Sep24
Sun's software influence
The September 18 edition of The Economist carries an interesting article on Sun.
"Sun is sending an unmistakable message to customers as well as to rivals such as Microsoft and IBM: software is shockingly overvalued." "Sun now sees Java, a software brand, as a prime asset to be exploited."
Sun and Java have more brand weight in a corporate board than Red Hat. Sun is able to tout that it knows enough about security for its software to be deployed in the front lines of Iraq and inside the CIA that a corporation should entrust them with their data. The board members will be very familiar with Microsoft security challenges over the past year and relate well to military security requirements.
Sun still lacks a strong database component. Sun's J2EE uses IBM's Cloudscape product. Q3 2004 should be interesting.
