Farewell Netscape

As you already know, AOL has decided to give up support for Netscape Navigator. I hate to recognize that, but I feel sad about it. You know, Sun became the hottest company in the .com days thanks to Netscape, as they could be considered the starters of the Internet fever (and bubble...). What memories I have from those exciting days, where you could open up a box of Cheerios and bang, an Enterprise E10K could be awarded to the lucky child about to have breakfast. And in a great part, thanks to the popularity Internet acquired those days, when everybody thought that the world would move all the business to Internet immediately (even Al Gore thought that!), we are what we are now.

I guess that is the reason why we reached that deal with AOL to build the iPlanet brand. You know, AOL didn't really want a software company, they only were interested in the millions of users of Netscape.com, so they never thought they were wasting the $4.2 billion they spent there although we all knew that they didn't want that legion of geeks and programmers. And that days our middleware was just crap, we needed desperate replacement to our Directory Server, Application Server (oh dear, I just remember NetDynamics, and a shiver runs through my back and my neck; that's when our Sales people got accustomed to sell BEA instead of our products, an issue we are still fixing...), Mail Server, etc., so it was a natural deal: they'd split the company, giving us the software factory and keeping the final users for them, to feed them up with contents, their real business.


But then, you know, there was such a stubborn VP from AOL-Netscape, and that other much more stubborn VP from our side (I don't recall very well the story as I never was very interested in software, what is important in Sun is the tons of iron we sell), so in 2002 we definitively splitted it up, retaining the code for ourselves to keep up the development of the products. Of course, we killed most of them (EcExpert, BuyerExpert, Certificate Server...); some had to be killed later (MetaDirectory), while others are trying to survive despite our efforts to make them absolutely horrible products (Communications and Mail suite).
I wasn't surprised at all when AOL decided to kill the middleware of Netscape, about six months after we broke our iPlanet deal. As I said, that was not their business.

The funny thing is that the Netscape Navigator was never intended to make big money for Netscape. That mission was to be accomplished by the middleware products, and they did a lot of money (App. Server got about 95% of the market, and you'd be surprised to know how many companies still use NAS 4 -we know that because they sometimes call us for support!!-). The Navigator was just a tool to make people easy to navigate through Internet, until they found that money can be also made from the browser, and big bucks too. But this is a long story. Far are those days where Moz ruled over Microsoft. It is rumored that Microsoft was feared of the ability to execute programs in the browser, independently of the operating system, and that this was the reason why they decided to play hard with their Explorer to kill Netscape's browser (Google, be aware of that, you are offering an office suite that can be used from any browser, does it sound familiar to you? ;-) ).

So, as the initial picture says, Netscape Navigator has finally reached the stability (although there is no beyond): Rest In Peace.

Merry Christmas to All!!!

I don't know if it is because we are running out of enemies (Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Oracle... they are all partners now), because I'm not officially the boss anymore and have less worries, because I'm getting warmer with the age, or it's just Christmas, but I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year, plenty of SunRays, with a bright shining Solaris illuminating your lives.
Well, it may sound a little bit like propaganda, you know, you can't change so much even in this dates... ;-) but my feelings are true from the bottom of my heart.

Best wishes to all!!!

P.D.: By the way, sorry for Jonathan, he is not writing so much lately because he is quite busy with all the financial information of the close of the year and so on. This is the advantage of not being the boss, officially, I can play golf while he does the dirty job. Anyhow, he also wishes you all the best!

Solidarity with Jobs (the Fake)

Hi again. To be the CEO in the shadows of a big company is a tough job, and if it is Sun it is a tougher job. That's is why Jonathan and me (the real and the fakes, that indeed are the reals pretending to be the fakes, you know what I mean...) are not writing very much lately is because of a couple of important factors: Christmas dinners with employees, partners and customers and closing of the second quarter of our fiscal year (well, the first activity is much more time consuming, over all when you have to spend the whole night drinking and dancing with your fellows).

Well, all that said, I just wanted to drop a few lines to show our solidarity with our (sometimes) friend Jobso, the fake one, of course. There is no need to recall the first Amendment to remember that in America everyone has the right to say what he thinks, and that we want to extend that right to all the World, because this is the first basis to freedom, the freedom of speech.

I'm sure that Jobso (the real), will rethink its attitude and realize that this blog has given Apple even much more awareness and propaganda that what they can afford to pay. Jobso, please, just a little bit of a sense of humor, for McIntosh sake!!!

And they say that Sun is a bully (well, I'll talk about that in a future article).

Jobso (the fake), I expect everything will go as we all expect, and that Apple will reconsider its position. If everything fails, you can count on us (Jonathan and me), and if it was necessary I'll let you post in my own blog (fake Ed Zander is free as far as I know, or whatever personality you would like to incarnate).

Meanwhile, I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

Sun Shopping Poll is still open

Well, I just took my medication after the crisis I suffered while writing my previous post, so I came back just to tell you that our poll about which company should Sun buy is still open, and now there is a tie between BEA and RedHat.

To be honest, I have been preparing some speeches to pronounce after the acquisition of that Linux company, but after what has happened with HR and the people leaving for Oracle, maybe it should be a good idea to digest BEA, so Larry would take his own medicine for once.
I'll be thinking about it. Keep on voting meanwhile and sending me comments.

I guess that those nice nurses sent by Steve, Iulia and Natasha, gave me too much of the dose of medicine... Peeeeace out! I looooove you Steeeveeee...

Sun Human Resources: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU WORKING FOR?

I'm furious, I'm really mad at HR. The headline indeed should say: HR, do you really work at Sun? What are you doing lately? Bok, our company is most of the time like an Ikea shopping experience: our employees have to do everything by themselves, from reserving a meeting room, to arrange a business travel, so HR is not an exception. Except the category of an employee and its salary, of course: but this is decided by the managers at last, this is not even a job for the boys and girls of HR. So, what I expected from them was to care about the employees, to help the company to retain the intellectual capital, or IC as we like to call it. Then, if this is what they are supposed to do, Why is there so many TECHNICALLY SKILLED people leaving the company?

In some GEMs, there are departments that are loosing up to 50% of the skilled people, counting Architects, Engineers and Business Development Managers, so there are some parts of the business with their continuity seriously harmed with this situation. In the SOA area, we have even lost 75% of the people selling JCAPS in one of the countries, and the situation is so well handled by HR that it is quite probably that we are going to loose the rest of the department.
What the HR head of that country told me is that "they are really focused in software". I pledged her to stop focusing and start doing her job before the whole office went out to work for our competitors (I really miss to have the control in this situations: Jonathan, I want to talk to you about this, please, pick up the phone, I've tried to call you 10 times this week... and it's only Monday!).

Ok, it is a matter of money. There are a lot of new jobs in other companies, the sector is going up almost like the times of the bubble, and experienced people is hard to find so other companies are willing to pay much more money for our skilled people. Don't you think there at HR that we have the same need of technically skilled people? Don't you ever realize that it is much more cheaper to rise the salaries and the benefits of the people _ALREADY_ working for us, with a lot of experience, rather than hiring new _unexperienced_ people that will need at least one year to match the people they are substituting? Not to mention that the people leaving is going to work for our competitors, knowing everything about on-going deals, customer contacts, product weakness...

Bye the way, I'm also mad at Steve and Larry. It seems that people leaving Sun software departments are going to Oracle (some to BEA, but I count on Larry buying them in the short term, so...), and the people that used to sell our iron is going to Micro$oft. I guess this makes sense, as Oracle is trying to build a quite serious speech in the middleware area, and Micro$oft is trying to make people believe that they can provide enterprise servers.

Well guys, Larry and Steve, I though we were partners, and that among partners we don't steel people... I'll ask the other Steve for the availability of Moshe to take some revenge...
By the way, it's curious, but it seems that Apple is not attracting many of our skilled people so far (despite the fact that this friggin device called the MacBook Pro is very easy to see in our offices).

After having fought with stakeholders so many years to avoid lay-offs, after having left the reigns to Jonathan with the promise to keep the most skilled people and to minimize the RIFs, now that the company is making money again, this is the way I get rewarded, by letting go (and now it is true that Sun is letting go people, not firing them) the people I have been taking care of during so many years?

I'm really FURIOUS. And you'll also be as soon as I post the stories that employees and ex-employees are sending me...

Jonathan, ok, don't answer the phone, but please, do something before it is too late: unfreeze the focal processes, rise the salaries, do something before I end up working as a pre-sales engineer as in the old times...

DELLizing Sun

Well, it seems that Jonathan and his team are trying to earn their living this week.
I was about to write an article about how we should improve our selling methods by "Dellizing" the company, but I think that Jonathan heard one of my interns commenting about that possible article -we'll talk later about information leaks, Ashok... maybe I should outsource the blog to the same country where FSJ has its own- because I just learned that WE have an agreement with Dell, so they'll sell our beloved and marvelous Solaris in their small irony machines.

Well, I think I have a "dejavou", Did you know where it was said that Dell rhymes with hell?

Namaste, Jonathan, good job, and keep on selling! (although it is not Sun's iron...).

Sun goes shopping (III)

I've just arrived to my office, thinking of a new post, when my interns inform me about the latest acquisition intent we are doing: Vaau, a company that seems to be in the line of the Identity Management Software area.
To be honest, I don't really get the point, as we have the best IdM solution in the world. I swear it, Gartner also says the same (you don't know how much did we have to pay to hear that from Gartner; what I'd love to know is how much did IBM and Oracle pay to be next to us having such a crapy products... Well, those are my interns opinions, of course, what would Ashok and his friends know about real business?).

Well, the thing is that everybody at the Software practice is excited with this, and they say this is what we need to keep us ahead in the IdM competition. I hope so, as long as this is good to sell our Niagara II.

By the way, I still keep my poll to know what company we should buy, apart from Vaau, of course. So far it seems that RedHat is winning our little competitions, but I still want to hear your opinions so I'll let Jonathan know what you think is best for Sun.

Pic taken from Vaau site (I hope a Sun site soon).