The Sun Case Study: Pertinent to Google?
March 4, 2010
I read the Sun case study “How Sun’s Need to Control the Code Cost Them the Company” and wondered if the information pertains to Oracle and to a lesser extent to Google. The author, Jeremy Allison, is a Googler who used to work at Sun. In addition to Mr. Allison, Eric Schmidt is a former Sun Microsystems employee. I once heard that Sun contributed quite a few employees to Google, but I don’t have any hard numbers. (If anyone does, please, use the comments section of this blog to share them.)
You will want to read the quite good write up because it combines useful business insights with a touch of humor. Rare in the world of ZDNet blog posts in my opinion. As I worked through the case study, I kept wondering “Why now?” and “For whom is this written?” I have to tell you I kept thinking about Oracle and Google even through Mr. Allison was writing his opinions and made clear that his views were not those of Google’s.
Fair enough.
First, I noticed that the discussion of the proprietary Sparc chip was a dog compared to Intel’s CPUs. When I read this, I realized that Oracle is requiring that each salesperson sell one of the big, honking servers along with the standard quota. If Oracle keeps the Sparc chip, Oracle is going to find itself selling systems that may be hard pressed to deliver the performance customers demand. Even worse, if an Oracle customer goes off the reservation, that customer may discover that commodity boxes and non relational databases are the cure for those performance woes. That would be bad news for Oracle in my opinion.
Second, I twitched my pinfeathers when I read the discussion of Sun and open source code. You must read this sequence including the “Have you ever kissed a girl?” email thread. In this exchange I see a warning (gentle, of course) about what problems Oracle may face in the open source community and how a company like Microsoft might find itself in a heap of trouble for a more savvy open source outfit. Could Google be more clever about “open”? Mr. Allison does not explore this idea, but I have a hunch that the lessons of Sun apply to both Microsoft and Oracle.
Finally, if you did not fall asleep in one of those required literature classes in college, you may be able to read even more between the words and the lines in this essay. Fascinating.
Stephen E Arnold, March 4, 2010
No one paid me to write this opinion as a blog post. I know I have to report whether my blog posts are commercials or the random thoughts of an addled goose. Ah, random. I will report this to the Clerk of the Supreme Court, an institution whose judgments are never random even though I see some of them that way.
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