Sun Microsystems...What happened?

[_unexpected_]

I have been doing a lot of research on this company and read a lot of remarkable things. After just six years it reached Fortune 500 and was number 337. Leading up to the dot-com boom, this company was the flagship of internet technology. During the dot-com boom it developed Java and Solaris and even took on that Hitler of Software, Microsoft. However, after the dot-com boom, this company nearly hit the floor.

 

My question clearly is, what happened? Anybody got information on why this company isn't as big as it was in the past and why it allowed other competitors like Cisco to take the lead?

[Devil 07]

after the dot-com boom, this company nearly hit the floor.

 

Happened to a lot of companies after the "boom" balanced itself out.

[old_geekster]

The ability to maintain market share and value these days is nearly impossible. Eventually, you have to make money to continue growth.

 

The speculators stopped speculating!

[momoceio]

Probably the fact that their stuff is soo friggin expensive and it's a niche market...

[taowulf]

My company runs a LOT of Netras. They are awesome for what they do well, and price really isn't a problem. We run mission critical servers and so on and for that, the reliability of Sun equipment is usually five nines.

 

There was a lot of artificial inflation of company "values" doring the height of the "dot com bubble". But then the stock market often has no relation to actual value.

 

Cisco and Sun are not usually competitors in the strictest sense. Sun makes kick butt workstations/servers, and that is how we use them. Cisco is more known for it's networking equipment and they make good switches, hardware firewalls and so on.

[red930]

Sun got caught in the "not invented here" syndrome. They built their way into some proprietary solutions that just plain cost too much.

 

(Some of you guys will remember the IBM MicroChannel architecture as the beginning of the end for IBM PC hardware.)

 

In just one hardware generation Sun went from market leader to market loser.

 

The advent of the Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron along with usable Linux distros had a major impact on their marked penetration.

[Angry_Games]

yep Linux/Unix took over the internet for major webways and Microsoft finished them off with whatever Linux/Unix didn't take from them

[ooeric]

the fact that .. sun just never welcome the era of PC hardware is partially why we never hear from them.

 

they are all into using their own parts.

 

and buying those custom parts = $$

 

but stability wise. its almost on par with IBM

[Redbeaver]

its been a very good stable company with great growing rate.. the dot boom just catalyst the process abit so the aftershock would drop abit.. i wouldnt call it 'nearly hit the floor'. its a great company with great products. its just too hard to compete with the *nix majority.

 

plus j# from M$ kinda screw their java as well at 2003...

 

but theyre hanging there, java seems 2 b rising again, their stock rates is healthy, and they have alot of sub-companies that develops java, sql, net stuff, etc...

[tweak50]

The need for proficient Java developers is raising quite a lot, and combine that with the fact that the .net programming that came from Microsoft is only around because of Sun I would say that they still have an impact in the development field, but hardware is another story.

[taowulf]

There is more to Sun's customer base than the frakkin Internet.

 

They are huge in the telcom industry in general and as carriers add more and more capabilty to your mobile handset, home phone, VoIP services and so on, Sun's market share will grow. HP can't compete with Sun there. HP just does not have the reliability.

[Smoken Joe]

Might note that Sun is now sing AMD and Intel processors in their systems. For now there is just too much of an economy of scale in cip making and CPU's. There is just too much overhead in for smaller companys to compete. R&D is just part of it. Efficient factories can be billions to make.