Sun/Oracle vs. IBM circus

So It's been quite a circus at our company lately, since we're partners with SUN, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft all at the same time.

IBM launched a campaign against Oracle/Sun , trying to talk customer over to migrate from Sun infrastructure to IBM infrastructure., and trying to make any movement by Sun looks like a "failure".

Sun started responding a bit late, waiting for Oracle to back them up I guess.

few weeks back we received this: (Interesting picture )
Performance - Sun plus Oracle is faster.

Today we received this from SUN:

Dear Sun Partners,

Let’s Knock Down our Competitor IBM ….. Please communicate this message by Oracle to your customers……….. And be a part of the wining Battle! “THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING……”

(the "message" is in the attached picture)

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mikej412

UnixGuy wrote: »

Interesting picture

I'll be disappointed if that XX in the picture isn't really double digits when they announce their results on October 14th.

It will be fun to see the performance (and configuration/price) of the Sun/Oracle solution compared to the "old champ" -- Executive Summary PDF of the current IBM TPC-C champ.

wastedtime

It will be interesting how this plays out over the next couple of years. Oracle's acquisition of Sun was a good buy on their part. Right now my money is on IBM.

UnixGuy

Oracle's vision is to deliver a fully integrated solution from application to disk. (Application, DB, OS, server, and SAN). They're planning on tuning SPARC hardware and the Solaris OS to give better performance running Oracle DB.

I think they will compete very well with IBM.

Solaris_UNIX

mikej412 wrote: »

I'll be disappointed if that XX in the picture isn't really double digits when they announce their results on October 14th.

It will be fun to see the performance (and configuration/price) of the Sun/Oracle solution compared to the "old champ" -- Executive Summary PDF of the current IBM TPC-C champ.

Hey Mike, I have an interesting question / subject for discussion for everyone- why does the IBM power 595 in the tcp.org adobe acrobat document you linked to look exactly like an IBM System z9 mainframe (see pictures below):

File:Front Z9 2094.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IBM System z9 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and not like an actual IBM power 595 (see IBM youtube video link that I have copied and pasted below explaining design / architecture of the power 595 below where the first thing you notice is that it looks very different from the "z9" look a like picture in the tcp.org adobe acrobat document):

YouTube - Tour of new IBM Power 595

Does anyone else besides me find it ironic that IBM's marketing team used a picture of the wrong product in their marketing pdf but that Sun's marketing team used the correct picture?

I'm not an expert on IBM hardware so I could be wrong here, but can someone else who is an IBM hardware expert chime in and confirm or deny this? Maybe there really is another version of the Power 595 that, for some reason, looks exactly like a System z9 and I've just never seen a picture of it or ever heard about it before?

Solaris_UNIX

Ok, even IBM's official photo gallery shows the power 595 looking the way I thought it looked (single cabinet with the green vertical stripe):

IBM Press room - Photo gallery - Power Systems - United States

I can't find any pictures on IBM's web site that say "this is a power 595" and then show a picture of something that looks like a System z9, so maybe I'm not going crazy after all?

eMeS

Solaris_UNIX wrote: »

Hey Mike, I have an interesting question / subject for discussion for everyone- why does the IBM power 595 in the tcp.org adobe acrobat document you linked to look exactly like an IBM System z9 mainframe (see pictures below):

File:Front Z9 2094.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IBM System z9 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and not like an actual IBM power 595 (see IBM youtube video link that I have copied and pasted below explaining design / architecture of the power 595 below where the first thing you notice is that it looks very different from the "z9" look a like picture in the tcp.org adobe acrobat document):

YouTube - Tour of new IBM Power 595

Does anyone else besides me find it ironic that IBM's marketing team used a picture of the wrong product in their marketing pdf but that Sun's marketing team used the correct picture?

I'm not an expert on IBM hardware so I could be wrong here, but can someone else who is an IBM hardware expert chime in and confirm or deny this? Maybe there really is another version of the Power 595 that, for some reason, looks exactly like a System z9 and I've just never seen a picture of it or ever heard about it before?

The case it's in is somewhat irrelevant. Some of the z-Series have a red stripe down the side if I remember correctly, and the z10's have the green stripe. (personally I wish IBM would just stick with blue). In the partner sales literature (which I will not repost) there is evidence of IBM hardware in different cases...I would say at the moment the green stripe is all the rage.

IBM System z10 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'd say for the most part the comments in this thread are forgetting a few significant points:

1 - Doesn't Oracle have some type of agreement/partnership with HP for hardware that was to intended to let Oracle compete with IBM in terms of packaged hardware/database? Is HP just going to roll over and take it?

2 - It's been a long time since Sun "competed" with IBM. Sun makes good products that show up in all kinds of places, but they have nowhere near the market penetration that they had in the mid to late 90's, and definitely nowhere near IBM's market penetration for hardware and applications. I'm not sure why Oracle thinks suddenly that picking up Sun is going to allow them to compete at the same level with IBM on hardware?

3 - Where Oracle could hurt IBM most is with Java. The majority of all of IBM's code base is in Java. However, it seems that Oracle's hands are tied in terms of what they can really do here without upsetting the entire world. This, not hardware, will be the interesting battle to watch.

4 - Sun has always been a very different company from Oracle. When the EU gives the go ahead (upon the sale or spinoff of MySQL AB), there will be a huge exodus of talent from Sun in terms of both job losses, people taking (wanting) severance packages, and people who simply don't want to work for Oracle.

5 - My speculation is that one of the real reasons IBM didn't buy Sun is because DOJ would not have approved a single entity controlling that much of the hardware and software landscape.

I'm really glad to see that no one has popped up with some kind of "what about Microsoft" nonsense in this thread.

Note: My company is an IBM Partner, and we do the majority of our work at the moment with the WebSphere product line. However, I also work directly with Sun on a limited basis.

MS

veritas_libertas

UnixGuy wrote: »

So It's been quite a circus at our company lately, since we're partners with SUN, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft all at the same time.

IBM launched a campaign against Oracle/Sun , trying to talk customer over to migrate from Sun infrastructure to IBM infrastructure., and trying to make any movement by Sun looks like a "failure".

Sun started responding a bit late, waiting for Oracle to back them up I guess.

few weeks back we received this: (Interesting picture )
Performance - Sun plus Oracle is faster.

Today we received this from SUN:

I am so sorry for you

I absolutely hate dealing with IBM.

UnixGuy

eMeS wrote: »

2 - It's been a long time since Sun "competed" with IBM. Sun makes good products that show up in all kinds of places, but they have nowhere near the market penetration that they had in the mid to late 90's..

MS

I have to disagree here.

Sun's performance reached its peak in the past few yrs only, and it's been doing much much better. That's what we keep receiving from Sun's representatives in the region.

Now, what I can confirm is: Sun sales in the EMEA region. Sun really took over the market in the Middle East region. My company alone took care of the two largest oil company's in the world...and It's exclusively Sun & Cisco infrastructure. In the past they used IBM, but they were unhappy with the support and sales reps.

I'm not a US citizen, but I do a lot of troubleshooting and support for US military bases, (after multiple long checks..etc), and I didn't see any IBM there (maybe they have but I don't get to see everything). They use the latest Sun technologies, ranging from "Sun Ray" thin clients to the latest Sun StorageTek 6140, 6580,...etc.

Also, central banks here rely on Sun infrastructure. Again, Sun quality support and products made a difference in the past few years, and it allowed for more major clients to shift from IBM to SUN.

Not forget the Telco sector...Ericsson rely solely on Sun hardware, which is huge in telcos. Even during the recession (which didn't affect the EMEA region much except for Dubai), we were able to sell all Sun new products ranging from entry level to high-end such as Sun SPARC M8000.

Motorola also rely big deal on Sun, and they're a major customer.

So it depends on the region.

I can also talk about Africa, a lot of business is going on there. Even in the poor countries ! I don't know details of these countries and why they get attention now, but huge installation took place in Nigeria, specially by the Middle East teclo giant "ZAIN". Even in dangerous areas like Sudan, there were huge successful installations there. Sun was never able to go there before.

UnixGuy

eMeS wrote: »

...
I'm really glad to see that no one has popped up with some kind of "what about Microsoft" nonsense in this thread.

...

MS

I don't care about these things, as my father is not the owner of Sun or IBM

but I noticed a lot of sensitivity here when Microsoft is mentioned ! I find it funny how people get emotional when Microsoft is mentioned...We're IT professionals, we should adapt with any technology...

UnixGuy

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I am so sorry for you

I absolutely hate dealing with IBM.

hehehe don't be, I'm not affected. It's entertaining, specially when you see sales people too excited talking about these things

eMeS

UnixGuy wrote: »

I have to disagree here.

Sun's performance reached its peak in the past few yrs only, and it's been doing much much better. That's what we keep receiving from Sun's representatives in the region.

You really only have to look at the most key of the key performance indicators here:

Sun Market Cap - 6.90 B

IBM Market Cap - 155.84 B

Sorry, but ~7B vs ~156B is not "competing".

Sun's market cap has only done one thing consistently in the last ~10 years, decreased. Also, companies generally don't do reverse splits because they've gained market share.

At one point in the mid-90's or so I remember Sun taking a lot of market share from IBM here in the US in the hardware market. I come primarily from financial services. Once example that I remember vividly is when we were replacing what were called "Stratus" machines, which were basically super fault-tolerant bullet proof hardware and software used for equity pricing. The mid-90's replacement was Sun hardware. By ~2001 the Sun solution was replaced with a z-Series solution, where it remains today. This is really just one example, and I'm sure there are plenty of examples of things moving the other direction.

While I still see Sun hardware turn up in quite a few places, it's not nearly as prevalent as it was in the 90's.

UnixGuy wrote: »

Now, what I can confirm is: Sun sales in the EMEA region. Sun really took over the market in the Middle East region. My company alone took care of the two largest oil company's in the world...and It's exclusively Sun & Cisco infrastructure. In the past they used IBM, but they were unhappy with the support and sales reps.

I'm not a US citizen, but I do a lot of troubleshooting and support for US military bases, (after multiple long checks..etc), and I didn't see any IBM there (maybe they have but I don't get to see everything). They use the latest Sun technologies, ranging from "Sun Ray" thin clients to the latest Sun StorageTek 6140, 6580,...etc.

Also, central banks here rely on Sun infrastructure. Again, Sun quality support and products made a difference in the past few years, and it allowed for more major clients to shift from IBM to SUN.

Not forget the Telco sector...Ericsson rely solely on Sun hardware, which is huge in telcos. Even during the recession (which didn't affect the EMEA region much except for Dubai), we were able to sell all Sun new products ranging from entry level to high-end such as Sun SPARC M8000.

Motorola also rely big deal on Sun, and they're a major customer.

So it depends on the region.

I couldn't agree more, but I would add that it also depends very much on the niche. Sun has always been a strong niche player.

BTW, "Sun Ray", while awesome, is around 10 years old now. It's good that Ellison finally got that thin client stuff that he was talking about in the early 90's!

MS

eMeS

UnixGuy wrote: »

I don't care about these things, as my father is not the owner of Sun or IBM

but I noticed a lot of sensitivity here when Microsoft is mentioned ! I find it funny how people get emotional when Microsoft is mentioned...We're IT professionals, we should adapt with any technology...

I couldn't agree more, and I gave you +rep for this.

The underlying technology or company is irrelevant. We all must be prepared to switch gears when and if necessary.

IMO, at the moment Microsoft is not a player in the situation being discussed in this thread. That's not to say that they don't do some things very well or that they won't become a player at some point.

MS

wastedtime

eMeS wrote: »

You really only have to look at the most key of the key performance indicators here:

Sun Market Cap - 6.90 B

IBM Market Cap - 155.84 B

Sorry, but ~7B vs ~156B is not "competing".

Sun's market cap has only done one thing consistently in the last ~10 years, decreased. Also, companies generally don't do reverse splits because they've gained market share.

I agree Sun doesn't stand a chance against IBM, but Oracle should be closing/closed the deal in buying them with a cap of 114.2 B. Not saying that things will change overnight but I know I will be keeping an eye on them.

UnixGuy

Interesting. I'm really not knowledgeable about Sales numbers and market shares...but as I told you, in the EMEA region you can notice clearly that Sun is doing much better, and primarily because of both Sales reps and Support.

The point I'm trying to make is, the market in the EMEA is new compared to that of the US, and SUN there is doing much better than IBMs for the reasons stated above. That's why - I guess - Sun is emphasizing that they're doing better than the past.

I remember reading somewhere that most UNIX installations are IBM based, that's true.

Sun Ray didn't do very well initially, but after Sun Ray 4.x and up, it's been selling much better now. Our company sold it mainly for Army and for Universities.

Speaking of Microsoft, there are some deals between Sun & Microsoft. I remember a link on Sun website (can't find it now) about some performance milestones reached for Windows on the new Sun's X86/X64 platforms. Our company sold these two, they're suitable for small business running ISA, Exchange,..etc.

Anyway, let's wait and see what Oracle can do now

eMeS wrote: »

You really only have to look at the most key of the key performance indicators here:

Sun Market Cap - 6.90 B

IBM Market Cap - 155.84 B

Sorry, but ~7B vs ~156B is not "competing".

Sun's market cap has only done one thing consistently in the last ~10 years, decreased. Also, companies generally don't do reverse splits because they've gained market share.

At one point in the mid-90's or so I remember Sun taking a lot of market share from IBM here in the US in the hardware market. I come primarily from financial services. Once example that I remember vividly is when we were replacing what were called "Stratus" machines, which were basically super fault-tolerant bullet proof hardware and software used for equity pricing. The mid-90's replacement was Sun hardware. By ~2001 the Sun solution was replaced with a z-Series solution, where it remains today. This is really just one example, and I'm sure there are plenty of examples of things moving the other direction.

While I still see Sun hardware turn up in quite a few places, it's not nearly as prevalent as it was in the 90's.

I couldn't agree more, but I would add that it also depends very much on the niche. Sun has always been a strong niche player.

BTW, "Sun Ray", while awesome, is around 10 years old now. It's good that Ellison finally got that thin client stuff that he was talking about in the early 90's!

MS

eMeS

wastedtime wrote: »

I agree Sun doesn't stand a chance against IBM, but Oracle should be closing/closed the deal in buying them with a cap of 114.2 B. Not saying that things will change overnight but I know I will be keeping an eye on them.

I wonder very much how Oracle will adapt to becoming a hardware company, when they really don't have anything in their history that says they know how to do this.

Picking up Sun is definitely a good thing for them, but I wonder how much talent they will lose in the short-term, and how this will affect their ability to truly compete in that consolidated hardware/applications market. Time will tell.

IMO, the 800 lb. Gorilla in this room that no one's discussing is HP.

MS

UnixGuy

Thanks for +rep

We should be able to switch and learn anything. I tell my colleagues that if I get the opportunity to work with ANY technology, then I will give it my heart and I will learn it no matter what.

Actually, we should be very well versed with these technologies, because very often we have to setup or troubleshoot problems where multiple vendors are in play.

eMeS wrote: »

I couldn't agree more, and I gave you +rep for this.

The underlying technology or company is irrelevant. We all must be prepared to switch gears when and if necessary.

IMO, at the moment Microsoft is not a player in the situation being discussed in this thread. That's not to say that they don't do some things very well or that they won't become a player at some point.

MS

eMeS

UnixGuy wrote: »

I remember reading somewhere that most UNIX installations are IBM based, that's true.

I don't know, but I would suspect that most are some form of Linux.

UnixGuy wrote: »

Sun Ray didn't do very well initially, but after Sun Ray 4.x and up, it's been selling much better now. Our company sold it mainly for Army and for Universities.

I wish more companies would do things like this, as I think it eliminates a whole host of problems and issues that come with implementing and supporting traditional desktops (which is funny to say BTW, because 20 years ago what is now "traditional" was truly cutting edge when very few people had pcs on their desks at work!).

BTW, Sun uses this at their campuses. It's good to see companies eating their own dog food!

I've heard that the Navy uses Sun Ray on some ships, but I'm not 100% sure about that. I would imagine that Oracle had to make some pretty big promises about keeping some things going in order to get DOJ approval.

MS

UnixGuy

eMeS wrote: »

I've heard that the Navy uses Sun Ray on some ships, but I'm not 100% sure about that. I would imagine that Oracle had to make some pretty big promises about keeping some things going in order to get DOJ approval.

MS

Sun sales reps told us that the Navy uses Sun Ray, and Sun StorageTek 6410 and 6580. But we're not authorized to see or support this kind of classified setups.

About Sun Ray, I agree. It's really better than having a desktop for every employee/student.

We implemented in two universities, using VMware. Every student has a Sun Ray card, and a VM machine. Which is great, more secure, easier managed, and much cheaper. It's a very successful project. Servers we used Sun Blade X6000, and storage is Sun STK 6580.

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