Article about Sun from Meta, consultants generally regarded to be with Gartner as most knowledgeable about large systems. The article is a little old but still has the latest:
Sun Forecast: Partly Cloudy?
enterprise.cnet.com
Sun Forecast: Partly Cloudy?
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9/18/00
META's research indicates growing unease at Sun accounts. Unlike the competitive landscape just two years ago, the performance of Sun's systems is being overshadowed by more-competitive offerings (comparable performance and better price/performance) from IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP). Accordingly, Sun has pointed to a new server product line using UltraSPARC-III processor technology, aiming to boost performance by two to three times over its current UltraSPARC-II-based systems.
Unfortunately, UltraSPARC-III was already at least nine months late as of August 2000, and though the new servers are not expected until the second half of 2000, the new processor technology had yet to emerge in August, even in new workstations. Moreover, Sun has until recently failed to provide any transition road map information or investment protection options for its current users.
META believes that Sun is still formulating its transition strategy. Sun now has a large installed base of accounts with numerous high-end systems in mission-critical data center environments. These large accounts are accustomed to receiving transition road maps and investment protection guarantees from IBM, HP, and others. META expects Sun to announce more formal programs concomitant with the new system announcements, which will be staggered during the second half of 2000, but not before then. In the long-term, Sun will institutionalize these business practices to facilitate future product transitions.
Shaky Server Transition
Sun's transition to a new server product line is a classic double-edged sword situation for users and for Sun. On the one hand, Sun server sales continue to enjoy strong market momentum. In addition, the competitive threat from widely anticipated Intel-IA-64-based systems has been postponed until 2002 (when systems with second-generation IA-64 McKinley processors are due), because Intel has reduced Itanium performance expectations. Initial IA-64-based Unix systems will be less robust than current high-end RISC-based platforms.
More important, Solaris continues to be the dominant Unix platform, attracting new software development. Moreover, META does not expect Solaris's leading reference platform status with independent software vendors to be significantly eroded by NT or Linux until 2002/2003.
Competitors Turn Up the Heat
On the other hand, Sun is facing increasing competition from IBM and HP in the data center and from NT servers (and workstations) at the low-end and midrange product tiers. IBM's new high-end S/80 server sales growth has eclipsed that of Sun's E10000 (though S/80 sales growth vs. combined Sun E10000 and E6500 would be more appropriate). Although comparing the S/80's recent TPC-C benchmarks against Sun's much older benchmark results is also somewhat unfair, the S/80 does offer comparable performance with more-competitive price/performance.
HP's strong midrange N-Class is selling briskly after a Y2K-related late start, and along with IBM's new H/80 and M/80 midrange servers, has significantly raised the price/performance bar for Sun's current midrange offerings. Finally, Sun's storage product line continues to lack coherence, and META does not expect significant improvements resulting in market share growth relative to EMC, Storageworks, and HDS/HP.
Unreliable on the High End
Our research also indicates continuing reliability problems with high-end systems. Starfire reliability was a problem last year. Although Sun did rectify those problems, META is receiving reports of other hardware problems with newer processors used in fully loaded E4500 and E6500 systems.
Sun has again moved quickly to address these situations, but they are still disruptive in operational production environments. Moreover, META's clients rarely recommend Sun's own clustering capabilities, instead overwhelmingly opting for Veritas solutions. Highly available, fault-resilient systems are becoming the norm for Web and e-business applications (and server consolidation). HP, IBM, and Compaq provide more-robust, high-availability clustering products.
UltraSPARC-III Transition Uncertain
Nonetheless, current Sun users are continuing to purchase additional systems. However, META believes Sun's future market share gains will be affected. Sun's transition to the new UltraSPARC-III-based server family is now looking uncertain. META believes this is due to a combination of product development problems as well as Sun's not feeling sufficient competitive pressure.
The new Serengeti UltraSPARC-III server family is still on track, to be announced in stages in late 2000. Sun will announce the entry-level, 1-8 CPU systems first, followed by a new midrange line (up to 24 CPUs), and finally a new high-end replacement (Starcat) for the E10000. META expects all the announcements during the second half of 2000 and general system availability by first half of 2001.
META expects performance from the new systems to be only comparable to then-current competitive offerings, not to leapfrog them (as IBM and HP have done in the past with major new products). Although META believes UltraSPARC-III per-CPU performance will still lag behind the competition (PA-RISC, Power, and Alpha), overall system-level performance should be comparable. Nonetheless, the competitive landscape will be even more crowded by the second half of 2001. That's when HP plans to announce a new high-end server (Superdome), joining enhanced IBM S/80 successors. Compaq also plans to announce Wildfire, its new high-end system.
Give Me My NDA
Early cross-platform support for Solaris on Intel has been eclipsed by IBM's AIX on Intel project Monterey initiative. And Intel has gone so far as to publicly criticize Sun's lackluster efforts to support Solaris on Intel. Of course, IBM's optimistic Linux support complicates AIX/Monterey positioning, and Unix on IA-64 will be moot until at least 2002.
META recommends that Sun users demand nondisclosure briefings as well as investment protection terms and conditions before committing to purchasing additional high-end capacity. In addition, prospective E10000 (Starfire) customers should consider smaller, cheaper, and faster E6500 systems as a tactical step until the new UltraSPARC-III products become widely deployed. Finally, the residual value of systems purchased for the next six months will be only about 30 percent of list price by mid-2001.
Transition Programs for the Future
META's research indicates that Sun has just begun to provide investment protection options for a few select large accounts. This is in stark contrast to HP, which announced 100 percent investment protection nine months ahead of time when transitioning from the older T-Class to the new high-end V-Class systems (ironically, largely due to competitive pressure at the time from Sun). However, HP's future programs for next year's transition from the current high-end V-Class to Superdome may not be as generous as past programs.
Nonetheless, by the second half of 2000, META believes that Sun will provide several programs to address user transition concerns. Although current UltraSPARC-II-based systems will be obsolete next year, META expects Sun to announce incremental upgrade options, including faster processors (450+ MHz), expanded memory support, and enhanced reliability. This will extend the life of current systems by 12 to 18 months.
Sun will position the transition within the overall context of change management, including software migration costs, staff training, and backward compatibility, where appropriate (the new Serengeti systems will be binary compatible and retain the same look and feel as current systems). Sun will also provide larger trade-in credits for purchases of current systems against future new system upgrades. However, META expects the maximum credit to be considerably less than 50 percent, though trade-in/trade-up credits and volume purchase agreement credits will be cumulative. Flexible leasing terms accommodating midterm technology "refreshes" will also be offered. |
