Posts Tagged ‘Sun’

Reply to an interesting comment.

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Here is an interesting comment. I thought it deserved a reply.

It’s not about technology, moreover, you totally missed the point on why people own BlackBerrys. BlackBerry will dominate anybody who is serious about their business (except for industries that are socially relevant like media/entertainment/fashion), and iPhone will be a price cool thing for people who want to think they are cool. Android made by nerds for nerds, and is after the iPhone market which will crush them.

I agree and disagree Blackberrys are for business; absolutely.

Backberrys used to be for people who wanted to be cool. Business warriors now have them strapped to their belts (Khaki pants, blue shirt); which most people think is sort of sad.

Non business people sometimes got them but found them generally useless for their lifestyle. Any keyboard phone was good enough.

Now iPhones are for people who want to be cool. (My phone is cooler than your phone)

iPhones have an apps avalanche which is making the iPhone more and more attractive for more people in both a superficial way (iFart) and a useful way. (Metronome for musicians)

But where it all boils down is that I have found that a successful product will appeal to people’s base needs: ego, greed, sex, stupidity, boredom.The iPhone has these covered in spades.

Ego (I’m cool for having this)

Greed – iPhone, not so much. Blackberry might win here a bit.

sex – Great browser plus many apps cater to this.

stupidity – the great browser makes wikipedia usable and other apps that can make you look smart

and finally boredom. I see so many people plunk themselves down and pull out their phone (any phone) and try to entertain themselves with whatever their phones can do. The iPhone does this really well with movies, podcasts, music, and games all at the ready. Other phones can do this but the iPhone does it in spades.

The last point is that the Blackberry has hit its highpoint. Damn it emails well. But my sister (government funded) has the same blackberry from 4 years ago. She has no desire for the coolest and newest in that offers nothing more for her. So cameras GPSs and whatnot probably won’t send sales spiking.

The android is still the wild card. Since this is a blog from a tech point of view I will end on a technical note.

Years ago (circa 1999) I downloaded the Blackberry SDK. Wow the engineers made it easy for me to make an app. Didn’t do anything for me to help sell it. Not a damn thing that I could see. When I contacted some large telcos to try and sell some apps through them they seemed shocked that you could even sell apps.

Then along comes the iPhone SDK in 2008 after a few hiccups Apple slams 3rd party apps right into iTunes and bang the app avalanche began. I have begun the development of some apps and it is fun and easy. I can’t wait to see the results. Once development is complete I throw my app into the app store and begin attracting interest where my app will live or die on its own merits. I get 70%, Apple keeps 30%. Then when apps are sold they wire the money to me. That rocks. From a programming standpoint it uses a language called Objective-C. This language is not hard to learn but it isn’t a commonly used development language outside of Apple products but Objective-C is based upon C which is one of the hardest of hard-core languages available. Most commercial apps are developed using either C or C++. That would include things like most operating systems, video games, most Microsoft products, your browser, almost everything. Basically you can do anything that pops into your brain and is theoretically possible on the computer. This leads to Android. Android apps are primarily programmed in Java. While Java is a perfectly nice language it is, in my opinion, a huge steaming pile of crap. Many business apps, your company’s payroll system for example, are generally programmed in Java. But in my experience it is too easy to end up either avoiding cool functionality due to the limitations of Java or getting stuck in a programming quagmire where you spend months spinning your wheels in the mud. Lastly there are lots of bozos programming in Java. They learned it in school last week and now they are churning out code this week. Thus Android is a bit handicapped by this. With no empirical evidence at hand I would guess that the general quality of apps will end up being lower on Android due to this Java development path.

But now for something about android that from a programming perspective is completely backwards from what the general public might perceive. There are around 50 Android phones out or coming out soon. This might seem like a good thing but from the perspective of a programmer this is a nightmare. It means that if I make an Android app I would have to test it on 50 platforms. Each platform could be quite different. This sucks. This really sucks. Programming for the iPhone can be hard enough and the various iPhones and iPod touches are almost identical to each other. Same basic screen. Similar processors and the core capabilities are nearly identical.

All these Android phones will make programmer’s brains explode but it does have one advantage. The iPhone is generally getting better and better with each release. But the Androids will be pumped out by many companies. If any one of them hits a home run they stand a chance of leaving the iPhone behind. But I suspect the opposite will remain true unless Apple drops the ball with the iPhone. I suspect that the niche that the Androids will occupy will be iPhone clones. They will appeal to people who can’t afford the absurdly expensive iPhones. This is a perfectly profitable place to sit whereas mounting a challenge to the iPhone will probably be financially ruinous even if the company in question wins.

So in summary. From a technical point I love the iPhone. As a technical consumer I love the iPhone. I also want the latest and greatest iPhone.

From a technical point the Android annoys me. As a technical consumer I don’t have any interest in the Android.

From a technical point the Blackberry confuses me. As a technical consumer the blackberry is useless to me.

From observing people; nearly everyone I know wants an iPhone and those with them either have the latest or wish they did. In fact I meet many people who pull out their iPhones and we spend 20 minutes comparing apps. The few who have blackberries either are happy or wish they had an iPhone but have zero desire for the latest and greatest blackberry.

So will RIMM die? No. Will the iPhone crush them like a bug? No; but who crushed the pager?

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Oracle and MySQL

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Oracle has bought SUN and thus have purchased MySQL. As far as I can tell Oracle has two competitors: one is Microsoft SQL which I don’t like but it has good sales in the Enterprise market; the other is MySQL(a free widely used database). Over the last half decade MySQL has probably put a serious dent in the Oracle market. I used to advise clients to get Oracle for serious databases but for the last few years I have advised that people use MySQL for just about everything big or small. Companies like Facebook and Google use MySQL so there are few companies that have data needs greater than those two. So it seems the FTC is not complaining about this deal so that puts MySQL in the hands of a company that has no doubt had pictures of dolphins on their dartboards for some years (MySQL’s logo). MySQL might survive this process due to the nature of how open source as many of the original creators have taken off and done something called forking which is where they are able to take the source code and create their own version but while this could breath life back into an otherwise dead product it can also cause confusion among the users as slowly but surely the world ends up with multiple versions of what used to be a standardized product. This is the key advantage of any given database; it has its own quirks but as time goes by a community of users get used to those quirks and help each other out and knowing that database becomes a skill in and of itself. But if there are multiple versions of the same database that skill set loses value as it becomes smeared out over a larger and thinner set of databases.

Keeping all this in mind I suspect that one strategy that Oracle might employ would be to claim that they not only will continue to support MySQL but that they will even go further and support the various MySQL forks. Thus for a few million dollars in “support” they could buy the death of what is arguably their worst nightmare.

Even if the FTC were to intervene and insist that MySQL be separated from the SUN purchase Oracle could still kill MySQL with love by not only supporting MySQL with what looks like some serious cash but they could also saddle it with a serious number of SUN employees who were the same ones who chased away the talent who created MySQL in the last while. That strategy could be combined with the previously mentioned strategy of sending some love to each of the forks so that they basically all end up killing each other. In effect it would be like sending weapons to both sides in some foreign war along with sending them both some of your worst generals as advisers. If you are really lucky the generals are killed too.

The only possible strategy that the FTC or justice could employ would be to force Oracle to reconstitute MySQL as it was before SUN bought them. The key being that they get the key employees all back into their old positions. But this might be a humpty dumpty situation so that the only hope at this point is that one of the forks of MySQL becomes the de facto fork and thus the best realistic strategy would be for the FTC types to force Oracle to kill their entire MySQL department prevent them from any involvement with any fork of MySQL and allow the forks to fight it out until the Open Source user community finally picks a fork and then it would be the de facto revival of MySQL. The key being that other communities like RedHat pick up the new fork.

Anything else and all we might be left with is SQLLite and that would be dire. :)

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Microsoft’s sinking ship

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

Before reading this blurb, please understand that I am not a Linux zealot. There are many people out there who cross their index fingers at the sight of Microsoft products. I have used many of their products over the years and have generally found Linux annoying as a desktop and cannot foresee myself ever using it. Recently I have made the switch to Apple and continue to program for Linux servers and Windows desktops. My theory is that I will use the best product for the job at hand. So with this in mind…

I had a problem and that problem is that around a year ago my father bought an underpowered Acer machine with Vista on it. Even with the crappy Acer software removed and the trial of Norton AV removed the computer was a total dog. New, it booted in around 3 minutes and opening things like a browser or a word processor took so long you almost forgot what you were planning on doing when it finally got around to opening. So I was going to dumb it down to Windows XP when I thought I would try the latest Ubuntu….

I set up my father’s desktop with Ubuntu and it rocks. He can boot up and be in his email or on the web it a tad over a minute. I put the icons for Skype, Firefox, Word from openoffice and Email on his desktop so he probably won’t notice anything is odd at all. What is important about all that is that his computer now functions far better than it did with Vista and with no compromises as far as he is concerned. He now has no Microsoft software running on his computer.

I would say the worst risk that he runs with Linux is that he will buy a new printer that won’t have the linux drivers. Most of the mainstream printers will be fine though.

The security on the system is basically off the scale. As the person who gets called with every problem I don’t anticipate getting any calls.

Microsoft is in big trouble. Even if their new Windows 7 is reliable and not too demanding they will still be losing to free Linuxes. The only way for Microsoft to pull ahead will be to have some feature that has the status of Killer. Basically they need monkeys to fly out of their butts.

For the average user Linux would be a perfect set up. But there are two big holes. Games won’t work and once you step outside of the word processing, surfing, and emailing basics you are basically screwed. No software you buy at staples will work and any extra device you buy such as a web cam will not probably be installable by your average user.

So I would say that right now Linux is ideal for servers and old people. Microsoft’s other problem is that younger people want Apple products. So the main group of people who will continue to use Microsoft products will be the corporate world. That might be big but Microsoft will lose the hearts and minds of people at home and those same people will be quick to drag Linux and Apple into the workplace as fast as they can.

So as I have mentioned before, my long term forecast for Microsoft is a long slow slide into obscurity. This will take forever and a day due to their lack of debt and a captive market that will be slow to change; but like companies of the Sun and Novell types once the necrosis sets in the company has little chance to ever thrive again.

What stock advice comes from this? Well Linux is not really a company. A few companies like RedHat nibble at the corners of Linux for a few crumbs of profit but since the core product is free I don’t see this as a huge success business model. At best other companies that provide services that leverage linux will do a tiny bit better as their server costs will continue to drop. Microsoft’s fall from grace will be so slow as to be useless to bet against unless you are into 10 year short sided bets. Microsoft will occasionally announce that a Monkey has flown out of their butt but I suspect that these monkeys will turn out to be the stuff that usually comes out of people’s butts. So except for day traders I would say to just put Microsoft thoughts aside unless somehow they get their fire back. To test to see if that fire is real; look at your desktop and see if that firey product is rocking your world. If not then ignore the hype.

Lastly there is a path for Microsoft to be successful. It is a contradictory path. First is that the new Operating system must be stripped way down. Get rid of all the bits that are there to sell customers all the other products that Microsoft makes. Toss .net, sharepoint, database connectors, Active Directory stuff and everything. Make the operating system completely bare. I want an operating system that takes up less than 100M of drive space and uses a less than 50M when freshly booted. But make the OS very modular. If you want sharepoint interaction then you can add it. But when you add something to the OS don’t integrate it, keep it very separate. No more registry, windows, or system directories all piled up with crap. Right now most operating systems have a security model that will ask when the user tries to do something fundamental. Well make it so that these fundamental modifications are not required by newly installing software. Hard drives are basically free so if every application needs to have its own .dll files that is fine. Make the computer boot in like 5 seconds.

But next, and this is the near opposite of what I just wrote, make your OS do something with all those computers in the office. I could go into huge and complicated details about a solution, but Microsoft has the opportunity to do something really cool that they won’t be able to do in just a few years. Something that would cement their place in the computer world and blow Linux back a decade in their progress to win desktops.

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MySQL and that bad smell called SUN

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

A year ago I had such great hope for SUN(JAVA). But it looks like they lost another key founder of the MySQL product they recently bought. So it looks like SUN is just incompatible with success.

I have generally found that with most successful software projects there are just a few people who really drive the product along. When they leave or lose control the product typically gets driven from marketing meetings and thus driven into the ground. Often this is usually not instataneous as the Marketing people initially do sell more of the given product but the product, being rudderless, drifts onto the rough shores of the land of Suck and breaks apart.

So I expect Sun to release some charts that show how great they are doing with MySQL over the next few quarters but I also expect to see my geeky compatriots start to drift to the next great database. I wonder what that is?

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Google Android vs Blackberry vs iPhone

Monday, October 6th, 2008

In summary Google will win and Blackberry will lose. A quick summary of the three products from a simplified technical point of view.

iPhone is cool and plays music. It surfs the web very well unlike almost any other web capable phone. It will show you the web in miniature as well as your desktop will show you. Except for pages using flash technology. The biggest inherent obstacle for business users is the lack of a keyboard. This means the iPhone user is mostly limited to consuming information. Cool is a major feature here. Everything about this phone is quite cool. It has quite a few applications being developed but Apple seems to want to battle with developers. Microsoft lost a whole generation of developers by doing this “our way or the highway” thing.

The blackberry line is as everyone knows is very good at email. But that is about it. Its web capability is squirlly and nobody that I have ever met uses any of the other applications. Technically it is possible for developers to make things for the blackberry but I don’t see much of this. In my opinion all RIM products are ugly and aimed at 50 year olds who think they are cool but truely truely aren’t. RIM does not seem to have much of an idea that phones are jewelry for some people.

The android is pretty ugly but cooler than anything RIM makes. It has the RIM keyboard and the iPhone web capability. But Google is doing a good job of wooing developers to make apps for the android. This will probably allow the android to be all things to all people. Quite simply it will have all the best features in both the iPhone and the various RIM products. Some coolness, a keyboard for email and stuff, and great web browsing.

The various reviews of the new Android phone compare it mostly to the iPhone and a few compare it to the Blackberry. Most of these reviews either call it a tie or they give the Android a close second place. A very few call it a winner. None of this is relevant until you consider that this is google’s first phone. What will their second phone be like?

The people who I see running around with blackberries are government people, finance people, and real-estate people. The last two groups are taking a huge hit both in jobs and budgets. Thus I foresee a general drop in all smart phone use but mostly blackberries. This will hurt the android somewhat in that it won’t be the raving success that might have come its way with a boom economy but overall this might benefit Google. From a technical point of view it looks like the Android might be cheaper to run than blackberries and iPhones and due to what google is providing to geeks it will soon have applications that will cover any software feature found on the other phones. So if you like some software feature on your favorite phone it will be matched and bettered by the android.

So I see a market that will be looking to cut back hurting blackberry and iPhone but not Android as they have doubtfully built up much dependancy on their tiny market share where as RIM basically has a single product and will be seriously hurt by any drop in revenues. iPhone will be less affected by this but it will give their many competitors such as samsung to catch up with cheaper units. This will hurt things like RIM’s R&D and general moral.

Then I see some companies adopting some Androids to cut cost. This won’t amount to much but it will get people exploring non RIM options. Then when the market rebounds people will not all return to the RIM family. Many will go to Android for both capabilities and cost.

So the timing of this bust will only put nails in RIMs coffin and open a door to Google. I don’t see this as being a huge revenue generator for Google but I do see this as being a massive revenue eraser for RIM.

So in summary Google will do OK; RIM will die a slow death; and Apple will just continue along.

PS My prediction is the RIM will fade in spurts. Basically look at the history of companies like Novell and Sun. They just sort of faded from relevance. Once in a while they would make headlines with a sizable layoff but due to a lack of any crushing debt they just sort of faded from the scene. One customer base that probably won’t switch and will keep RIM plodding along will be governments. Due to the lack of real impact by the economy they won’t cut way back and since they generally are very old school people who are very uncool they will keep on and on with their blackberries. That should fit in well with their various Novell and Sun systems.

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Sunday, September 7th, 2008

Here is a great reason for dumping sun. In response to a rumor that MySQL co-founder Micheal “Monty” Widenius may quit Sun Microsystems one of the SUN people said, “Second, Monty’s resignation has been a possible outcome already since years before the Sun acquisition. Perhaps his resignation at some point is inevitable, given that the type of skills and qualities needed to make MySQL great are different from those needed for working productively in a larger organisation (and I am referring to the size of the MySQL team, not Sun).”

This quote has two wonderfully revealing parts. First; wouldn’t everyone who works have resignation as a possible outcome? Short of slaves all workers might resign at some point. The real question is when? So right here we have a large company trying to spin this. Why. Either he leaves or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t you have the guy say that he isn’t or he does and you deal with it. What would spinning this do for a company when if he just pops out and resigns anyway. The only thing that I would learn from this if his resignation was important to me would be that Sun can not be trusted to be forthcoming with the truth. If he isn’t resigning then the PR flacs should parade him out and have him tell it.

The second sentance kills all hope I have for sun in the future. “the type of skills and qualities needed to make MySQL great are different from those needed for working productively” Great products were the only thing that could bring sun back. But this flac seems to think that working productively is better than making MySQL great. What is this productive work that somehow results in not great MySQL? Could it be endless reams of meaningless reports and meaningless meetings?

I am just guessing this but looking at the history of MySQL (created one of the greatest databases ever with little budget) and the history of SUN (sold sort of big iron to big stupid companys until linux kicked their asses and the companies became less stupid) that there might have been an uncomfortable situation every time this guy came into a room. The courtiers would worry each time what was going to come out of his mouth. Might he tell the truth again and point to another naked emperor? Then the courtiers probably just shut him out. Just a guess.

So what have I learned from three crap investments(VMW, MSFT, JAVA) in tech?

Nimble is good. Big and old is bad.

Who is important to the company? Has their position changed? If so then just stay away. Watch for code words/phrases such as ‘allowing him to focus’, ’spend more time with his family’, ‘the new ceo is better suited to the demands of running a public company’ et tu brute?

If you see the founders of a nimble company being pushed around by someone who has an MBA and has read the prince a few too many times then this is bad.

Bill Gates and Microsoft would be a great example. This company grew and grew under his control but once the charity work came the company faltered.

Apple would be another example with a well known story of founders and such.

VMWare looks like it is in the same boat.

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Dumping SUN (JAVA)

Monday, June 30th, 2008

I am dumping Sun from my portfolio not only because it is a total dog but also because of what they are doing with MySQL. MySQL is a product that was poised to take on Oracle. It used the open source model and it was going gangbusters until Sun bought it. Sun made the usual takeover promises that they would not change a thing but now they are moving toward closing the parts of the source code. For you less technically minded this is breaking what makes products like MySQL great. This is missing the whole point of the product. This shows that Sun is still thinking like a giant company that it isn’t anymore. I had thought that they were going to be new and nimble but I now suspect that they are going to continue with their long tail slide into the dustbin of history.

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As an addition based on a comment that I received. MySQL is not going completely closed source that is the problem, it is that tiny pieces of it are. This is a tiny change. But it is a change in the wrong direction. MySQL is a great database with huge support from the Linux world along with others. But in the world of Open Source people can be fanatical about the source code being open. The moment you close even one part of the code the open source people will scream and run for other solutions. And there are other free open source databases lurking in the shadows ready to take MySQL’s place.

The key to the success of MySQL is not just that it works well but that it the linux community has adopted it wholesale. It is distributed along with most of the major distributions of linux and linux is what most of the real net is driven by. But many of the Linux distributions are black and white about opens source. If the source isn’t open then they won’t distribute it. This won’t happen overnight and it won’t even happen soon. But with the slightest hint of closed source and many in the linux world will start looking for alternatives to MySQL where they normally would not be looking at all. This would result in MySQL fading away and SUN having squandered 1 billion dollars.

Companies that buy successful things for 1 billion dollars and then change that which makes them successful by making them “better” are companies that get tossed off my portfolio.

This would be like buying a Chrysler right after they invented the minivan and removing the 3rd row of seating and putting in more trunk space. You could validly argue that people had been demanding more trunk space and this was just delivering to a proven market. Your competitors would love it and promptly make minivans that do have 3 rows of seating and kick your ass.

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ORCL

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Oracle took a good hit today (~7%). This is one company that always confused me. There core database product is solid but there are other solid databases out there including MySQL. Oracle costs a fortune and most people who buy it just don’t need its power. The other day I had a table with 110 million rows in it and MySQL just wasn’t doing what I needed fast enough where I know that Oracle in the same scenario would be fine. Now I suspect that I could have tweaked MySQL into being fast enough but it does show where each is happiest. But the worst thing about Oracle is the sales people. I have met a few and they are the most arrogant dinks you have ever met. I am not alone. Over the years I have had various customers who commented on just how much of a twit this Oracle sales person or that was.  So my question has long been why does Oracle keep making any money? I have never been able to answer this question except to think that people like to buy their big databases from big companies. But now SUN has acquired MySQL so the only reason I can think of most people buying Oracle databases has gone away. Thus I would doubt the future of Oracle.

Counter-argument. Oracle sells more than databases. They sell an entire pile of products that companies need. Well my experience is that companies need databases. The other stuff is well… just other stuff.

My financial plans remain unchanged. I would not bet for or against on Oracle but with SUN in play I would pick against if I had to. But keep in mind that companies like Oracle rarely have any debt and many customers who aren’t about to change databases and thus will buy many more licenses into the distant future so Oracle has plenty of time to turn things around.

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