Sun’s
Software Strategy Updated
On
November 13, Sun held one of its Software Town Hall meetings in San
Francisco and broadcast by audio for those analysts who can’t get
to the west coast for a two hour meeting.
We listened – and asked questions.
Sun’s
Software viceroy, VP Jonathan Schwartz, was in a good mood.
He reported that J2EE Version 1.4 ships next week and that
the reference implementation will now all be Application Server 8,
deployable for those who want to use it.
(He does point out that it is free, but not equipped with the
interface and management tools that an Application Server vendor
like a BEA or an IBM adds, so it will scarcely compete with them in
their space.)
He
was pleased to report that Solaris x86 has had 350,000 licensed
downloads and it is now compatible with 180 x86 systems.
Solaris 10, which will ship simultaneously for all Solaris
platforms, will be available in August.
A
major focus of the meeting was Sun’s desktop software which will
ship in December, as scheduled.
Sun has about 1,000 ISVs qualified to work with the software
now. They seem to be at one and the same time very excited about
the possibilities for this software and a bit disappointed about the
reality of the North American market.
“North American has the least sensitivity to price,”
Schwartz remarked. Sun
sees the most interest in Asia.
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Most
of the early North American sales are going to government and
non-profits where the low cost of the software and the ability
to leverage existing PC’s is important.
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Sun
is looking at offering per citizen pricing to governments,
particularly for governments in less developed countries.
The idea is that Sun will offer the desktop software at a
very low per citizen cost to the government who will use it both
for administrative purposes throughout the government and then
give it freely or for a very small sum to citizens to use it in
their homes. We
asked Schwartz why price-sensitive governments wouldn’t just
use free OpenOffice.org. He
replied that the work Sun did in integrating and supporting
StarOffice could easily justify the low prices Sun was planning
to charge.
On
another front, we were surprised – and Schwartz was clearly
delighted to report – that Sun’s N1 software for simplifying the
integration and management of computing systems is doing well.
Their virtualization and provisioning software is shipping
now and they have nearly 100 data centers using N1.
Schwartz says customers say “It’s not about equipment;
it’s all about saving administrative time.”
Important features seem to be around service levels,
availability, choice, leverage, and managing the infrastructure.
One
analyst asked Sun how they can hope to be a major player in this
space without a File Server in their portfolio.
“The Internet is the File Server,” replied Schwartz. “So is Email.” He
believes the File Server is only a small part of the picture –
and, in any event, all the major file server offerings are available
to Sun customers.
We’d
give Sun a B in software based on this performance, substantially up
from previous grades, but still a bit guarded.
We like what they have, but we still wonder just how much of
it customers will choose to buy from Sun rather than from other
suppliers. Time – and
the market – will tell.
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