Sun Computer $50 Million Linux sale

Interesting news on the Sun vs MS Windows/Office front ...



Sun's McNealy announces Linux deal with Chinese government
By Dean Takahashi
Mon, Nov. 17, 2003
Mercury News

Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Scott McNealy always seemed like he was tilting at windmills when he said Sun would challenge Microsoft's dominance on the desktop computer.

But McNealy announced today that the Chinese government has pledged to deploy a million computers in the next year using Sun's Linux desktop software. The cost: $50 per license for Sun's desktop software, which includes its Star Office 7.0 productivity program that is a clone of Microsoft's Office suite. Microsoft Office can cost more than $400 a copy.

The China Standard Software Co., a consortium of government-funded companies, selected Sun as its preferred technology partner to deploy Linux-based desktops. The deal is part of China's deliberate policy to diversify away from Microsoft. Other governments in Europe and Asia have embraced a similar strategy, as has the state of Massachusetts. China has pledged to deploy 200 million copies of open standards-based desktop software.

``This I believe makes us the No. 1 Linux desktop play on the planet,'' McNealy said today at the Comdex technology trade show in Las Vegas. ``That's not the only opportunity. We're calling on every ministry of information technology on the planet.''

Sun has been demonstrating its Java Desktop System for the past year, which the company says it will begin shipping in December. At a later time, Sun will announce which hardware companies will ship systems with the Sun software on it, said John Loiacono, Sun's vice president of operating systems.

The announcement was just one of several years-long strategic efforts that are coming to a head at Sun. Sun also announced a previously reported deal to create servers based on Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron microprocessor. The strategic alliance will challenge Intel's Itanium microprocessor.

Good for them /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif But most interestingly, and perhaps most dangerous is the last sentence where they are releasing AMD based machines, which will basically be PC's.

Didn't they learn anything from what happened to SGI? Can anybody tell me how long SGI's chip development and custom hardware lasted after they started developing intel based hardware?

See, these combination hardware/software companies are getting confused. Their hardware is where the money is. So they develop a machine based on cheaper chips than the ones they develop themselves. Then they port their OS and software to it. Oh, but since it's AMD and just a PC I can get one for $400 from tiger direct and why would I buy their hardware. Shortly thereafter Poof, Sun announces the end of their hardware development.

Oh well

You're right James, that is odd.

First Sun goes out and buys Star, then gives away the software for free. Now they decide to sell it instead. Then they go and strike this deal with AMD.

Did they forget that almost all their revenues are derived from the "Solaris on Sparc" platform?

Does McNealy hate MS and Intel so much that he's cutting his nose off to spite his face?

I wonder what the stockholders will have to say about this.... As Alice said: "Curiouser and Curiouser"! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

I believe Sun's OpenOffice is free and unsupported, whereas StarOffice costs around $50 and is supported to a degree. StarOffice has a few more bells and whistles too.

Wouldn't servers based on Opterons be different from desktops/workstations?

(Although that does give them the opportunity to move to Athlon64 workstations later on /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif)

I think the Athlon64 is just the consumer version of the Opteron.

The trend toward inexpensive hardware and open, almost free software has started and cannot be stopped. The best example of the benefits of this trend is Google. They have Linux running atop more than 14,000 Intel-based servers.

Microsoft has peaked and they know it. They are now intending to open an iTunes-type service to benefit from consumer sales of music. Whether they can change fast enough to maintain their existing revenue flow is an open question. That flow is already being nibbled away at by the flood of recent viruses, worms and trojans on the net.

Microsoft's existing revenue model was developed initially for the North American and European markets. Due to the wide discrepancy in per capita income in the rest of the world, it's a struggle to make their revenue model work elsewhere. Linux and open source software is developing impressive gains internationally. In less than ten years, I believe everything will be different.

The Opteron is a 64 bit Server chip which can be run on high end workstations. The Athlon64 runs 64 or 32 bit OSes, and is the only one to do so natively. The Athlon64 is a transition cpu for this reason, and is the design intent for it. It may well end up as the consumer chip in the not so distant future. The AMD64 sits between the Opteron and the Athlon64.

I do wonder why Sun would be doing this, considering that they sided with SCO.

The Opteron and Athlon64 are based on the same marchitecture, with the Opteron boasting ECC support, dual-channel memory and SMP/ccNUMA capability. The Athlon64 is the consumer version, that is correct.

They both can run high-end workstations, but if you want really fast memory and more than one CPU, you have to go Opteron.

They both can run 32/64-bit code natively (and at the same time). They can't run 16/64, but they can run 16/32.

We've turned into a large Sun/Oracle shop with 2 U-2's, 1 U-10, 1 E250, 3 E450's,1 E4500, 1 E5500, and 1 E6500. And our DBA has written a couple of white papers for Oracle and is working closely with them on their Collabration Suite which will soon be pitted against exchange server and several other Microsoft products at a lower price with much greater stability, integration, and features all running under the Oracle database. Many of the features Microsoft is talking about for Longhorn are part of Collabration Suite. (Unified E-mail, voice mail, fax, documents, spreadsheets and file sharing with LDAP and single sign on for all applications.) We are working with it now and preparing it for companywide use next year and so far it looks to be very happening.

Anyway this is speculative but seems to be the way things are shaping up. Oracle is putting a big initiative behind Linux which right now is second to Sun but is poised to become #1. Red Hat just recently sent notice that they are dropping support next year for all their Linux distributions except the Enterprise Edition (I think that is what it's called) which is the version that is supported for Oracle and already has made patches and kernel changes specific to Oracle. The talk is that Oracle will buy out Red Hat.

So I don't know for sure but a lot of interesting things are starting to come together to give Microsoft a good run for the money.

Mutech

[ QUOTE ]
The talk is that Oracle will buy out Red Hat.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, that wouldn't surprise me in the least. I know that the gang at Oracle has always hated windows after doing some accounting on their support and finding out how much money they spend supporting the OS rather than their database. I know they would love to ship a system with them in control of both sides of it.

What ever happened to their "big iron" or whatever that project was that was supposed to run on their own hardware or something?

I have also worked on some really huge oracle databases, with just indexes running into the gygabyte size, all cached in memory for fast searching. Fun stuff /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

James,

I asked my boss and DBA and neither could recall anything. My boss did mention Sun working on thin client technology a few years back when that was the up and coming trend.

We weren't using Sun or Oracle back then but we did try IBC Orion's as thin clients and they just weren't happening. When they started the development PC's were $1500-$2000 and Win95 was able to boot from flash memory by the time they came out PC's were way cheaper and it wasn't possible to boot from flash anymore and now they had to put HD's into them. Pretty much worked out to be a diaster and IBC went under as a direct result.

Mutech

Mutiny, I think it may have been called "Raw Iron" now that I keep trying to think about it. I never actually saw one, but after reloading NT on that box for the 3rd time in a year I remember thinking that it was probably a good idea. That was the last windows server I ever agreed to work on. That was about the same time that Oracle offered a million dollars to anybody who could show that SQLServer was any closer than 1/100th of the performance of Oracle. Pretty gutsy, I don't recall anybody ever collecting on that money either /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

While I tend to think that for most jobs Oracle is over priced and over complicated, there are certainly jobs sized so that it's the only thing really I would advise to tackle it.

I remember those thin client things. They set one or 2 up in the office just for us to look at. We played with them, but never used them for anything at all... If they could have cut the price in half again they might have caught on.

It's going to be interesting to see what Sun does going forward. There are certainly things that would benefit from their high end servers, but RAIC's are so good, that you can get similar performance in almost any task by clumping a bunch of cheaper boxes together. So the market for their own chip is going to continually get smaller as the little computers continue to grow up. Without an inexpensive computer based on their chip I can't see their hardware division getting the R&D money it will need to keep pushing the design. At some point they are going to find themselves with Star Office being their only product...

I like the idea of thin clients but I agree they have to be at least half the cost of a PC to be happening.

Sun doesn't look to be in a very good position at the moment and from what I understand things aren't looking good for them hardware wise.

I haven't actually used Star Office. Anyone here have any experience and/or comments about it?

Mutech

Mmmm. Star Office good. Star Office transfer from/to MS Office not good.

That's my experience, fwiw.

Hey wasn't that pre-made Oracle app box the big orange cube that was advertised? Is that the same as the "Raw Iron" thing?

Whatever. I have to say this cpf place is getting better than Slashdot. All the news and none of the crummy no-info (like this one) comments to slog through. Thanks for the news!