Sun
Looks To China
At
COMDEX, Sun CEO Scott McNealy used his keynote to announce a Java
desktop deal with the Chinese government – no doubt the deal
alluded to in Jonathan Schwartz’s software town hall meeting the
previous week. It’s
hard to pin Sun down on exactly what they think they’ve
accomplished here – or for us to comment on it.
The
official word from Sun is that they are “partnering with the
China Standard Software Company (CSSC) to establish the Java
Desktop System as the foundation for China’s fast growing IT
industry.” The Sun
press release goes on to say that the CSSC is a consortium of
Chinese technology companies supported by the Chinese government
to produce a nationwide standard desktop software system to help
bridge the digital divide among the nation's 1.3 billion citizens
and that he CSSC has selected Sun as its preferred technology
partner to help reach this goal.
Sun
then goes on to say that this licensing agreement will pave the
way for the CSSC to deliver its own branded desktop products using
the Java Desktop System as the foundation for its desktop
standards. Okay.
That’s pretty straightforward.
Now,
fancy and hope enter. Sun
then notes that China plans to ultimately install 200 million
copies of an open standards based desktop throughout China,
starting with 500,000 to one million copies per year.
We’d note that:
-
There
are lots of open source companies vying to provide China with
that desktop.
-
There
are lots of autonomous government-sponsored groups in China
that are out there making deals.
-
China
has a publicly declared preference for a Chinese-created
desktop to go with its Chinese Linux (Red Flag).
We know of at least one product (Evermore), which is
ready to meet that need.
-
We
are sure that China has the goal of 200 million (or more!)
open source desktops, but we’d point out that no matter how
rapidly their market is growing they are years away from that,
so Sun had better not be counting on even a fraction of that
market.
Our
sources in China note that there is tremendous activity in China
to establish open source software relationships.
There will be many players.
So far, the Chinese government has formed relationships
with three Linux desktops, with more popping up in every province.
Our source asserts, “China needs innovation and its own
software industry.” They will, in the end, select a Chinese company.
He considers the Sun CSSC deal mainly hype – but then, he
has a vested interest in a Chinese company being the successful
player.
We’d
note that if Sun can follow up this collaboration in China with
some real implementation, even at the 500,000 units volume, and
then partner with other countries such as their targets in South
Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Israel and India, where they see
governments driving programs to improve IT infrastructures and
incorporate technology into government agencies, educational
systems and domestic regions where economic barriers have limited
technological growth and believe they can play a role by providing
low-cost, open source desktops, in very high volumes.
We
confess to having trouble with Sun’s business model; we don’t
understand how they are going to get these governments to pay them
tens of millions of dollars for software which can be obtained for
free (in this particular case, OpenOffice.org).
Jonathan Schwartz says governments value the integration
and support services Sun can offer, but we think most of these
governments will quickly decide that for those prices they will be
able to hire local talent to provide integration and support –
at local prices and labor costs – for far less.
However, for that tale, only time will tell.
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