Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog: Changing World Some fun self-deprecating humor (in the links) and subtle insights into Sun's current bets:
"... one of my basic rules of business: convenience is more powerful than any other competitive weapon. Against all foes, even piracy."
"Which hits on another rule of mine: in the technology world, volume wins."
Sun is betting its future on being a leader in super-convenient, pervasive, mobile, high-volume devices. Okay, I understand that the gazillions of such devices will be highly complementary with PCs etc. (Tangent: think PCs are fading? Microsoft projects "... the number of PCs in the world growing to one billion by 2010 from about 600 million today".) Here's the part that's far less clear to me: why does Sun appear to believe it's going to have a profitable and sustainable business in the new ubiquitous mobile device realities?
Why did Sun care so much about http?
ReplyDeleteStandards drive opportunity. It's only for Microsoft that products lock in product opportunity. Everyone else has to compete - and in a growing market, there's more to grab.
I think the recent track records for Microsoft, Sun, and other suggest the conventional wisdom on standards and lock-in is overdue for a reality check; Microsoft has done more for standards over the last few years than any other vendor, and Sun, in contrast, has no plans to truly standardize Java. Also check out Sun's initial response to SOAP, a few years ago -- a rather stark contrast to the responses of IBM and others.
ReplyDeleteIn any case: customer value drives opportunity. Standards ease interoperability.