How do I feel about Sun Microsystems

I have worked about 14 months at Sun microsystems. I wanted to write about my feelings about it from long. Just now, I have organised my thoughts and placed the details here. First a bit of gyan and then my analysis about its future and work place.

What Sun does for its Living ?

For those non technical friends of mine, Sun is an systems/hardwared company to start with, but nowhas the complete stack of the system. Its product list include Solaris OS, Java , J2EE, Net beans on Software side, Niagara , V40Z , Starcat and other systems on the Hardware side. The major source of revenue for them is from their Systems business at present, Despite they are being famous for JAVA language.

What do I do at Sun ?

I worked as a performance analyst for their Niagara line of systems. For non techy guys, I have to drive Oracle database on these systems to its limits to achieve the system's full potential. For which , you need to excel at the complete stack of the system. Thanks to my mentor , RAVI - In this short duration of One year, I have got a very good feel of this great company.

Why sun is not financially performing to its potential ?

Sun was its best in 98-2000 period, just before 2000 dotcom burst. The post 2000, Sun was in losses for about five years because of two reasons.

• Hardware business is low margin high volume business. And it had betted big on SPARC architecture.
• Two or three failed products will made it bleed. And did not entered the X64 and X86 market at the right time.
• Bad investments it made during the dot come period.

How ever, the last two years growth was good. And things are looking bright.

What about the future of Sun ?

Three significant steps taken by Jonathan at SUN in last year. Which can leverage Sun's strengths into financial benefits.

• Entered in to new avenues of X86 and X64 architectures in System business
• Fastet supercomputer on earth now is RANGER at TACC [ Which was produced with SUN hardware and collaboration.
• Acquisition of MySQL.

All these actions can help to both sun's topline and bottom line directly. And Its bet on Solaris is also looking good as it has reached about 7 Million downloads recently. However, its going to take time for converting these downloads into money.

So What do I think about Sun and working at Sun?

To put it briefly in two sentences,

• Sun is a very great company technologically. But some how always loose out in cashing the money for those innovations.

Sun is a great place to work. I have quit Sun because of my personal reasons. For people who are motivated to work in Systems area, its one of the companies to work with. With this note, I am signing off.