RE: RE: Poor littly Matty
"Never heard of bundling discounts?...." Yes, but that will mean selling the hardware at a loss, and a steep loss it Larry wants to match ProLiant, let alone beat hp on price. Consider that hp's size in the market means it can get much better discounts from suppliers that have no interest in Larry's software bundling. Larry doesn't like losses, he runs Oracle for a profit. And then Larry has no answer to the way hp can swamp a customer by hitting all the areas Snoreacle doesn't play, such as desktops, printers, or management software.
".....Come on, they want the cash and won't want HP / IBM / Dell making off with their Service revenue if it can be helped......" Slight problem - Snoreacle doesn't have any services capabillity! It would be hard enough competing against hp's clout in the channel, but hp also has EDS. Larry has no services, and he alienated the channel by taking the top Sun accounts direct. Don't even start with a comparison to IBM or Dell, they both have better services than Snoreacle and even Dell has a better channel presence. And if Larry really does go to war with the other server vendors then he would push them even further into the arms of M$, RedHat and IBM Software, which would damage the profit engine of Oracle software sales. At this point, Larry really needs the other server vendors far more than he needs the ex-Sun hardware bizz.
".....Not much cash in it for them to make when all they got was a measly licence sale for Solaris on someone else's tin....." Selling a software license is money for old rope, especially when you don't have to provide the tin, provide the money to develop the tin, or fund the hardware support for it. Software-only is what Oracle does best, it's what Larry originally planned for Sun (remember, he wanted hp to buy the Sun hardware bizz). Any other option involves considerable expense in hardware development and marketting in a highly-competitive market where hp is the undisputed King.
".....I really like the one about the "hardware business firesale to HP"...." Oh ye of short memory! I suggest you go back and read some of the earlier Reg pieces on the Sunset, such as http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/19/oracle_shopping_sun_hardware/, which details how Oracle desperately tried to offload the Sun hardware bizz. When are you Sunshiners going to realise that just sitting there saying "I don't want it to be true so it's not true" is not a very effective strategy for dealing with reality?
".....The "Itanium will rule everything" style stuff was amusing as well, any more gems up your sleeve?..." Well, I once heard this amazing prophecy from some Sunshiners that this chip called "UltraSPARC V" was going to be the best datacenter server CPU ever! That farce was followed by an even funnier sequel with some vapourware project called "Rock".... By the way, just to remind you, Tukzilla is alive and selling, whereas Snoreacle don't have a high-end CPU other than Fudgeitso's SPARC64, and with no future products for that either. You sure you want to cast aspersions on Itanium when you have nothing to put up against it?
/SP&L.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
