Michael Dolan Dot Com

Friday, July 11th, 2008

Sunset? A failed open source strategy?

Has mismanagement finally done Sun in? Unfortunately I have to wonder if Jonathan has done irreparable damage. I think a lack of a real strategy to embrace Linux has led to this problem… Schwartz tried to turn Sun into an “open source company” but what does that really mean? How many companies have taken a similar approach and generated shareholder value? The best “open source companies” know better, they know how to manage and really use open source effectively to support their strategy – they don’t make it the strategy.

I just shake my head when Jonathan compares Sun to Google – it’s not true, not even within a mile. Google has a proprietary product in its search business – it’s built on open source, yes. But open source supports their strategy – to sell ads. If Sun “opened” Solaris correctly and at the right time, perhaps it could have done well. But you have to look for a strategy that works today, not a few years ago.

A strategy starts with what will customers buy from you. Refusing to accept that customers want fast, efficient servers running business solutions on Linux and Windows (note, not “open source”) could be cited as a cause of the downfall, or sunset if you allow me a pun.

I feel for the employees at Sun that will lose out first, before management. There are a lot of great people with great talent there and I can only hope the upper management is replaced and Sun as a company gets set straight by a professional with actual business execution ability. I would like to continue seeing Sun in the tech industry, perhaps not as the vendor we know it today. Maybe I’m just nostalgic, but too many great technologies have come from Sun employees in an innovative environment to just go the way of DEC or SGI.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/10/sun_under_gun/

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/07/09/sun-micro-could-ceo-schwartz-be-on-his-way-out/

Thoughts? Am I all alone on this?