To: D.J.Smyth who wrote (160143 ) 8/29/2000 7:12:08 PM From: rudedog Read Replies (1) | Respond to Darrell - your post actually reinforces my point. From its inception in 1982 until the early 90s, SUNW was a workstation company and saw themselves competing with Apollo and the like, on the proposition that their systems were more open and much less expensive. They had already started shifting their thinking by 1990, and began to make investments in engineering and marketing with Oracle, Informix and Sybase. They placed hardware into those companies, put engineering teams on-site, and began developing hardware which could more fully support big database applications. They did the same with a number of key ISVs in the Unix application space. Their first server products did not come out until years later, but when they did, there were developers and customers who had a long history of working with SUN products, and a sales force who knew the accounts and the barriers to entry, many of which were eliminated by the new products. This made possible the rapid penetration of Wall Street by SUN / Sybase products running a variety of specialty software, and penetration of Oracle accounts which had previously been strongholds for DEC VAX (which had about 35% of Oracle's platforms at that point) and HP. It would not have been possible without a careful and well funded effort by SUNW.
