I hate to see SUN evaporate in IBM. Not so much because I love SUN or their products. I was never a customer, partner or even fan, but because consolidation is economically a bad thing to happen. GM, Ford and Chrysler are examples of consolidation that made them so big, fat, faceless and in-competitive that foreign car manufacturer just took the market in storm. If the 20+ car brands that existed in the early 70s continued to compete – have a face, have fans, emotions… We wouldn’t have to bail out the auto industry.
I’d rather see a strong CEO – who re-architect SUN to a new high tech company that it could be.
What needs to go out:
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1) The silly hatred against Microsoft, Intel and the rest of the world
2) The random engagement in everything that moves – but can never be executed
3) The army of people that just sit and waits until it’s 5 o’clock – not making a move because they learned “if you don’t do anything and not be seen or heard you don’t get fired”.
What need to come in:
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1) I clear focus on the inner strength: Build the first and currently only dedicated cloud computing provider. Not a “we do cloud too” but THE cloud company. Provide computing power to anybody, anywhere, anytime – build a business model just for that. Hosting anything from SaaS, social, Web X.0, U name it. Allow every school every kid to run a piece of something in their computing cloud. Becoming the go to point for cloud computing of any company any size. Remember “The network is the computer”.
2) Sell all the non core products like MySQL, part of the software divisions, the consulting & service division, the training division, part of the hardware groups and all the other more or less valuable units that have no direct and immediate impact to the new company. Stop dreaming the open source dream – it’s a great concept but not for a struggling company.
3) Rigorous financial measures. Reduction of remaining manpower by 50% and then increase by 10% (the right people). Revenue after cleanup may only be 20% or whatever from what it is today – but profitable. Reign the new model with an iron fist.
The SUN can shine again – as it always does even behind a CLOUD. OR – you wouldn’t even see the CLOUD without the SUN 😉
