SUN

Apr 6 2009   1:46AM GMT

IBM takes back SUN offer - BAD IDEA SUN!

Posted by: David Vasta
IBM, SUN

I think everyone at SUN is happy for now. I am not sure how good this is for them long term. I don’t think SUN has what it takes to keep selling nothing. I don’t know what SUN has to offer the IT world. Solaris is free, OpenSolaris is even more FREE and the hardware they are putting out is lack luster and not even as good as anything DELL or HP has. Sadly I think SUN should have taken the offer and called it  day. Next thing they will be asking the government for a hand out.

LINK :: Linux Journal - IBM Lets Sun Set

Mar 27 2009   12:33AM GMT

Where is the SUN buyout?

Posted by: David Vasta
IBM, SUN

I really thought SUN was going to get purchased by IBM and then come to find out IBM may be laying off 5000 employees? Come on IBM, you know you didn’t have to do that? Seems like the past 20 years of IT have been very up and down. I wish it would level out for just a bit.

Mar 18 2009   7:37PM GMT

Is IBM about to buy SUN for $7 billion?

Posted by: David Vasta
IBM, SUN, Buy Out, Solaris

LINK :: NYT - IBM said to be in talks to buy Sun for $7 Billion

I think this is long over due. Sun has been twisting in the wind for way to long with way to many decent products (Solaris, StarOffice, SSO, EIM, Java, OpenSolaris,MySQL), that they like IBM can’t figure out how to sell any of it.

IBM has, in recent years, done a better job than SUN but not by much. Part of the problem SUN has is Jonathan Schwart. He is has said nothing innovative in the past 7 years to spur on anything but declining sales and even less innovation from SUNs staff.

SUN also has a bad habit of brain washing executives and releasing them into the wild so that they can convert IT, all the while these brain washed zombies who think SUN is going to save the world end up destroying companies, ruining IT departments and in the end are nothing more then SUNs evil puppets. Sadly all to often they end up in decent hard working IBM shops trying to find chinks in the armor and can’t so they just start ripping the walls down like gorrilas who is unhappy with the decorations in thier painted white cages. They should have stayed at SUN where they belonged, in the fold, on the mother ship.

OK, to be fair, IBM has zealots too, and I know that, but you don’t rip and replace when something has been working well for over a decade. I have been in more than one place where some past executive from one of the big three has shown up and decided his former company could come in and do it all for less. Well if that was the case then why didn’t we do that 10 years ago smarty pants, oh I know because SUN has been on the edge of DEAD now for so long no one trust the investment.

You don’t buy a car you want a warranty on from a car company that is going out of business, why the heck to you think GM is not selling cars right now? No one will know if they are going to be there in 6 months.

You can have the best widget in the world with the best colors, but if you are not going to be around to support it in 6 months or a year then no one will want it, except the stupid, and that is what you end up with when you hire a former IT Exec from SUN or Microsoft who wants to rip and replace everything  for no decent reason. You also have to question everyone sanity who hired he or she.

SUN is the expensive IT choice, nothing they make is cheap or even FREE unless you pick thier OPEN lines. Even those can be supported for a cost. A big cost but a cost none the less.

SUN has failed to do anything with SPARC and also has failed to really break open the server market with it’s pathetic little pizza box servers that are so sad looking when you open them up that you wonder which laptop company sold them the bits to barley fill the case?

Apple and Sun would have made the most sense, but Apple has a problem thinking about big IT, and IBM seems to have a pretty good hold on big IT, while strugguling with small IT.

So I did use this post to rant a bit about the demise, thank goodness, of SUN and the rise of IBM. I think if IBM were smart they would take everything SUN has in house, close up shop on SUN. Retain the decent people. I do know a few, and take that technology I mentioned before, port it to POWER and offer it up. IBM at that point in time will have a killer offering. Please don’t kill the OPEN projects, we need them for the sake of innovation. IBMs next move, NOVELL!

Well in the long term if IBM does take in SUN I hope to have OpenOffice in every Lotus product soon, and move to what I consider a better office suit than the “other guy”

Good Luck IBM.

Nov 15 2008   4:54AM GMT

This can’t be good - SUN to lay off 6000 employees

Posted by: David Vasta
SUN, Just Blogging, Bad Economy

It’s not going to be easy to get throught this hard economic time. Sadly SUN was not in a position I think to survive it anyway. They have been on the bubble for years. I wish all the empoyees who got thier walking papers good luck, there are jobs out there you just have to be creative.

LINK :: Sun to lay off 6000 Workers

Nov 5 2008   8:40PM GMT

Running a Users Group - Jim Grisanzio

Posted by: David Vasta
SUN, User Groups, Offtopic, Just Blogging, Other Blogs, Japan

Jim writes an blog post that I found is not just for OpenSolaris User Groups, but could be used for all User Groups. Thanks Jim for the great post and sharing you thoughts on the matter.

LINK :: Jim Grisanzio -  Running Successful OpenSolaris User Groups

I tried at one time to get the Colorado Lotus Users Group back up and running and kind of hit a brick wall after the first year. In Charlotte by accident I kind of started a group of users we call, Lunch Time Geeks or LTG, and we just meet for lunch. No agenda, no meeting, just hanging out and eating. Maybe I can grow it from there? Maybe not?

Aug 1 2008   4:18AM GMT

OpenSolaris keeps making baby step and Jim Grisanzio is documenting every one

Posted by: David Vasta
SUN, Open source, OpenSolaris

I am a fan of Open Projects and OpenSolaris all be a SUN product is still something to watch, and I do ofter from Jim Grisanzio’s Blog. I read Jim’s blog for two reasons, one he is interesting and is honest about the progress of the project and two he lives in Japan and I think I am living vicariously through him living there.

Hats off to Jim and make sure you stop by and read what he is up to.

“OpenSolaris keeps making baby step and Jim Grisanzio is documenting every one”

Jun 22 2008   2:48AM GMT

New Site is coming

Posted by: David Vasta
Linux, Lotus, SUN, FreeBSD, Apple, System i, Ubuntu Linux, Linux in System i, Domino on System i, David on System i, Lotus News, i on Power, AIX on Power, Linux on POWER, POWER Systems, i, i for business, OpenSolaris, IBM i

I am working on a new site, so between work, this site, writting for Search400 (which I hope they change the name of soon) and family, I have also found little time to start building a new site that will in the end be a hub for all things POWER based. I have to bring the community together under one web site.

So with that said, I am going to need people to provide content for the site. I need really dedicated insane people to help build the community from all parts of this equation. IBM i, AIX, Linux on Power, and POWER hardware. We need to come together in a big way and share. I am also going to cover Lotus, Ubuntu, OpenSolaris, OpenSuSE, FreeBSD and other things that interest me that I think are changing the way IT does IT.

Please send me an email and I will get you in on the fun, and if you know Joomla that would be great too…I am no expert on that CMS kit.

May 7 2008   2:04PM GMT

OpenSolaris released in time to die?

Posted by: David Vasta
Linux, UNIX, SUN, Open source, OpenSolaris

Sun has never been buddies with IBM and since I still bleed blue and like the company named IBM, most days, I have a bit of disdain for SUN and it’s not just because they are who they are I have tons of reasons not to like them. Sun has spent the past 8 years fumbling the ball and failing all over the place and even while they have poor financial performance and what I would consider average. It’s sad that the stock holders do call it quits and let them be purchased by someone who might pay half of what they think that are worth. Not sure who would touch them now that they are all over the place.

With that said I am an open source advocate, and I think Linux is doing pretty good, I do however have questions about OpenSolaris and the lack of WOW wrapped around it. I read daily the blog put out there by Jim Grisanzio and while it is the most popular blog at Sun’s site he reveals some of the problems with OpenSolaris and is always willing to air their dirty laundry to make a point.

I also have trouble with the Sun Open Source model, where some things are open and others are not. While I can’t keep track of any of it, the whole idea just seems very stupid to me. Plus the fact that the hardware they are selling on the “cheap” side of things is just that, cheap. It’s utter rubbish and should be avoided at all costs. Any IT person woth their salt would avoid Sun equipment until they get their act together. I have seen some if it and it’s not worth what they are charging.

While I would love to see some hearty competition between Linux and OpenSolaris I think the fact that OpenSolaris is out there supporting a company that makes a profit on the backs of the free help is a bit of an odd model to me.

Here are some interesting points:

“OpenSolaris has been released under an Open Source license,” it doesn’t have “an Open Source development community.”

“OpenSolaris’ biggest trouble is that while it’s taken three years for OpenSolaris to reach a point where general techie sorts will get it a try, the Linux distributors, especially Red Hat, Novell/SUSE and Ubuntu, has been moving in strength both to the public and to enterprise customers.”

While I wish the project luck I don’t see much future for it, the teams inside OpenSolaris fight constantly and there are some unsavory IT has beens on the board as well who have not done well in IT much less helping OpenSolaris.

I also think Sun and Jonathan Schwartz are really hanging on, and in the next four or five years unless they make something truly remarkable will be sunk. He is a pony tailed silicon valley chatter mouth and if we were to shake his head you could hear his brain rattle around in it. Sadly everyone at Sun likes his goofy know nothing smile and puts up with his poor performances and his blathering blog where he rambles on and on about nothing of significance.

This post is not an attack on Jim at all. I point out that Jim is one of the most well spoken and articulate people in the OpenSolaris community. I respect the work he does and know at the end of the day if OpenSolaris fails it would have more to do with Sun doing to much and developers arguing and belittling each other inside the project vs. anything Jim did. I just recently saw a video with Johathan on it talking about how Sun is going to make a comeback here in the next few years with their new server strategy. I still think Solaris is flawed in that it is not easy to deploy or use for the average business. It does not make computing easy at any point like the i does. I also read this which is just like to males getting out the yard stick. More does not always mean better, and in this case with all that hardware they still have run out of capacity?