Sun shaves (and DIY 19" rack)

In today's IT Blogwatch, we look at Sun's new take on the classic Gillette razor and blades business model. Not to mention a homebrew 19 inch server rack...

The razor and blades model has more recently been used to great effect with inkjet printers and cellphones [definition]. Can McNealy successfully give away his software, sell hardware at an eye-wateringly low sticker price, and make it up on the service contract? We'll see...

» Sun blogger Ben Rockwood summarizes November: "radical ... mind-boggling ... crazy ...out of control ... hold on to your kilts ... Q1 FY06 ... revenues of $2.7B up 3.7%. Gross margin was up to 44.1%, an increase of 3.3% ... Sun still has $4.4B in the bank ... Sun has now made the bulk of its software portfolio free and they've commited to open sourcing it all ... Just look at the scope of this? Its mammoth!" Later, Ben homes in: "Of all the newly announced free products from Sun the one that interests me the most is Sun Cluster, including the agents and Geo Edition. This makes Sun Cluster free in more ways than just 'no cost', it means that we're all free to deploy HA solutions in situation that never would have been possible before due to cost constraints ... If you haven't tried Sun Cluster 3.x you're seriously missing out ... if you've been stuck in the HA dulldrums known as Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) then your salvation has arrived ... I would recommend though, that if you put SC into production that you have Sun Profesional Service (Sun PS) come out and help you with your implementation." [Aha! I spy a blades opportunity...]

» Hali, a Swede living in London agrees: "this fall actually has been full of interesting announcements from Sun. This time they announced that more or less the entire Sun software suite will be open sourced and released free to use. Right on! ... Why do so many small/medium sized companies use Linux on more or less all their servers? I believe one strong factor is simply because that's what the sysadmins know ... Now Sun wants all these admins to look again, to be able to download and test all the awesome features and scalability JES provides. Oracle did partly the same a few years ago when they released most Oracle products free to use for testing and development" [Sounds similar to what Scalix is doing with its free Ajax Exchange alternative] "Deploy your application on a pair of X4100 Opteron servers today, cluster them using Sun Cluster server for free. A year down the line your business goes through the roof and you need to expand, now move your application to the a rack full of 64-core Niagra servers and get the support contracts your customers require... all this without modifying one single line of code ... Now why are you still reading this? You should be over here downloading all the enterprise class software you can take."

» Sun COO Jonathan Schwartz tells us a story: "I thought I'd ... highlight why free software GROWS revenue, not diminishes it ... the customer ... looked at me and said, 'we're about to go into our Christmas season. We'll sign up more customers on that one day than in the rest of the year combined ... So give me your home phone number.' [in case he had a problem] ... Christmas came. He didn't call. Whew. Just a few weeks ago, I met with this same customer in my office. He's had two years of huge growth ... he'd inquired about a Sun software product he'd begun using ... I let him know it was about to go to free/open source ... The Sun sales rep looked at me like I'd gone insane ... So I looked at the customer and said, ... 'If you're using the free product without a support contract, don't bother calling me on Christmas Day. You'll have to look to the community.' The point being, Sun doesn't have a single customer, worldwide, that will run an unsupported product in their datacenter. Do such customers exist? Surely. They're called developers. Or startups ... And if you don't provide them with the technology to use, they'll find someone else's free products ... Betting against [free software] is like betting against gravity. And free software doesn't mean no revenue, it means no barriers to revenue."

» Nyquist Capital's Andrew Schmitt remains unconvinced: "If it wasn’t for the occasional communication from McNealy everyone would agree their company crossed the event horizon of the Intel/Microsoft black hole long ago ... At the end of the day, Sun still needs to solve an important problem better than someone else and this interview doesn’t offer a credible example of what that problem is ... There might be an opportunity for hardware optimized with proprietary offload ASICs and supporting it in their own OS only. Locking down both the hardware and software side of important new applications is the best defense against commoditization. Apple has executed this strategy flawlessly in the consumer market. Could Sun do it in the enterprise market? They’ll need to find the application first. Maybe McNealy should start wearing black turtlenecks."

» And so (inevitably) to Slashdot, where WidescreenFreak gushes, "The Ultra 20 is still the better deal as far as I'm concerned. 3 year warranty on both hardware AND software (for which you have to pay extra with just about all other vendors). One of the most mature operating systems out there. One of the most mature 64-bit operating systems out there (TRUE 64 bit). The only commercial system that is certified to run the three (arguably) most popular operating systems - Windows, Solaris, and Red Hat. Considering all of those factors, I still consider the Ultra 20 to be a hell of a bargain."

» Junta clarifies the service contract element: "The cost is $1080 dollars, since it is ~30/month minimum of 3 years."

» Xant: "They're giving away the servers and the software. I guess it's the service contract that's the razor. Given Sun's business acumen the last decade, I expect them to start giving that away too. Not that I'd be happy about that. Competition is good, so competitors shooting themselves in the foot is bad."

Buffer overflow:

• Richi'Blog: eBay's anti-phishing desk phails
• Enterprise System Spectator: SAP responds to Oracle's move into pricing optimization
• Ars Technica: Patent dispute leads to changes in Internet Explorer
• Ars Technica: ICANN authority attacked again
• Educated Guesswork: Why peer-to-peer naming is difficult
• InfoWorld Techwatch: Word, Excel eyed for software-as-a-service plan
• Techdirt: The Problem With Thinking Anyone Owns Ideas
• Techdirt: No, People Still Don't Care About Video Phones
• Douglas Schweitzer: You can never have too much closet space
• Martin MC Brown: Email commandments and timing
• Larry Medina: Once again, terminologies divide RIM and IT on Information Management
• Robert L. Mitchell: High-tech retailers, low-tech rebates
• John Monaghan: Un-wired or life without the Blackberry.
• Shark Tank: Work of art

And finally... Homebrew 19 inch server rack

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk. Judi's gone walkabout today.