Papadopoulos also talked about Sun’s vision for the future, moving from shrink wrap software to services and from client/server to utility computing. Reflective of the shift to new network-centric models, he said: “I want to be the Google of something, not the Microsoft or SAP.” Perhaps, but so far Sun is ahead of the curve with its vision of commoditizing infrastructure and trailing in terms of generating growth in its business, compared to Google, Microsoft or SAP.The $1 per CPU utility, which Sun–as an infrastructure provider–is doing to stimulate the market and show how the business and computing model is possible, is still mainly confined to technical workloads. “I’m not so concerned with what’s happening now from a business model sense. We aren’t going to make a lot of money in the near term. What matters is the hardware and software stack, how to do it securely and efficiently. It’s also a long lead time to get ISVs there,” Papadopoulos said. He is also banking that the million-fold increase demand on the Net from sensors networks will be an area where Sun sell its infrastructure.
He also believes that the commoditization of computing, which has the virtue of transparent pricing (e.g., $1 per CPU), and the associated utility computing lower switching costs, doesn’t favor a Microsoft’s more closed system and higher margin model. Sun’s model, he said, is to drive commoditization, which can also mean lower margins.
The bottom line seems to be that Sun's making two big bets, both around commoditization: assuming continued growth on the client/demand side of public and private networks, they're redoubling efforts to be the hardware vendor of choice for the back end. The second bet is that some combination of Sun hardware, Solaris, Java, and JES, delivered as a utility, will become the platform of choice for software developers (as opposed to certifying to a specific OS, as companies like Oracle or SAP do today).
On the other hand, you could read this as Sun being unwilling (and, actually, unable) to be anything other than a hot box business, bringing us back to the old question of how Sun can fight off the combined resources of Intel, Microsoft, and the open source community. Of course, the strategic ju-jitsu of their alliance with AMD for Opteron CPUs, and the open-sourcing of Solaris makes that riddle all the more interesting.
