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Sun's Comeback One of the Most Underreported Stories of 2007 InfoWorld Documents the Company's Turnaround December 31, 2007, Volume 119, Issue 1
Labeled number two of 2007's most underreported tech stories, InfoWorld's Bill Snyder highlights Sun's comeback from the dot-com bubble burst to its "...four profitable quarters in a row plus record margins — as well as a growing list of wins, point to a company on the upswing," he reports. His article focuses on the company's product roadmap that some analysts are calling its strongest in years. Sun President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz is credited with this upturn, along with former predecessor and Sun co-founder Scott McNealy. "You have to credit Schwartz because he understands the way to combine hardware and software. Although Sun's image slipped from public view, they were making very competitive technology and pricing," says Bud Mathaisel, CIO of outsourced-IT provider Achievo. McNealy also is given credit for investing in R&D during what Snyder terms, "the dark days of 2002," which produced Niagara, Sun's UltraSPARC T1 chip. Additionally, McNealy earns praise for opening the door to the AMD Opteron-based Sun Fire x64 servers or Galaxy servers by welcoming back Andy Bechtolsheim in 2004. "Sun's line of Galaxy and blade servers are hits across a wide swatch of businesses, and its storage business is growing," Snyder observes. "Sun has already entered the market for quad-core servers (while rival AMD's Barcelona remains problem-plagued), and in the next year or so Sun will roll out new server, storage, and networking products." Sun's purchase of SeeBeyond in 2005 sets the company up to be "a vendor of choice" in providing integration tools needed to support enterprises' SOA strategies, Snyder reasons. To illustrate Sun's progress, Snyder did a follow-up piece focusing on Real Time Matrix's enamorment with Sun and its Sun Fire T2000 servers, which have replaced the two-year old company's AMD-based Linux servers. Initially, the young company that delivers tailored content to websites took advantage of Sun\'s Try & Buy program so it could test out the Sun Fire T1000 servers for 60 days with no commitment and at no cost. Real Time Matrix CEO Jeff Whitehead told Snyder that this trial-run convinced him Sun and its technology was right for his startup. In fact, Whitehead upgraded, choosing to purchase six Sun Fire T2000 servers, which have provided his company with a substantial amount of savings in energy, heat, and space, he reports. Whitehead once again capitalized on Sun programs to save his company money by purchasing these servers under the Sun Startup Essentials program. "To be sure, Real Time Matrix is a small customer and Sun will have to replicate that success many times over. But it's a start, and a good one," Snyder concludes, "Sun may not be at the top of everybody's vendor list, but once again, it's worth your consideration." The complete list of InfoWorld's 2007 underreported tech stories:
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Sun President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz is credited with this upturn, along with former predecessor and Sun co-founder Scott McNealy.
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