The Blog of Ben Rockwood

Transition & Closure as Oracle Takes the Con

29 Jan '10 - 15:13 by benr

On Jan 27th Sun, as an independent company, died and Oracle's reign begins. No time was wasted. As you no doubt have noticed by now, sun.com redirects to Oracle.com, which is in keeping with its acquisition history... but even so it happened quicker than I expected. No time being wasted.

Oracle hosted a 5 hour (yes, 5) event in Redwood City (Oracle HQ) to lay out its strategy for Sun.

Charles Phillips: Welcome and Oracle + Sun: Transforming the Industry
John Fowler: Hardware Strategy
Thomas Kurian: Software Strategy
Edward Screven: Operating Systems and Virtualization
Juergen Rottler: Customer Service and Support Strategy
Jeff Epstein: Operational Strategy
Larry Ellison: Oracle + Sun

Find all the above webcasts, both full and highlights, plus slide decks, here: Oracle + Sun: Transforming the IT Industry. If you only watch one, make sure to watch the final webcast with Larry which is an open Q&A.

(Selfish note: Joyent's logo is on the customers slide in the Operating Systems and Virtualization presentation. w00t.)

This is followed up by a Oracle + Sun Welcome Event world tour beginning in March. Look for an event near you.

In addition, several webcasts have been produce in the last couple weeks discussing technologies and the strategy going forward. Find them all here: Oracle + Sun Product Strategy Webcast Series.

So onto the guys who got us here in the first place.

Jonathan returns to blogging, "With the passing of that milestone, I can once again speak freely", in Where Life Takes Me Next.... He tells us how great things will be now that he's not running the company, points us to his Twitter feed, and yet again extols the brilliance of Greg Papadopoulos.

Now, I probably shouldn't pick a fight with Mr. Papadopoulos, but here goes. We hear again and again how brilliant this guy is... but look where we are. Seriously, how can you stand on the ruins of a fallen empire saved only because a neighbor took pity on us, and then tell us how brilliant one of the guys in charge was? I know I'm going to regret saying that, but he should have been smart enough to beat some sense into folks. I digress....

Scott McNealy, who took over for Jonathan either because the job wasn't getting done or because he wanted to take credit for "saving" the company (I'm not sure which yet; maybe both), sent out a old-skool company wide memo: Subject: Thanks for a great 28 years. Best summary of the situation was: "This is a very powerful merger. And way better than some of the alternatives we were facing. " Then he starts threading in capitalism, almost blaming but not blaming, the system as a whole for stacking the deck. I sense a story behind it all.

Scott gives us the answer to the horrible question "Why?!?!" We all know it, but its good to hear him admit it: "And though we did not monetize our inventions as well as we could have..." Under. Statment. Of. All Time.

- - C O M M E N T S - -
There’s the old saw about managing the product instead of the stock price. One suspects that perhaps Scott sees our capital system as having forced the company into managing the stock price…. Certainly the booming stock price that went along with the bubble drew Sun’s attention away from what was important in an attempt to grow at all costs, that ultimately dragged in a bunch of folks who helped the end arrive.

elmegil - 02 February '10 - 13:35

This comment suggested an interesting word-play, even if too cynical for the sad occasion and quite not correct for the vast range of Sun’s products:

With the “dot-com bubble” having long bursted, “the dot in dot-com” has finally gone down.

Sad times indeed…

Jim Klimov (Email) - 02 February '10 - 15:12

Well that’s a wrap then; we all knew this was coming. I’m shocked at how emotional I’ve been over this … I always liked Sun but I guess I didn’t really realize how much emotional energy I had put into Sun. Silly really as it’s just a company. We all have our teams.

The second computer I ever owner was a (very) used SparcStation 10. Even though it was over 8 years old at that point it was a dual CPU box with 256MB of RAM and booted off a 4 drive Sun 911. That made it significantly more interesting then the x86 desktops my friends had. x86 just looked like trash after that box.

Sun reminded me so much of DEC back in the day … great engineers in company that had serious management and strategy issues. I don’t know everything that went on in Sun HQ but the results speak for themselves. Sun was run by people who couldn’t lead a company out of a lit hallway with one exit. We run almost exclusively on Sun hardware and I always felt like we were a Sun customer in spite of Sun.

I feel the Oracle purchase (and it is a purchase not a merger) is hardly the worst outcome for Sun; the proposed IBM buyout would have been catastrophic. Oracle say’s they will keep much of Sun’s tech around and let’s all hope that proves true. Anyway it was always that tech attracted me as opposed to Sun the company. There are plenty of things I can criticize Oracle for but not generating revenue isn’t one of them so maybe we won’t lose it the way we’ve lost tech from SGI and DEC.

Thanks for all the good times Sun and goodbye. :’-(

isaac (Email) - 02 February '10 - 16:33

Were there any updates from Oracle regarding the future of OpenSolaris?

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Based upon what I read in this article, I don’t have much hope for any of the freebie’s like Oo or VirtualBox, etc…

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