...ex-Sun employees would have been all laid off 7-8 years ago. If you are an ex-Sun employee, you should be thanking LE for his unwise decision to buy Sun and think he is "Tony Stark". "Software, Hardware, Complete" LMAO! LE saved your rear end and put food on your table for the last 8 years. Be thankful!
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Agree. We all got the smoke blown up our rear ends about the Engineered Systems. There would never be enough volume to make Sparc a player once all the other desktops and servers were tossed out. Those of us from Sun knew the power of a single OS that ran on the pizza boxes up to the most expensive systems available, back when that was an E25. The competition from Linux was overpowering.
Good point there. Somehow I always thought the problem was with Sparc. But coming to think of it, Intel itself has software folks at RWS working to optimize performance in servers, but there is nobody from Oracle who does that work for x86 or Sparc. If Intel weren't as pushy as it is, Oracle would have put in no efforts trying to engineer anything together.
Oracle acquired Sun, but didn't do much to help SPARC survive.
The only way to get SPARC platform survive is the volume.
After Sun was taken over, Oracle wants to make SPARC and Solaris(include x86 Solaris)
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only server systems.
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make money for all HW sales.
then, less volume -> less software development from 3rd parties --> less volume again.
These days, I even cannot find a stable browser running on Solaris.
Less volume also means per chip R&D cost is higher.
Did LE give any incentive to the customers who purchase SPARC systems, such as more discount for the database on SPARC+Solaris, even free, integrate into the Solaris ?
Perhaps, this will not change the end result, it just slow down the dying a little.
At least LE never tried hard to save the SPARC.
There wasn't any real evidence of it happening on the x86 side either. Not with engineered systems or the cloud teams. As far as I could see, all the interactions with these teams were at very high level. I makes you wonder why Oracle would want to build any systems, not just SPARC.
"I think LE's comment about hardware and software working together was never really serious. At least I didn't see any real evidence of it my time there."
No kidding. TK's org never went big on SPARC/Solaris. Sales never went big on SPARC/Solaris. DB sales team was incented to sell on HP kit running Linux. And from what I saw, they didn't care if it was OEL, so they aren't setting the world on fire either. Hardware and software: engineered to cut each others throats.
Just another example of LE having 'brilliant' idea but of course no clue how to make them happen, and no ability to hire people who would. That's his downfall. He's never had either the skills to manage a large corporatio, nor the ability to hire world class execs to do it for him. One gets the impression that his oversized ego gets in the way.
At least Fowler has more time to sail now. 🤦♀️
LE and Oracle bought Sun with the promise that billions would be invested in SPARC chip R&D. Billions were indeed invested, and now, many years later, there is no product that customers want to buy. The new SPARC chips have ... what ... a new feature to make in-memory database queries a couple of seconds faster? This, along with other hardware R&D investments (Exalytics, Exalogic, etc.) have been a multi-billion dollar commercial failure.
Fowler is horrible. He didn't give all-hand for years. Absolutely no communication to the organization. I think because he didn't know how to save SPARC and Solaris at all.
Well said.
My take (or conclusion) is that the hardware-software was all marketing BS for outside.
LE bought the division for Java and other licenses and he knew the Sun team was good so he gave them a chance. He certainly liked boasting about making the fastest processors in the world. And there is also some personal spite against IBM there..
But I don't think he ever meant for hardware to actually be "engineered together" with software. Nobody seemed to take any steps to integrate the two.
From the sun pov, the hardware team was used to being the star of the show. I don't think they knew how to fight when thrown into a shark tank. Classic mismanagement.
We do have sparc cloud, don't we?
Do you have more info on this?
"JF wasted resources on sparc cloud which he couldn't deliver on time."
Because someone think our customers are foolish. Now, we are paying that back to our customers.
JF wasted resources on sparc cloud which he couldn't deliver on time.
Perhaps it was more a matter of 1/3 of the database licenses were on SPARC at the time. There was value in trying to slow the decline SPARC. There was also some value in other parts of the business. LE certainly didn't do it to be nice.
Unfortunately I think LE's comment about hardware and software working together was never really serious. At least I didn't see any real evidence of it my time there. Maybe that wasn't the actually the plan, but just something said publicly to justify the deal.
I do give LE a lot credit for his patience and level of investment in the Sun business. SPARC, x86 and storage were an absolute mess when Oracle took over. Fowler and his management team need to take responsibility for that mess and the end result. Oracle gave them the time and resources, but they didn't deliver. Folks can hate on LE and Oracle for lots of reasons, but the failure of the Sun business shouldn't be one of them.
The Sun folks should be forever grateful to Scott McNealy, who convinced LE to do the deal. Otherwise they would have been left to mercy of IBM or to spiral into bankruptcy.
He didn't do it to be nice. He did it to make more money and being stubborn
I do thank LE. He helped tens of thousands of Sun employees. If Sun was bought by IBM, all Sun employees should had gone.
You are an effin jag off.