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Here's a piece from Upside on Ed Zander.
Sun's Ed Zander: Seven years later
July 27, 2000
by Patti Ziemke
upside.com
How do you rank Solaris vs. NT?
Oh, it's like comparing cars vs. motorcycles vs. bicycles. NT, to me, has always been a Microsoft desktop small server in that working environment -- you know, the de facto standard for your desktop. But it's never competed with us in the server marketplace to run mission-critical, industrial-strength [services] 24/7.
Microsoft is always quoting that they have 50-plus percent of the installed base of server markets for NT. That doesn't mean anything. You're comparing apples to oranges. All you have to do is talk to the most industrial-strength websites, the e-commerce, the large corporations around the world, and [see] what they're running -- they're running Solaris. And the other thing you've got to look at is -- and it's really a clear way of looking at it -- [it] is the Internet world, not the PC world anymore. How many human beings around the planet -- when you get on to buy something, trade something, chat, sell, auction, talk -- use Solaris computers or Solaris operating systems? I guarantee you every day tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, touch Solaris and don't touch NT.
And similarly, the Unix people, just like the Microsoft people, say they have the largest number of installed workstations, or seats. The Linux people [also] now say that's the fastest growing ... Sure. And it is. It is at the low end. Again, it's like saying pencils vs. pens.
It's like saying there's more bikes than automobiles. I'm not trying to drive Linux. Linux is being used today in desktop-type applications, embedded applications, small applications.
And you don't feel like Microsoft has ever done that really?
I think they've -- they've certainly put everything -- I mean, this company's put every ounce of energy and strength and dollars and commitment to try to build an industrial-strength operating system. [It's] hard -- it's not their core competency. They're a desktop-PC company. And I'm not dismissing them. We take them very seriously, and we look at everything they're doing. The way you succeed in life is you don't keep looking over your shoulder, you keep looking in front of you.
So, setting aside your industrial strength and comparing what's going on with Linux vs. Microsoft ...
Well, I think it's an interesting fight -- food fight. What's interesting to me is to watch Intel (INTC), for example, adopt Linux for their client strategy and not Microsoft. I think [it's interesting] watching Dell (DELL) announce that their whole family of new servers is based on Linux, not Microsoft. I was just sitting on the sidelines and watching Linux chop away at Microsoft NT, both in desktops and in the little embedded applications and small server applications.
You have to understand that all our middleware, IPlanet, runs on Linux, our Star Office runs on Linux, Java runs on Linux, all of our Forte tools run on Linux. We just announced the new IPlanet auctioning engine called MarketMaker, and it runs on Linux.
So, we have a number of groups in the company that have revenue streams and businesses based on Linux.
Best of luck. |
