The smartest thing that Sun could do right now would be to REALLY get behind Solaris/X86. Get it out there at a CHEAP price. In fact, maybe they should GIVE IT AWAY, along with the development tools.
This would be the ultimate bold give-away - giving away an OS and the tools to run on a processor that the company doesn't even make. I think it would be crazy like a fox.
Sun makes it's money in the high-end server market. They ARE going to lose some of the low-end business to Linux/Intel - that is a fact. Who cares, though? It is a low-margin business. Why not capture future high-end customers while "giving away the store"?
I've run Solaris/X86. It was several years ago, and I judged it to be very good. Oh, bitheads will tell you that Linux is much faster. But what I liked is that it was VERY close, both operationally and in terms of software development, to Solaris/Sparc. One can move back and forth very easily between the two environments.
I say, hook em' on Solaris on the low-end machines, and when applications grow to the point where they need a powerful server that can't be accomidated with an X86 machine, they will easily move into Sun hardware.
Otherwise, people ARE going to gravitate to Linux/PC. When they outgrow that, they will either undergo a painful conversion process to Solaris/Sparc, cursing both Linux and Solaris along the way, or they will just muddle along with Linux/PC until bigger PC servers come along.
FREE SOLARIS NOW! FREE SOLARIS NOW! ;) |
