Tuesday September 21, 2004
Waiting for the perception to shift It is widely acknowledged that Sun is suffering from a perception problem. The perception is that we are still selling overpriced sluggish hardware. The reality is that we are shipping workstations powered by Opteron processors and have doubled the performance of the server line with dual core UltraSparc IV chips. The price-performance of Sun's product line is back in the game. But what to do if the customer is still not convinced? Enter utility computing...
I just listened to the NC04Q3 New York event and heard Jonathan announce the utility computing plan to sell computing power at $1/CPU per hour. Although I did not hear him make this connection, I drew this conclusion from the announcement. Since we know we have the best price-performance kit out there, we will buy our own machines and sell the hardware's ability to crunch data as a commoditized utility to our customers. This way we can still make money while riding out the perception change. As we wait for the reality to sink in, we'll put our money where our mouth is, make the purchase for the customer, selling the raw performance instead. Ingenious. Credible. And you can sign up to test drive it now. (2004-09-21 10:49:41.0)
Permalink
