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Sun CTO Predicts Internet Consolidation Endgame
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Dec 08, 2006 11:09 AM
from the is-it-bill-pullman-or-bill-paxton-i-always-forget dept.
from the is-it-bill-pullman-or-bill-paxton-i-always-forget dept.
Romerican writes "C|Net is running an interview with Greg Papadopoulos, CTO of Sun Microsystems, about the Very Near Future where he essential sees the Internet as no longer competitive. He has blogged his belief that the end game is here and nothing is likely to unseat the new world order." From the C|Net article: "It's called software as a service. It really is the running of what we think of as IT through the network. You don't buy software, you buy the consequence of the software. That starts with the small and medium enterprises. eBay, in my mind, is the leading example of small businesses being absorbed by services. Anybody who clicks their store on eBay is in fact consuming a service. They are contributing to a larger-scale eBay rather than them buying some server and sticking it on their desk."
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Erm ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And then it will happen again.
Witness: Mainframe computing to Personal Computing to Thin Client Computing.
Re:Erm ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Characterizing it as an "endgame" may be a extreme, but consolidation of the big players is continuing for the forseeable future.
--sugarman--
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Some business apps do very well in such a framework. Others do not. Spreadsheets, for example, don't (there have been "networked" spreadsheet apps for years now, but what is their penetration? Zilch). Yes, sigh, we can code the entire app in Javascript and hide transfers in
i like the server in my server room (Score:5, Insightful)
unless "services" address this, there will be resistance. maybe not if you're buying used stuff at estate sales and selling it on ebay, but...
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It still won't work for many reasons. First, it requires an "always on" broadband network connection that far too many people don't have and feel they don't need. Second, the security risk is too high. Too many of these companies will sell whatever isn't nailed down especially your data. Even though you may retain a copy of your data locally, nothing is stop
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(i) costs decline to make it attractive to you (if your $200,000 costs can be cut to $75,000, wouldn't you? (I'm just making up #s))
, or (ii) it becomes so easy and ubiquitous that you would be worse off to do it the old way (an example would be webmail versus desktop client email from an ISP)
How many people nowadays use Gmail, Hotmail, or what-have-you for their personal and confidential e-mail? At one time, many would have
Cost of good data (Score:5, Insightful)
(i) costs decline to make it attractive to you (if your $200,000 costs can be cut to $75,000, wouldn't you?
NO. Here's why:
I currently work for a SME of approx. 120 employees, sales in the 75-100 million dollar range.
About 3 years ago I was told that we had 12-15 million dollars of data in our databases. Based on the cost of collecting and maintaing the data (lots of engineering field data). In the past few years we have doubled in size both in employees and in database size, so let's call it 30 million in data in our databases.
This does not include data in documents on the file servers or in emails. SO let's say another 30 million there.
Now, some of our clients compete against each other and we are *very* careful to firewall information so that the data from client A is not seen by client B. Not only could a breach like this resutl in losing client A and/or getting sued by client A, but would ruin our reputation and make it difficult to attract other clients.
The problem is that people take data, good data, far too lightly. Good data is hard to obtain and expensive. Without you are SOL. And so we protect our data and try to insure it is of high quality. We trust no one with the data.
The 'savings' of SaaS are miniscule compared to the risks to the company in this case.
Also data lasts longer than programs or vendors. What happens if the software company goes under or if you need to port it to a new application?
Except for a few cases I think SaaS is very inappropriate and will not be as wide spread as some hope.
You are right though, many companies are already exposing themselves. However, we see it as a false economy. There is no replacement for just doing the work.
Parent
resistance? (Score:2)
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I used to think that, too. Then, I found out I could let somebody else deal with the headaches and liability, so I outsourced it. Just in the past 6 months, I've outsourced both our web hosting, and I switched out our dumb POP mail server for an Exchange Server hosted elsewhere. Now that we don't have to deal with worrying about the server, we can spend more time and energy on the parts of our business that actually makes us money.
Data, schmata. Th
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One of my clients has 4 sites connected on an UUNet/MCI MPLS network. They run Exchange and they need to run servers at each of the sites to hold the mailboxes locally at those sites because otherwise, trying to open mailboxes across the network from the remote sites is an exercise in frustration. Maybe that's just an Exchange misconfi
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Exactly. The ASP's or ISP's deal with security for a living. They're going to be as good if not better than most regular IT people because they deal with it all day, every day.
And of course, you're right... it is a bit more expensive from an initial dollar standpoint (ie: we're paying $xxx/month for this hosting and $xx/month for that), but yeah, less time spent
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That is easily solved by suitable encryption.
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I'm guessing you would feel much safer with the bank.
that is all good and well.... but (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, there is Google and eBay et al, but look at the reality of things... all that really needs to happen to stop the world is for 2 of those 5 computers to be infested with spam spewing botnets.
I think that the world is as ready as I am for that to happen... lets just shelve this cute idea before the botnet owners get word of it
"You don't buy software..." (Score:5, Funny)
sigh (Score:2)
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Do you recall that "the network is the computer" idea required ubiquitous broadband?
Only now, and over the next few years, is the idea even practical. So hold your horses, and watch.
re: "The Network is the Computer" (Score:3, Insightful)
All of these large corporations (IBM, Sun, Microsoft, etc.) envision making a fortune by renting you your software (by serving it to you over the Internet). Like everything else in life though, you've got a LARGE number of folks who'd much rather own than rent. Renting has historically only made sense in the short-term, usually as a "stop gap" mea
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So tell me again why I'd want to continuously RENT my applications rather then buy software licenses and install/run the stuff on my OWN equipment?
Maybe because the application has pretty hefty hardware requirements? I notice that Salesforce.com is raking in the dough, largely because most CRM systems require two or three servers (and I don't mean Linux on a white box, think something [sun.com] like [hp.com] this [ibm.com]. And that's per site, you'll probably have your main servers and a second set at a backup site (or at least one big one that can virtualize any of the others). And then there's the bandwidth, power, cooling, storage...
Here's a bad analogy for you: computers
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This is a great example of why you're wrong. Or at least, partially wrong.
It's only the US that has so many cars. Everywhere else in the world, people are pretty likely to use public transportation. We have cars in the US because of successful lobbying - public funding for the rail network was cannibalized and applied to the highway system instead. As a result, instead of [comparatively] easily and cheaply
Don't be so sure (Score:3, Insightful)
I play WoW. Yeah I bought the software, but the software is worthless with out the online services.
I use Vent. Free software, guild pays for services.
I use hotmail. I don't even have an email client installed at home.
I could go from example to example of how online services have replaced many of my digital and non-digital based activities.
Online services will never be an abso
Welcome to the industry, Greg Pramanamana... (Score:3, Insightful)
Welcome to the industry, Greg Pramanamana. In the great game of IT sales, the men will tell you that it's always been about pitching benefits (what you call "consequences"). What you actually close with doesn't really matter. Over time the deliverables have almost always been a combination of hardware, software and services; the mix may change over time but the mix will change again when someone's pricing model makes the alternatives look attractive again.
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Or they remember to factor things like data vulnerability into their pricing model.
The Internet no longer competitive? (Score:5, Funny)
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This begs the question, is Google part of the Internet, or is the Internet now a subset of Google?
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Also in the future... (Score:5, Funny)
He even went so far as to say that the concept of marriage will soon be dead. "In the future, everyone will frequent brothels. Anybody who fucks a whore is in fact consuming a service. They are contributing to a larger-scale brothel rather than them marrying some broad and sticking her in a house. I mean, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for cheap?"
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I like this guy's way of thinking. =P
Ebay? (Score:2)
I think his motivation for saying these things has more to do with keeping his job than reality.
Wishful thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
When you sell software, you get a one-time payment that may or may not ever be repeated. When you sell software as a service, you get continuous revenue. This is what every software company wants. The question is, is this what the client wants.
Enterprise software companies are making a huge push into this space, but I'm still not convinced that the market for it is big enough, at least not yet. For software as a service to work, the client needs to trust its vendor far more than they do now, because not only are they trusting the vendor to provide them a piece of software, they're also trusting the vendor to handle the bulk of their IT functions as well.
This may be desirable for some companies, but I think the vendors are vastly overestimating the market because they want to believe EVERYONE will jump at the chance to hand over control to the vendor.
Obviously, there are some advantages for the client as well, such as being able to do things like true Disaster Recovery, and being able to sit in state of the art data centers and have real backup solutions, things that may cost far more if they wanted to implement them on their own. Even so, I just can't shake the feeling that the size of this market is more fantasy than reality at this point.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
However, in the corporate world it's a bit different. The box on a shelf model of purchasing software doesn't apply so much. We purchase software and then pay for it yearly under expensive maintenance contracts. After years of using a software package,
Missing the forest (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there are many, many more service providers but they will almost all go the way of YouTube; they'll get eaten by one of the majors.
The faulty logic here is that it presumes that new independent service providers aren't sprouting up every day. He sees the big trees in the forest, but misses the seeds and sprouts. Maybe that's just because the little guys don't buy pricy Sun hardware, so Sun doesn't see them. But they are there. I have no doubt that for every one web site that gets bought up by the big guys there are many more which don't.
What I see is that the Internet is an exceptionally fertile ground for seeds to sprout in. The existence of large companies such as Yahoo and Google doesn't change that. His comparison to the energy sector is flawed. The ease with which somebody can start up a new web site (sorry, "service provider") is in no way comparable to what it takes to start a new energy provider. Not even close.
It's this kind of nonsense which makes me wonder about the long term viability of Sun. It's no secret that cheap commodity boxes are eating them from the bottom up. So he spins this fairly tale about how all the small web sites (which don't run on Sun hardware) will simply cease to exist leaving only the mega sites (which do buy Sun hardware). Let me know how that works out for you.
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I pretty much agree with you except that most of the big sites he mentions don't use Sun hardware either. Google is pretty well know for using cheap hardware. Microsoft isn't exactly known for running on Sun stuff. So it isn't even clear things look good for Sun even if this idea comes
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You're right, a lot of them don't. But the folks who do use a lot of Sun hardware tend to be the big players.
Sort of too bad though since I've spent enough time on Ultra 10s to have a certain fondness for Sun hardware.
Bah, kids these days. I spent many an hour doing sys-admin duties for a Sun 690MP server and a bunch of SparcStation 2 an
You just made the case for network neutrality... (Score:2)
>The existence of large companies such as Yahoo and Google doesn't change that. His comparison to
>the energy sector is flawed. The ease with which somebody can start up a new web site (sorry,
>"service provider") is in no way comparable to what it takes to start a new energy provider. Not even close.
Excellent post. And, pardon my topic derailment, but I'd like to take this time to point out to everyone tha
And then there were two (Score:2)
Services absorbed by housing (Score:3, Funny)
The shaman went on to warn: "If this trend continues, at some point there could be no craftsmen living outside of houses anymore! It is obvious this would be a great loss to our culture and society!"
eBay is NOT software... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't believe anybody that sells on eBay is there because of a few scripts. They are there because of the buyers that search this site. Indeed, it's the unique marketplace, and marketplace was always a service. The fact, that eBay is a virtual one changes nothing.
Sun? Has to be wrong then. (Score:2)
One would have thought that given Sun's current headlong decline into
What a Fucking Idiot! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the Sun CTO's predictions also overlook what it is that people actually do with their computers. He's looking at it from completely the wrong angle: business application, specifically e-commerce. The majority of people use their computers for recreational and creative purposes. Sure, you have things like Youtube and MySpace that are all the rage right now, but they are merely distribution points. They aren't actual tools. TO put a video up on Youtube requires that you have a video camera, video capture capabilities on your PC or Mac, and ideally editing software plus all the associated tools to create the content. This is what people WANT. Until we all have 10 gigabit links to the internet and latency is sufficiently low, I don't think that content production tools are suited for network publishing over the internet (aka Software as a Service). This guy's head is up his ass in my opinion.
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And I think you're completely missing the target audience of the interview: IT people. Note that he says in the summary: "It really is the running of what we think of as IT through the network." Nobody says that everyone's g
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How do you figure? Maybe my math is wrong.
300W x 24 hours / day x 30 days / month = 216kW-hours per month
In my area, a kW-hour costs about 14 cents. But, lets say you live in CA where I understand electricity runs about 12 cents/kWh.
216kWh / month x 0.12 $ / kWh = $25.92 / month.
Looks like you might be running up a bigger bill than you think.
The net connection where I am has only gone down twice in nearly four years
eBay as a markeetplace (Score:2)
I really don't think eBay can be said as a marketplace.
The only people who sell there are individuals or companies looking to dump refurbished, returned or old merchandise.
The fact that ebay+paypal fees are ridiculously high makes it a killer for any business to sell there. They basically host to people who have nowhere else to sell by charging enormous fees.
I know a few people who have tried to make a living or business out of selling on eBay and have always concluded that it's not worth it at all.
You'd think that the company with their trend (Score:2)
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