Replies to post #142690 on ajtj99's Market Pulse

[ajtj99]

I think Sun's basic business plan is to attempt to remain relevant in a world where they are basically irrelevant.

When my brother worked for IBM he used to sing the praises of Sun's products, but their proprietary stuff has not led the pack for a long time now, and it probably never will again.

Sun is to computing what J.C. Penney is to retailing. Both were giants in their time, and both are struggling to remain relevant and viable entities today.

Cloud computing is a buzz word for the modern ASP model. It's the industry trying to make something that's not new sound new. That's a sign there's not much going on right now in the business.

[rich ruscio]

Sun designs CPU chips ('Sparc') that it has manufactured and assembled into computers used as servers. Sun develops and supports an operating system called Solaris, a UNIX variant, that'll run on damned near anything. It's always been 'high end'.

That's what it sells and makes some money on.

On the hardware side, it can't compete with Intel's progress / cash / margins. On the software side, both Windows and Linux, a UNIX variant, are eating it's lunch.

I'd suspect there's a large overlap between IBM and Sun's customer base. Killing off Sparc sooner than later is worth something too.

rr