_______ is dead?
_______ is dead?
Posted Oct 3, 2003 0:49 UTC (Fri) by stevenj (guest, #421)Parent article: After Sun goes out (NewsForge)
People periodically say that such-and-such big company (usually Apple) is "dead" and they are almost invariably proved wrong. I'm not an economist, but my informal impression is that such companies are so huge that they have to shrink a lot before they disappear...they have a lot of time to change course.
Of course, dot-coms with little or no revenue and huge paper valuations could disappear in a puff of smoke. However, in Sun's case, we're talking about a company with over $11 billion in revenue and almost $6 billion in cash reserves (according to 2003 SEC filings). They have a long way to go before they fall.
Posted Oct 3, 2003 1:33 UTC (Fri)
by funkor (guest, #15677)
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If I were a Sun board member, I'd be asking some hard questions of the executive staff right
Posted Oct 3, 2003 2:54 UTC (Fri)
by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
[Link] (1 responses)
People periodically say that such-and-such big company (usually Apple) is "dead" and they are almost invariably proved wrong. As with DEC? Or Commodore? Or most of the Seven Dwarves? What I find irritating about the article is that it assumes that
the PC vendors have good strategies. HP's strategic direction is worrying. Dell have just shot their Linux strategy in the foot (they only support Red Hat Enterprise Linux, making their low-end servers considerably more expensive than the white box competition).
Posted Oct 3, 2003 10:34 UTC (Fri)
by djabsolut (guest, #12799)
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Posted Oct 3, 2003 17:41 UTC (Fri)
by rfunk (subscriber, #4054)
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It doesn't necessarily take that long for a poorly managed big company to collapse. In 1995Apple was almost dead
-1996, Apple really was in deep sh*t. It's worth noting that the company didn't really recover
until the CEO and most of the board was replaced.
now. I agree with the poster above, there seems to be an egregious lack of oversight at Sun,
and the board probably needs to go.
_______ is dead?
The comparison with Commodore (C=) is on the right track. C= had a good product for a while (the Am*ga), but miserably failed to innovate/develop it or place it in a coherent direction (anybody remember the CD32 debacle?).
It's as if they deliberately consigned themselves into a niche and never bothered to strike out from it;
C= became complacent, thinking that the niche will last forever.
_______ is dead?
Sun is doing the same - it's placing itself (whether deliberately or inadvertently) into the high-end server niche (and it is becoming a niche due the presure of Linux & Windoze utilizing the ever increasing horsepower of run-of-the-mill Intel processors). They keep on touting that Solaris on x86 is the best. What planet are they on? Why on earth would anybody want to pay them when Linux, or even the *BSD distros, are just as good or better?
The solution for Sun is a simple and an obvious one, yet they're living like they want to turn the clock back. They can keep on peddling their high-end servers, but that by itself is not enough. They will also have to focus their energies into making & selling Linux boxes and support contracts (a la Red Hat). It's called evolution: mutate or die.
Usually the companies die by being bought out (though sometimes they call _______ is dead?
it an even merger) and then disappearing within the new owner. Not by
disintegrating on their own.