Step 5 is the problem. In the twelve years from 1997 through 2008, Sun made a profit
in three years (2000, 2001, and 2004) and lost money in all the other years. I understand
people having reasons for wanting Apple to acquire Sun, but they should not kid themselves
that making a profit is one of them.
Without having done a proper analysis of the business, my impression is that SUN have invested a lot of money in developing the various SPARC processors for a market that simply was not all that thrilled with SPARC processors, especially when they had no particular advantage over other alternatives. Gosh, that sounds a lot like a short history of the PPC as well. (Yes, I realize that Intel "lost their way" for a few years and have only recently come back like gangbusters.)
SUN have also suffered from other companies "poaching" their traditional customer base. HP, Dell (yes, them), and others have offered alternatives at attractive prices. Even Boeing drunk the kool aid a number of years ago and bought a bunch of Dells. Price does matter...and so does the OS. The benefits of Solaris/OS X are there whether they run CPU X or Y. Simply put, the IT business is much, much more competitive that it was during the "good old times".
Despite the various issues with Apple, they have run much more like a business whose purpose is to make money that they used to. There was a time when Apple could, perhaps uncharitably, but nonetheless accurately have been said to be a bunch of people doing stuff that, while interesting, had no relationship to any product that would be salable (and I don't mean the R&D staff). Believe it or not, that is what SUN needs to focus on whether they remain independent or are acquired by someone else.
Let's face it. The lack of profitability you recite is why SUN is on the auction block.
My global impression is that IBM in its chasteed and continuing remake following its near death experience at the hands of MS, and since giving up the PC wars and dumping its PC division has gradually become a better steward of its acquisitions while shedding its propriety roots to become a deep pockets supporter of open source - although it's tried to pull the rug out from under Sun's Java through its participation in the Eclipse Alliance (which I admit not having followed in some years), so it wouldn't necessarily scrap ZFS or OpenSolaris. Whatever my fuzzy math on this though, and it's bound to shed some things some people really like, Big Blue's done something pretty impressive for what another poster called an "old fart" company: made money in this business climate. And it still has scale.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison
Probably for the same reasons Apple has tepid interest in Enterprise level computing. They don't seem to feel comfortable in this arena. I agree with JavaCowboy and Apple Sun merger could work with the right amount of Sun Autonomy and of course sharing of technology.
Apple alone could sway big numbers simply by using Sun on the backend for their Datacenters. Sun's storage hardware is solid (StorageTek stuff freshened up) and Sun is more into support services than Apple which is why they do not fear open source.
I believe Apple would lose focus if it tried to digest Sun. Too far away from its knitting. Better to collaborate with partners who still all agree the target is MS.
Apple's made some good use of acquisitons, but only of things they're capable of swallowing and applying to their own vision. And they have no large vision of server computing.
An Apple holding an autonomous (and unprofitable) Sun has no advantage over an Apple with fat margins who can partner with a Sun IBM subsidary from a position of clear strength (and IBM knows how to profitably run a service and server-based enterprise-oriented company - something Sun has been having trouble doing).
Quote:
Originally Posted by bloggerblog
Adobe has never been this cheap for more than 5 years (a few days ago it was going for $10 a share!), Apple should buy Adobe.
SUN and especially IBM are both old-farts.
I used to think this, but I doubt the cultures and goals would be a great fit, and moving from Flash to HTML 5 would be a lumpy transition - not to mention I've always felt PDF's suck by locking in content in totally difficult to cut and paste and lock you into running yet anohter program.
Let Apple be Apple and negotiate with the friends of my enemies.
You need to learn how to write a real business plan.
1. Buy Sun.
2. Gut the redundancy in staffing.
3. Restructure as a subsidiary of Apple.
4. Develop an Enterprise Roadmap for cross pollination.
5. PROFIT!!!
I guess they didn't teach you that in your fancy MBA classes!?!!?
</sarcasm>
As a mechanical engineer and computer scientist who worked at NeXT and Apple I never did an MBA.
Having worked in the Enterprise space and dealt with Sun, IBM and more your sarcasm makes zero sense.
The redundancy deals with the mergers of accounting, marketing, human resources and more.
Key engineers work to cross-pollinate knowledge.
Top architects start sifting through IP that is value added and work towards what will or will never be worth hording and thus license out to third parties for some extra revenue streams.
Fire Jonathan Schwartz. That douche sucked at Lighthouse Design when I worked at NeXT and had the arrogance to think he was the next Steven P. Jobs. He's such a genius that Sun never bothered to leverage the Lighthouse Design engineering team to continue Cocoa development for OS X and provide revenue streams for Sun. He's an ego-maniacal dweeb.
The pony tail look never worked for you Jonathan. No one needs to see an embedded video of you.
Scott McNealy moves on and Apple puts a new management team for the new subsidiary and streamlines their product group. Renegotiates their long-term server strategy with partners like AMD, Oracle, Red Hat and more.
Apple closes Sun's headquarters and sells all the disgusting interior coloring to the fanatics who think that color of lavender and gray were cool.
Apple holds the server world hostage in wondering what the hell they have planned for their n-tier solutions and pisses off HP and IBM because it had the cash, on-hand, to swallow up this company and in less than 1 year recoups their cash base with their continued growing consumer markets.
What's amusing to contemplate are all the various architectures and OS technologies that Apple/NeXTSTEP have had to deal with. Consider the Mac platform alone:
'Classic' Mac OS on 68xxx > PowerPC > OS X (Mach/BSD) > (32-bit - 64-bit) > Intel architecture.
Now imagine incorporating Solaris (System V Unix) and/or SPARC into the mix. It's the platform transition that never ends!
Apparently you missed that Leopard was certified as a Unix system. It now joins the ranks of Sun, IBM, & HP.
If Apple were to aquire SUN I fear they would replace Solaris with OS X Server & just merge key technologies, something that in effect may not put them in a much better place technology wise to attack the enterprise market.
All that being said though they would also be buying customers if they bought SUN & this could give them a well enough boost into the enterprise market that people might actually stop laughing at the thought of Apple in enterprise.
I would love to see Apple go enterprise, but as awesome as Leopard Server is it still has many shortfalls in management when compared to AD. You can't simplify everything in enterprise, this is the one area that you actually need to offer crazy range of flexibility.
Hmm. I say, as much as I love leopard, and think win7 might revive IT, look up Project Looking Glass from Sun. Lots if Leopard features years before Leopard. Not sure if anyone can really take on MSFT. Their pockets are too deep.
I do worry about Sun and hope Sun can still be a player.
Let's be real. Apple doesn't service IT like they could Nd their bread and butter are consumer devices. That said, Sun could offer Server space like Apple has never seen plus offer great workstations like pro tools and avid. I think this is doable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigpics
My global impression is that IBM in its chasteed and continuing remake following its near death experience at the hands of MS, and since giving up the PC wars and dumping its PC division has gradually become a better steward of its acquisitions while shedding its propriety roots to become a deep pockets supporter of open source - although it's tried to pull the rug out from under Sun's Java through its participation in the Eclipse Alliance (which I admit not having followed in some years), so it wouldn't necessarily scrap ZFS or OpenSolaris. Whatever my fuzzy math on this though, and it's bound to shed some things some people really like, Big Blue's done something pretty impressive for what another poster called an "old fart" company: made money in this business climate. And it still has scale.
I believe Apple would lose focus if it tried to digest Sun. Too far away from its knitting. Better to collaborate with partners who still all agree the target is MS.
Apple's made some good use of acquisitons, but only of things they're capable of swallowing and applying to their own vision. And they have no large vision of server computing.
An Apple holding an autonomous (and unprofitable) Sun has no advantage over an Apple with fat margins who can partner with a Sun IBM subsidary from a position of clear strength (and IBM knows how to profitably run a service and server-based enterprise-oriented company - something Sun has been having trouble doing).
I used to think this, but I doubt the cultures and goals would be a great fit, and moving from Flash to HTML 5 would be a lumpy transition - not to mention I've always felt PDF's suck by locking in content in totally difficult to cut and paste and lock you into running yet anohter program.
Let Apple be Apple and negotiate with the friends of my enemies.
How long did it take Jobs to turn around Apple? I'd argue it took him at least 5 years before anybody saw any results. Before that, just about everybody was proclaiming that "Apple is dying", much as they're now saying about Sun. Before that, "Cocoa development" was a pipe dream, as Apple was forced to kill off Rhapsody for their customers, so please explain how Schwarts was stupid to kill off Lighthouse design?
Sun has a solid business plan that unfortunately was derailed by the current financial crisis when about 10% of their customers went out of business. That's not Schwartz's fault.
In case you need it spelled out for you, here it goes:
1) Sun is positioning themselves as the preferred vendor of open source solutions, attracting developer mind share.
2) Sun will leverage bottom-up introduction of their products in corporations, as developers who prefer their solutions integrate them.
3) The companies using their products will buy support and hardware from Sun.
Pretty simple, eh? Too bad you haven't figured it out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer
As a mechanical engineer and computer scientist who worked at NeXT and Apple I never did an MBA.
Having worked in the Enterprise space and dealt with Sun, IBM and more your sarcasm makes zero sense.
The redundancy deals with the mergers of accounting, marketing, human resources and more.
Key engineers work to cross-pollinate knowledge.
Top architects start sifting through IP that is value added and work towards what will or will never be worth hording and thus license out to third parties for some extra revenue streams.
Fire Jonathan Schwartz. That douche sucked at Lighthouse Design when I worked at NeXT and had the arrogance to think he was the next Steven P. Jobs. He's such a genius that Sun never bothered to leverage the Lighthouse Design engineering team to continue Cocoa development for OS X and provide revenue streams for Sun. He's an ego-maniacal dweeb.
The pony tail look never worked for you Jonathan. No one needs to see an embedded video of you.
Scott McNealy moves on and Apple puts a new management team for the new subsidiary and streamlines their product group. Renegotiates their long-term server strategy with partners like AMD, Oracle, Red Hat and more.
Apple closes Sun's headquarters and sells all the disgusting interior coloring to the fanatics who think that color of lavender and gray were cool.
Apple holds the server world hostage in wondering what the hell they have planned for their n-tier solutions and pisses off HP and IBM because it had the cash, on-hand, to swallow up this company and in less than 1 year recoups their cash base with their continued growing consumer markets.
Let's be real. Apple doesn't service IT like they could Nd their bread and butter are consumer devices. That said, Sun could offer Server space like Apple has never seen plus offer great workstations like pro tools and avid. I think this is doable.
Let's be real though. Apple's consumer success has been parlayed from a hail mary TD from the iPod.
If the iPod doesn't turn out to become a billion dollar success there's no iPhone. We should all be thanking Tony Fadell for saving Apple. Every bit of consumer success for Apple stems from iPod origin which is why I still think Apple's long term success is tenuous. Consumers are fickle...they'll have an iPhone for one contract an then move on to a new phone for the next contract.
I can't assume that Apple has these customer locked in for any significant time. Enterprise however takes a lot longer to turn. Few places can sustain a "rip and replace" upheaval.
I think Sun would merge with Apple for less money than IBM, Cisco or whoever well pay. I agree with MDriftmeyer that Apple keeps the best of the best of Sun employees in a merger and develops a two headed Hydra approach.
Sun engineers get certified in OS X and handle some of the Pro Applecare stuff.
Both IBM and Sun already sell multiple OSs, their own proprietary stuff and Linux.
Yes, and notice they don't sell anyone else's proprietary OS...
Quote:
Why would they license Mac OS X Server too? Because there is a market for serving Macs in higher ed and increasingly, to serve push messaging to corporate iPhones and other easy to mange wiki/blog/iCal Server/Podcast Producer style applications unique to Apple that aren't all available to AIX/Solaris/Linux.
Which Apple is happy to sell Xserve's for more Xeon buys from Intel.
Quote:
Why would Apple license Mac OS X Server to IBM/Sun when it shows no interest in licensing Mac OS X to Dell and HP and Pystar? Because Apple's money comes from consumer hardware, and the company hasn't been able to break into enterprise sales and demonstrates little interest in doing so.
Which doesn't mean it wants to give away the enterprise sales it does have.
Quote:
How much money does Apple make designing and building the Xserve? It's a vanity product. Why not cede that business to Sun, and collect licensing revenue from a NEW market, just as it gave up trying to sell the Xserve RAID and delegated those hardware RAID sales to Promise?
A RAID box is different than giving up control over their OS and thier enterprise h/w.
Quote:
Apple also "licensed" the iPod to HP (or more accurately "franchised") because HP could (at the time) sell it to a wider audience of PC buyers. So there's plenty of reasons why Apple would license Mac OS X Server to a broad audience that does not compete with its current sales.
HP iPods were identical to iPods and not made by HP. HP was a distributor and not a manufacturer. And it didn't last all that long.
Quote:
Additionally, Mac OS X Server costs $500 to $1000 per license. Mac OS X costs $129. When you buy a PC, you pay a ~$30 Microsoft tax. When you buy a PC Server, you pay $1000 (or more) for a Windows Server license separately. You then shell out thousands for CALs.
That reality results in desktop PC licensing making no sense for Apple to enter (it can't make any money giving up its profitable Mac hardware sales for $30 licenses sold to Dell), but leaves enterprise server sales a lucrative licensing opportunity where Apple risks very little. It has no real Xserve volumes to lose, and Sun could offer a variety of different hardware to enterprise customers (Apple only has one Xserve, a 1U machine).
Sun/IBM could gain a new way to sell hardware, and risk little from 'losing sales' of AIX or Linux or Solaris, because first, there's little overlap and new markets to enter, and secondly because Sun makes its money from hardware, not its OS, while IBM makes money on service, not AIX. That's why both started supporting and distributing Linux - they don't make money on software.
There's no real reason for Sun or IBM to pursue Mac OS X server without also getting workstation licenses. Which Apple isn't going to give up. There's no real market for OS X servers and OS X is inferior to Solaris for servers, and slightly inferior to Linux anyway. I haven't had an AIX box in years so I don't know what shape that's in.
What you prefer is that your workstations run the same OS as your backend servers just becuase it's easier that way. This is why folks will go ahead and pony up for RHEL workstation if they decide on RHEL server for their servers (plus it's cheap relatively anyway). This is why some folks by xserves but otherwise why bother? Macs are already made to exist nicely within the Windows Server ecosystem.
Sun and IBM is better off trying to build a desktop that doesn't suck.
Apparently you missed that Leopard was certified as a Unix system. It now joins the ranks of Sun, IBM, & HP.
If Apple were to aquire SUN I fear they would replace Solaris with OS X Server & just merge key technologies, something that in effect may not put them in a much better place technology wise to attack the enterprise market.
No. You replace OS X server with Solaris and slap Cocoa and the UI on top of Solaris for a big win.
Running OSX on Sun's "big iron" would be funny to watch as long as it wasn't YOUR server.
I used to think this, but I doubt the cultures and goals would be a great fit, and moving from Flash to HTML 5 would be a lumpy transition - not to mention I've always felt PDF's suck by locking in content in totally difficult to cut and paste and lock you into running yet anohter program.
Let Apple be Apple and negotiate with the friends of my enemies.
Flash who? It's CS that Apple cares about. CS alone is worth the current cost of Adobe for Apple. At least it would something that MS cares enough about to never close the macbu.
There's this thing called the internet see. And on it are these things called forums...and like kitchens they can get rather warm.
Given how defensive you've been whenever anyone dares to critique any of your articles I suggest you refrain from reading the forums or growing a thicker skin.
Flash who? It's CS that Apple cares about. CS alone is worth the current cost of Adobe for Apple. At least it would something that MS cares enough about to never close the macbu.
God, I love slow days at work, especially since I'm forced to use crappy IBM products since I work for an IBM shop (my clear bias against IBM buying Sun showing).
You hit the nail right on the head, though. Adobe isn't doing super well these days, and are a bargain at 10.77B market cap.
It might be really audacious, but it wouldn't surprise me if Apple were to first port Photoshop to 64 bit Cocoa and then....
(suspenseful pause)
Make Photoshop *Mac Only* (as they did with Final Cut Pro).
Then a whole bunch of image editing professionals would be forced to buy Macs.
Apple doesn't "get" the Enterprise but they do "get" graphics which is why I think it would be easier to spend 5 billion in developing their own CS suite versus buy Adobe.
Apple and Adobe have different ways of accomplishing things. I love to see them battle it out as they bring the best out of each other.
Is anyone concerned about how such a merger might be for the public? (I can't decide how I feel about that.)
A defining feature of the computer industry is how a company with a lot of power can completely control the market and prevent new entries into that market. What offsets this nicely is the fast rate of change in the type of tasks that computers are used for. If it weren't for that change, the centralized power would be much more problematic.
So what I'm wondering is if that rate of change will ever slow down for relatively static portions of the market. If that happens, then I'd prefer to have more competition rather than less.
For instance, word processors have stagnated, partially because it is a relatively"known" field at this point and also because of MS's monopoly position. Wouldn't it have been great if multiple companies had survived and conformed to industry wide standards?
This is the type of thing which should be pondered when considering a Sun / IBM merger. 20 years from now, will the corporate systems they specialize in have stagnated due to lack of competition?
How many other players are in the same league? Oracle, SAP, Sun, IBM...
Comments
Your comments are inappropriate and ridiculous.
Your comments are salacious, egregious and thelonious!
well I'm glad! 'cause that makes me feel a lot better about my comments!
You need to learn how to write a real business plan.
1. Buy Sun.
2. Gut the redundancy in staffing.
3. Restructure as a subsidiary of Apple.
4. Develop an Enterprise Roadmap for cross pollination.
5. PROFIT!!!
I guess they didn't teach you that in your fancy MBA classes!?!!?
In the fancy MBA classes it goes like this:
1. Buy Sun.
2....
3. PROFIT!!!
(3a. or ask for a bailout...)
You need to learn how to write a real business plan.
1. Buy Sun.
2. Gut the redundancy in staffing.
3. Restructure as a subsidiary of Apple.
4. Develop an Enterprise Roadmap for cross pollination.
5. PROFIT!!!
I guess they didn't teach you that in your fancy MBA classes!?!!?
</sarcasm>
Step 5 is the problem. In the twelve years from 1997 through 2008, Sun made a profit
in three years (2000, 2001, and 2004) and lost money in all the other years. I understand
people having reasons for wanting Apple to acquire Sun, but they should not kid themselves
that making a profit is one of them.
Step 5 is the problem. In the twelve years from 1997 through 2008, Sun made a profit
in three years (2000, 2001, and 2004) and lost money in all the other years. I understand
people having reasons for wanting Apple to acquire Sun, but they should not kid themselves
that making a profit is one of them.
Without having done a proper analysis of the business, my impression is that SUN have invested a lot of money in developing the various SPARC processors for a market that simply was not all that thrilled with SPARC processors, especially when they had no particular advantage over other alternatives. Gosh, that sounds a lot like a short history of the PPC as well. (Yes, I realize that Intel "lost their way" for a few years and have only recently come back like gangbusters.)
SUN have also suffered from other companies "poaching" their traditional customer base. HP, Dell (yes, them), and others have offered alternatives at attractive prices. Even Boeing drunk the kool aid a number of years ago and bought a bunch of Dells. Price does matter...and so does the OS. The benefits of Solaris/OS X are there whether they run CPU X or Y. Simply put, the IT business is much, much more competitive that it was during the "good old times".
Despite the various issues with Apple, they have run much more like a business whose purpose is to make money that they used to. There was a time when Apple could, perhaps uncharitably, but nonetheless accurately have been said to be a bunch of people doing stuff that, while interesting, had no relationship to any product that would be salable (and I don't mean the R&D staff). Believe it or not, that is what SUN needs to focus on whether they remain independent or are acquired by someone else.
Let's face it. The lack of profitability you recite is why SUN is on the auction block.
As I said in my post yesterday, this will be a nightmare for Java and OpenSource as IBM will ruin or kill all of Sun's excellent software products:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=96439
My global impression is that IBM in its chasteed and continuing remake following its near death experience at the hands of MS, and since giving up the PC wars and dumping its PC division has gradually become a better steward of its acquisitions while shedding its propriety roots to become a deep pockets supporter of open source - although it's tried to pull the rug out from under Sun's Java through its participation in the Eclipse Alliance (which I admit not having followed in some years), so it wouldn't necessarily scrap ZFS or OpenSolaris. Whatever my fuzzy math on this though, and it's bound to shed some things some people really like, Big Blue's done something pretty impressive for what another poster called an "old fart" company: made money in this business climate. And it still has scale.
Probably for the same reasons Apple has tepid interest in Enterprise level computing. They don't seem to feel comfortable in this arena. I agree with JavaCowboy and Apple Sun merger could work with the right amount of Sun Autonomy and of course sharing of technology.
Apple alone could sway big numbers simply by using Sun on the backend for their Datacenters. Sun's storage hardware is solid (StorageTek stuff freshened up) and Sun is more into support services than Apple which is why they do not fear open source.
I believe Apple would lose focus if it tried to digest Sun. Too far away from its knitting. Better to collaborate with partners who still all agree the target is MS.
Apple's made some good use of acquisitons, but only of things they're capable of swallowing and applying to their own vision. And they have no large vision of server computing.
An Apple holding an autonomous (and unprofitable) Sun has no advantage over an Apple with fat margins who can partner with a Sun IBM subsidary from a position of clear strength (and IBM knows how to profitably run a service and server-based enterprise-oriented company - something Sun has been having trouble doing).
Adobe has never been this cheap for more than 5 years (a few days ago it was going for $10 a share!), Apple should buy Adobe.
SUN and especially IBM are both old-farts.
I used to think this, but I doubt the cultures and goals would be a great fit, and moving from Flash to HTML 5 would be a lumpy transition - not to mention I've always felt PDF's suck by locking in content in totally difficult to cut and paste and lock you into running yet anohter program.
Let Apple be Apple and negotiate with the friends of my enemies.
You need to learn how to write a real business plan.
1. Buy Sun.
2. Gut the redundancy in staffing.
3. Restructure as a subsidiary of Apple.
4. Develop an Enterprise Roadmap for cross pollination.
5. PROFIT!!!
I guess they didn't teach you that in your fancy MBA classes!?!!?
</sarcasm>
As a mechanical engineer and computer scientist who worked at NeXT and Apple I never did an MBA.
Having worked in the Enterprise space and dealt with Sun, IBM and more your sarcasm makes zero sense.
The redundancy deals with the mergers of accounting, marketing, human resources and more.
Key engineers work to cross-pollinate knowledge.
Top architects start sifting through IP that is value added and work towards what will or will never be worth hording and thus license out to third parties for some extra revenue streams.
Fire Jonathan Schwartz. That douche sucked at Lighthouse Design when I worked at NeXT and had the arrogance to think he was the next Steven P. Jobs. He's such a genius that Sun never bothered to leverage the Lighthouse Design engineering team to continue Cocoa development for OS X and provide revenue streams for Sun. He's an ego-maniacal dweeb.
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/executives/schwartz/bio.jsp
The pony tail look never worked for you Jonathan. No one needs to see an embedded video of you.
Scott McNealy moves on and Apple puts a new management team for the new subsidiary and streamlines their product group. Renegotiates their long-term server strategy with partners like AMD, Oracle, Red Hat and more.
Apple closes Sun's headquarters and sells all the disgusting interior coloring to the fanatics who think that color of lavender and gray were cool.
Apple holds the server world hostage in wondering what the hell they have planned for their n-tier solutions and pisses off HP and IBM because it had the cash, on-hand, to swallow up this company and in less than 1 year recoups their cash base with their continued growing consumer markets.
There is quite a bit of Sun I'd sell off.
Earlier on Apple offered a file server running AIX:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Network_Server
That was a short-lived novelty, but certainly not Apple's first foray into Unix:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX
What's amusing to contemplate are all the various architectures and OS technologies that Apple/NeXTSTEP have had to deal with. Consider the Mac platform alone:
'Classic' Mac OS on 68xxx > PowerPC > OS X (Mach/BSD) > (32-bit - 64-bit) > Intel architecture.
Now imagine incorporating Solaris (System V Unix) and/or SPARC into the mix. It's the platform transition that never ends!
Apparently you missed that Leopard was certified as a Unix system. It now joins the ranks of Sun, IBM, & HP.
If Apple were to aquire SUN I fear they would replace Solaris with OS X Server & just merge key technologies, something that in effect may not put them in a much better place technology wise to attack the enterprise market.
All that being said though they would also be buying customers if they bought SUN & this could give them a well enough boost into the enterprise market that people might actually stop laughing at the thought of Apple in enterprise.
I would love to see Apple go enterprise, but as awesome as Leopard Server is it still has many shortfalls in management when compared to AD. You can't simplify everything in enterprise, this is the one area that you actually need to offer crazy range of flexibility.
As I said in my post yesterday, this will be a nightmare for Java and OpenSource as IBM will ruin or kill all of Sun's excellent software products:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=96439
Hmm. I say, as much as I love leopard, and think win7 might revive IT, look up Project Looking Glass from Sun. Lots if Leopard features years before Leopard. Not sure if anyone can really take on MSFT. Their pockets are too deep.
I do worry about Sun and hope Sun can still be a player.
My global impression is that IBM in its chasteed and continuing remake following its near death experience at the hands of MS, and since giving up the PC wars and dumping its PC division has gradually become a better steward of its acquisitions while shedding its propriety roots to become a deep pockets supporter of open source - although it's tried to pull the rug out from under Sun's Java through its participation in the Eclipse Alliance (which I admit not having followed in some years), so it wouldn't necessarily scrap ZFS or OpenSolaris. Whatever my fuzzy math on this though, and it's bound to shed some things some people really like, Big Blue's done something pretty impressive for what another poster called an "old fart" company: made money in this business climate. And it still has scale.
I believe Apple would lose focus if it tried to digest Sun. Too far away from its knitting. Better to collaborate with partners who still all agree the target is MS.
Apple's made some good use of acquisitons, but only of things they're capable of swallowing and applying to their own vision. And they have no large vision of server computing.
An Apple holding an autonomous (and unprofitable) Sun has no advantage over an Apple with fat margins who can partner with a Sun IBM subsidary from a position of clear strength (and IBM knows how to profitably run a service and server-based enterprise-oriented company - something Sun has been having trouble doing).
I used to think this, but I doubt the cultures and goals would be a great fit, and moving from Flash to HTML 5 would be a lumpy transition - not to mention I've always felt PDF's suck by locking in content in totally difficult to cut and paste and lock you into running yet anohter program.
Let Apple be Apple and negotiate with the friends of my enemies.
Sun has a solid business plan that unfortunately was derailed by the current financial crisis when about 10% of their customers went out of business. That's not Schwartz's fault.
In case you need it spelled out for you, here it goes:
1) Sun is positioning themselves as the preferred vendor of open source solutions, attracting developer mind share.
2) Sun will leverage bottom-up introduction of their products in corporations, as developers who prefer their solutions integrate them.
3) The companies using their products will buy support and hardware from Sun.
Pretty simple, eh? Too bad you haven't figured it out.
As a mechanical engineer and computer scientist who worked at NeXT and Apple I never did an MBA.
Having worked in the Enterprise space and dealt with Sun, IBM and more your sarcasm makes zero sense.
The redundancy deals with the mergers of accounting, marketing, human resources and more.
Key engineers work to cross-pollinate knowledge.
Top architects start sifting through IP that is value added and work towards what will or will never be worth hording and thus license out to third parties for some extra revenue streams.
Fire Jonathan Schwartz. That douche sucked at Lighthouse Design when I worked at NeXT and had the arrogance to think he was the next Steven P. Jobs. He's such a genius that Sun never bothered to leverage the Lighthouse Design engineering team to continue Cocoa development for OS X and provide revenue streams for Sun. He's an ego-maniacal dweeb.
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/executives/schwartz/bio.jsp
The pony tail look never worked for you Jonathan. No one needs to see an embedded video of you.
Scott McNealy moves on and Apple puts a new management team for the new subsidiary and streamlines their product group. Renegotiates their long-term server strategy with partners like AMD, Oracle, Red Hat and more.
Apple closes Sun's headquarters and sells all the disgusting interior coloring to the fanatics who think that color of lavender and gray were cool.
Apple holds the server world hostage in wondering what the hell they have planned for their n-tier solutions and pisses off HP and IBM because it had the cash, on-hand, to swallow up this company and in less than 1 year recoups their cash base with their continued growing consumer markets.
There is quite a bit of Sun I'd sell off.
Let's be real. Apple doesn't service IT like they could Nd their bread and butter are consumer devices. That said, Sun could offer Server space like Apple has never seen plus offer great workstations like pro tools and avid. I think this is doable.
Let's be real though. Apple's consumer success has been parlayed from a hail mary TD from the iPod.
If the iPod doesn't turn out to become a billion dollar success there's no iPhone. We should all be thanking Tony Fadell for saving Apple. Every bit of consumer success for Apple stems from iPod origin which is why I still think Apple's long term success is tenuous. Consumers are fickle...they'll have an iPhone for one contract an then move on to a new phone for the next contract.
I can't assume that Apple has these customer locked in for any significant time. Enterprise however takes a lot longer to turn. Few places can sustain a "rip and replace" upheaval.
I think Sun would merge with Apple for less money than IBM, Cisco or whoever well pay. I agree with MDriftmeyer that Apple keeps the best of the best of Sun employees in a merger and develops a two headed Hydra approach.
Sun engineers get certified in OS X and handle some of the Pro Applecare stuff.
Apparently you missed that Leopard was certified as a Unix system. It now joins the ranks of Sun, IBM, & HP.
Although I didn't mention it, I'm fully aware of their certification:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterpri...d_gets_un.html
Although I didn't mention it, I'm fully aware of their certification:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterpri...d_gets_un.html
From what I understand, while OS X is an excellent consumer operating system, it isn't that great as a server OS.
Both IBM and Sun already sell multiple OSs, their own proprietary stuff and Linux.
Yes, and notice they don't sell anyone else's proprietary OS...
Why would they license Mac OS X Server too? Because there is a market for serving Macs in higher ed and increasingly, to serve push messaging to corporate iPhones and other easy to mange wiki/blog/iCal Server/Podcast Producer style applications unique to Apple that aren't all available to AIX/Solaris/Linux.
Which Apple is happy to sell Xserve's for more Xeon buys from Intel.
Why would Apple license Mac OS X Server to IBM/Sun when it shows no interest in licensing Mac OS X to Dell and HP and Pystar? Because Apple's money comes from consumer hardware, and the company hasn't been able to break into enterprise sales and demonstrates little interest in doing so.
Which doesn't mean it wants to give away the enterprise sales it does have.
How much money does Apple make designing and building the Xserve? It's a vanity product. Why not cede that business to Sun, and collect licensing revenue from a NEW market, just as it gave up trying to sell the Xserve RAID and delegated those hardware RAID sales to Promise?
A RAID box is different than giving up control over their OS and thier enterprise h/w.
Apple also "licensed" the iPod to HP (or more accurately "franchised") because HP could (at the time) sell it to a wider audience of PC buyers. So there's plenty of reasons why Apple would license Mac OS X Server to a broad audience that does not compete with its current sales.
HP iPods were identical to iPods and not made by HP. HP was a distributor and not a manufacturer. And it didn't last all that long.
Additionally, Mac OS X Server costs $500 to $1000 per license. Mac OS X costs $129. When you buy a PC, you pay a ~$30 Microsoft tax. When you buy a PC Server, you pay $1000 (or more) for a Windows Server license separately. You then shell out thousands for CALs.
That reality results in desktop PC licensing making no sense for Apple to enter (it can't make any money giving up its profitable Mac hardware sales for $30 licenses sold to Dell), but leaves enterprise server sales a lucrative licensing opportunity where Apple risks very little. It has no real Xserve volumes to lose, and Sun could offer a variety of different hardware to enterprise customers (Apple only has one Xserve, a 1U machine).
Sun/IBM could gain a new way to sell hardware, and risk little from 'losing sales' of AIX or Linux or Solaris, because first, there's little overlap and new markets to enter, and secondly because Sun makes its money from hardware, not its OS, while IBM makes money on service, not AIX. That's why both started supporting and distributing Linux - they don't make money on software.
There's no real reason for Sun or IBM to pursue Mac OS X server without also getting workstation licenses. Which Apple isn't going to give up. There's no real market for OS X servers and OS X is inferior to Solaris for servers, and slightly inferior to Linux anyway. I haven't had an AIX box in years so I don't know what shape that's in.
What you prefer is that your workstations run the same OS as your backend servers just becuase it's easier that way. This is why folks will go ahead and pony up for RHEL workstation if they decide on RHEL server for their servers (plus it's cheap relatively anyway). This is why some folks by xserves but otherwise why bother? Macs are already made to exist nicely within the Windows Server ecosystem.
Sun and IBM is better off trying to build a desktop that doesn't suck.
Apparently you missed that Leopard was certified as a Unix system. It now joins the ranks of Sun, IBM, & HP.
If Apple were to aquire SUN I fear they would replace Solaris with OS X Server & just merge key technologies, something that in effect may not put them in a much better place technology wise to attack the enterprise market.
No. You replace OS X server with Solaris and slap Cocoa and the UI on top of Solaris for a big win.
Running OSX on Sun's "big iron" would be funny to watch as long as it wasn't YOUR server.
I used to think this, but I doubt the cultures and goals would be a great fit, and moving from Flash to HTML 5 would be a lumpy transition - not to mention I've always felt PDF's suck by locking in content in totally difficult to cut and paste and lock you into running yet anohter program.
Let Apple be Apple and negotiate with the friends of my enemies.
Flash who? It's CS that Apple cares about. CS alone is worth the current cost of Adobe for Apple. At least it would something that MS cares enough about to never close the macbu.
Your comments are inappropriate and ridiculous.
There's this thing called the internet see. And on it are these things called forums...and like kitchens they can get rather warm.
Given how defensive you've been whenever anyone dares to critique any of your articles I suggest you refrain from reading the forums or growing a thicker skin.
Flash who? It's CS that Apple cares about. CS alone is worth the current cost of Adobe for Apple. At least it would something that MS cares enough about to never close the macbu.
God, I love slow days at work, especially since I'm forced to use crappy IBM products since I work for an IBM shop (my clear bias against IBM buying Sun showing).
You hit the nail right on the head, though. Adobe isn't doing super well these days, and are a bargain at 10.77B market cap.
It might be really audacious, but it wouldn't surprise me if Apple were to first port Photoshop to 64 bit Cocoa and then....
(suspenseful pause)
Make Photoshop *Mac Only* (as they did with Final Cut Pro).
Then a whole bunch of image editing professionals would be forced to buy Macs.
Brilliant!
Apple and Adobe have different ways of accomplishing things. I love to see them battle it out as they bring the best out of each other.
A defining feature of the computer industry is how a company with a lot of power can completely control the market and prevent new entries into that market. What offsets this nicely is the fast rate of change in the type of tasks that computers are used for. If it weren't for that change, the centralized power would be much more problematic.
So what I'm wondering is if that rate of change will ever slow down for relatively static portions of the market. If that happens, then I'd prefer to have more competition rather than less.
For instance, word processors have stagnated, partially because it is a relatively"known" field at this point and also because of MS's monopoly position. Wouldn't it have been great if multiple companies had survived and conformed to industry wide standards?
This is the type of thing which should be pondered when considering a Sun / IBM merger. 20 years from now, will the corporate systems they specialize in have stagnated due to lack of competition?
How many other players are in the same league? Oracle, SAP, Sun, IBM...
It seems like the list gets shorter each year.