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

[Mike Kelley <mkelley@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:16 AM 01/18/2003 -0800, you wrote:
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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".

I'm not sure that a "side business" model would work for Sun. IMO
everything they've done through the years was designed for profitability
from servers, services, and workstations sold using a solutions approach,
primarily through a direct sales force with specialized partners allowed to
participate. Its hard to teach an old dog new tricks like that.

>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?

Appliance hardware line of business aside, I suspect that Cobalt was
attractive for the ChiliSoft code. I expected Sun to run with this in a
serious effort to convert IIS users onto Cobalt or Sun hardware. This
seemed to make some sense given their Star Office play, but it never
materialized.


>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).

And really, really expensive. 

>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...

Sun sorta had an appliance in the 80's. The 386i was not actually an
appliance, but it had an applicance type of management interface and an
intel pc architecture. The interface drove many system admins crazy because
you couldn't go to the "usual places" in the file system to modify things
the unix (sunos) way. Does that sound familar to Cobalt admins?

>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"...

See the 1989 "All our wood behind one arrow" quote for the commitment to
SPARC.
If you were not around then try these links... watch the wrap.
http://www.siliconindia.com/digital_profiles/articledisplay.asp?article_id=5
06&imagedisplay=prof
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=20&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Googl
e+Search&as_epq=wood+behind+one+arrow&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=lang_en&as_ft=i&as_fi
letype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

>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, 

I hope they are smarter than that. I thouht SGI's downfall was directlty
linked to their introduction of a Wintel procduct line. I hope Sun is
smarter than that. Like most list readers I am dis-appointed by the dim
prospects for the Cobalt products. 

[good stuff and venting deleted]
Mike Kelley
Standard and non-standard disclaimers apply