How Will Sun Profit from Java?
By Angsuman Chakraborty, Gaea News NetworkTuesday, May 6, 2008
All throughout the JavaOne 2008 keynote presentation, I had the same nagging question, how is Sun going to profit from all these diverse technologies? In the end I don’t have an answer.
Purely from business standpoint it doesn’t make sense. Sun emphasizes about Write once, run anywhere mantra with JavaFX, targeted for rich internet applications and mobile devices.
Sun demonstrated several businesses which leverage Java, none of which contributes to Sun bottom-line.
Why is this important?
I am as excited as any Java developer to know about the futuristic initiatives from Sun. However if Sun as a company doesn’t survive, the same fate is in store for their technologies too.
BTW: I couldn’t for some reason get too excited about JavaFX.
Also I think Sun initiatives are more targeted towards new and cool as opposed to maturing the existing technologies and making it easier to use. I think it is a big mistake.
Tags: JavaFX, JavaOne, JavaOne 2008, Leverage, Sun, Sun Microsystems
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May 13, 2008: 9:54 am
I heard the same argument before. However spending money on Java doesn’t directly translate to revenue for Sun. It works for IBM better because they are in consulting business, which Sun is not. In consulting business you can get greater mindshare by releasing open source products like IBM does. Unfortunately it doesn’t translate so well with hardware as you can see with Sun. |
 John Bayko |
May 7, 2008: 5:27 pm
Simple - Sun sells SPARC and x86 systems, running Solaris or Linux. Java lets them sell more hardware because the same network applications run on all of it. Same with IBM, only they’re worse off - mainframe, POWER, PowerPC, and x86, running zOS, AIX, Windows (XP or Vista), Linux, Solaris, OS/400, and who knows what else. They’re also very big Java supporters, and I’m sure would take over if Sun went under (they’ve contributed Eclipse, an embedded Java database, and a few frameworks as well as big parts of the standard and enterprise Java libraries). |
Angsuman Chakraborty