Sun Microsystems |
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In the past, Sun Microsystems declared itself the "dot in dotcom". The company's fortunes rose and fell with the Internet bubble. While other companies managed to recover, Sun still remains under a cloud. Wall Street has been disappointed in Sun and many observers have written it off altogether Nevertheless, even during the darkest days of the bust, Sun never cut spending on R&D, spending half-billion dollars every quarter on new software, hardware, and microprocessors. Recently, those investments have paid off in the form of new systems designed for the ever-growing demands of computing on the Web. Scott McNealy, one of Silicon Valley's longest-serving CEOs, has created a new "razor-and-blades" strategy in order to turn his company around. First, Sun announced it will give away most of its software (that's the razor). Next, Sun rolled out an entirely new line of Web-friendly servers based on the UltraSparc T1 32-thread 9.6-gigahertz chip (the blades) that the company believes will be significantly better than anything competitors can offer. These new servers can be used by anyone who needs to have a massively scaled Web presence or computational horsepower. All of Sun's products have open interfaces, open-source strategies, and community-development efforts. It is the most partnered and community-development-oriented company in the technology industry. |