[cobalt-users] Re: The next step...

[Bruce Timberlake <bruce@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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> what I fail to fathom is the obvious great success of the RaQ's (as
> server appliances) and the apparent lack of interest from Sun to
> maintain a lucrative "side business".

Remember, in the quarter or two just after Cobalt was acquired 
(Jan-June 2001), the "bubble" burst... our former CEO, Steven DeWitt, 
was a masterful salesman who convinced Scott at exactly the right 
time to spend a lot more than Cobalt was probably worth (based on 
sales to date, number of units sold, etc)...

> If Sun had no intention of continuing the RaQ line, why did they
> purchase it in the first place?

Scott "bought" the appliance vision, but was never able to give the 
product line the proper resources (engineering, R&D, sales).  Six 
months after the acquisition, in the annual company-wide July re-org, 
the entire channel for Cobalt was shut down, due to 
"incompatibilities" with the existing Sun channel model (they wanted 
to sell Cobalt like any other Sun product, which is totally 
unrealistic).

This channel (via Tech Data, Ingram Micro, etc.) was the main avenue 
for selling Cobalt products, so total Cobalt sales dropped almost 75% 
in the July-September quarter after that happened.  With no revenue 
coming in, management was questioning the viability of Cobalt, not 
realizing (or caring) about the reasons for 'failure' (no sales team, 
no real support from almost everyone from Sun, not to mention the 
economic collapse happening to the industry in general).

> I can't possibly imagine that Cobalt "appliances" were perceived as
> a serious threat to the Solaris platform...

I don't think that was the reason for the acquisition... this was not 
a Microsoft-ish 'buy them simply to kill them off' deal.  I think 
that all good intentions were there at the time the deal was 
consummated, but a variety of factors since have led to the current 
state of affairs.  Sun is first and foremost a Solaris/SPARC company.  
They have never wavered from that, as most everyone there truly 
believes to the core of their being that SPARC/Solaris is "The One 
True Way"...

I don't fault them for that -- it's very good business to have strong 
beliefs and reinforce them constantly with your employees and with 
your customers.  It is just extremely unfortunate that Cobalt and all 
its employees and customers have suffered directly because of this 
mantra.

I also think that ultimately Sun's short-sightedness, or lack of 
willingness to completely embrace what is inevitably coming (Linux) 
and figure out a way to be a leader and use it to their advantage, 
could be their undoing as a 'Major Player' and relegate them to being 
another SGI... in their short-term needs to appease the shareholders, 
they are jettisoning and shutting down every piece of the business 
that isn't 'breaking even' or close to it.  Cobalt and Linux are the 
new kids, and so far sales have been pretty dismal. So on paper, 
killing it all off (or at least neglecting it enough to die from 
attrition) makes a lot of business sense.  But it's stepping over a 
five dollar bill on the street to pick up a penny.

If Sun had thrown even a "paltry" couple of million dollars (a 
relatively small fraction of their annual R&D budget) at Cobalt and 
Linux product marketing, it would thrive:

- - First and foremost, incent the salesforce and the resellers to sell 
Linux products.  Create a new branch of the salesforce, if needed, 
and a new reseller/channel model to target small and medium 
businesses -- key potential Linux users/converts -- who are a 
customer base that Sun ignores today and doesn't have a clue how to 
sell to.

- - Hire more engineers. Get a couple of "luminaries" from the Linux 
world to be on Sun's payroll -- doing whatever they want, but just to 
have them working "for" Sun would generate a lot of good karma with 
the community. (Example - The open source community "bought" Damian 
Conway last year for dedicated Perl enhancement work for something 
like $55K - something like that would be a 'rounding error' in Sun's 
marketing budget!)

- - Do what IBM has done with their developerWorks website, and publish 
all kinds of useful technical whitepapers and howtos, so that 
everyone (not just Sun's own customers) thinks of Sun as a "major" 
source of general Linux knowledge and information.  (BTW - if you 
haven't seen the IBM site I mentioned, I highly recommend it... they 
have an enormous amount of very useful information there: 
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/)

IBM and HPAQ have more than a small share of fundamental flaws and 
problems themselves. Sun is small enough and theoretically nimble 
enough to beat them at this game, especially given the R&D dollars 
they have to "burn," combined with their tremendous depth in 
engineering know-how...  But they have to commit to it 100% and not 
dip their toe in the water like they have been to date.  That's the 
main problem with their Linux stuff to date -- Sun management has 
just been trying to "get by"... many people on the Cobalt team (and 
some transplants/converts from within Sun) have had lots of awesome 
ideas to become better players in the Linux community.  But the bean 
counters or long-time Sun diehards above them never approve anything.

Bah... it still gets me so frustrated every time I think about it.  
The core team at Cobalt [a|we]re some of the most talented and 
visionary engineers and product managers I've ever seen.  It just 
sucks that they aren't getting a fair chance to succeed.

It's late, and I'm off to bed.  The soapbox is now free for the 
standing upon and shouting... :)

- -- 
Bruce Timberlake

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