Then there was this wonderful little gem in Jonathan's blog:
...Next on the list was signing a Solaris OEM deal with Dell, through which they've endorsed and will support Solaris across their server and blade platforms. This was a very big deal for us – an endorsement from the volume leader in PC's and commodity infrastructure matters to our customers.
I remember it well: a different set of guys (except for Michael Dell, who was the same) made almost exactly the same vacuous statement in 1992.
What, exactly, does Jonathan's paragraph mean? What is a "Solaris OEM deal with Dell", exactly? With all that 'endorsement' and 'support', is it a P.O.?
I don't think so. It's where Dell says, "Sure, we don't mind if you create a free operating system alternative for our customers by certifying our hardware with Solaris device drivers you write yourselves. And if you have trouble writing the drivers and need some advice, well hey, just give us a call. We may or may not return it. And once the software is done, if any customers actually use it and encounter a problem, we'll be glad to direct them politely to your call center in India."
That's what a Solaris OEM deal is. I don't know what metric Schwartz used to measure its importance to customers, but time shall tell whether it's important enough to make Sun any money.
Jonathan could say, "We closed a major OEM deal with Dell and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." That would about sum it up.
Deja vu all over again...
--QS |
