Jonathan at $JAVA and Sun Storage 7000

Sounds like the old Sun I loved... I remember when the fastest servers in the farm were Sun Microsystems. You know, ten or so years ago. Here is a great post that talks in terms of leadership of all places, in the datacenter! Jonathan Schwartz means well, but his bookstore metaphor also serves to point out how poorly Sun sales are doing... the quarter ending in September 2008 was a disaster, giving way to a loss of over $1.6B (yes, billion)... which gave way to the announcement of 6,000 layoffs last November. Jonathan can you say, "Focus"? Case in point, in this blog post, he tells us about an offer to try this new Sun Storage 7000 device for free. But if you follow the link, good luck finding the offer. Talk about burying the lead! On the page that loads, there are nine products (above the fold, so to speak) on my screen. Yes if you review them, you will find the 7000 offer. Why should I have to work that hard? Come on guys, as I have suggested before (and repeatedly), how about some focus? And some old fashion aligning of tactics with a coherent strategy... and then some real execution. Sure, your stock price doesn't suck as bad as it did the end of November 2008, but at $3.97 a share, it is a long ways off the twenty bucks it was worth when you took over. Yes, the economic conditions are partly to blame. Maybe $JAVA shares would be selling at ten bucks as a result of our economic woes. So what happened to the other six bucks? The marketplace rewards effective leadership. Effective leadership requires the ability to execute. Any of this sound familiar? From that same Mercury News article:

"Sun said the layoffs will save the company $700 million to $800 million a year, starting in its next full quarter. The company expects one-time costs of $500 million to $600 million over the next 12 months associated with the layoffs."

Anyone else see the flaw in this logic? Jeff 'SKI' Kinsey, Jonah www.linkedin.com/in/consultski ski@throughput.us FYI: I am only being tough on Sun because I care. Disclaimer: At this moment I do not own any $JAVA ©2008 Throughput.us LLC. All rights reserved.