in his farewell message, watch this video to take the bite out of Mr McNealy’s bittersweet farewell.

Click more for the memo.

 

Innovation without Value is a load of crap

October 10, 2009. I braved the cold winds of San Francisco to attend Oracle Open World 2009. It was my first time to attend this event and true to what my hostess told me, it was jam packed with people wanting to listen to Larry Ellison deliver his welcome keynote address. What surprised me was Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems peddling his stuff to a crowd of Oracle guests and employees. Everyone was expecting McNealy to give his traditional Top 10 “funny, sometimes insightful, and almost always highly Microsoft-targeted” list. But the on-going Oracle acquisition of Sun prevented him from being his usual self (or so he said). Watch him deliver what may be one of his last keynotes as CEO of Sun Microsystems.

In his keynote, McNealy reminded everyone that Sun has “always been about innovation and despite today’s technology having the shelf-life of a banana, you have to keep inventing, creating and breaking-through with new stuff.” He also emphasized that the combined Oracle and Sun companies will create one of the largest pools of R&D in the world. Innovation is not just about creating something new but you need to provide value to your customers, and must result in success.

Larry Ellison, for his part, shared the ‘same excitement’ about the potential that two industry innovators (Sun on the hardware and Oracle on the application software) can bring together to the market. He promised to continue investing in Sun’s core innovations including the Sparc chip and the Solaris operating system.

The announcement of the next release of the Exadata server series seems to corroborate this promise. The first Exadata released was a HP-Oracle venture. Exadata Version 2 sees Oracle partnering with Sun to produce an even better product. While the first version focused on speeding up data warehousing (DW), the succeeding version included online transaction processing (OLTP) compute capability in the same box. What Oracle is trying to do here is deliver a complete DW/OLTP solution that integrates server, storage, operating system, middleware and application to do something faster than is possible by amalgamating different elements from different vendors, the way system integrators do.

Certainly the Exadata offers a slightly radical way of running your data warehouse. If you believe Larry Ellison’s slide on the comparative cost of the Exadata to the IBM near equivalent offering, the price differential is staggering. Such a shift in the way data warehouses are built and delivered should amount to what McNealy calls innovation that delivers true value and profits to an organization.

So am I sold on the idea that Sun will thrive under the Oracle umbrella? The Exadata 2 proves there may be a future for Sun inside Oracle. But I still have some lingering doubts and perhaps its because of the way McNealy left the stage as he closed his keynote. In my mind, it signalled a quiet resignation on the part of this entrepreneur who co-founded a company that today represents a sizeable install base in finance, education, and government industry sectors. But maybe I am just reading too much into it. Watch for yourself below.

Click here for other stuff around Oracle Open World 2009.