HP's customers "feel betrayed" by HP, HP says

The author of the missive admits that HP is struggling with customers who "feel uncertain about, or even betrayed" by HP.

So HP customers, here's the anti-Sun FUD. All emboldening is HP's own:

Subject: Sun's "Chief Engineer" hints at eventual Solaris demise

Hi folks,

You might want to take some time to digest this ZDNet interview with Rob Gingell, Sun's newly-named Chief Engineer. His comments are direct admissions that "Solaris-on-SPARC" will not differentiate Sun in the future. This article can be tremendous collateral for us as we "defend" our roadmaps to customers! In particular, as we struggle with customers who feel uncertain about, or even betrayed by, HP's technology directions going forward, you can use such information to demonstrate that the industry as a whole is moving towards commoditization of system-level components . . but we're the only company to ensure our customers are clear about our product directions for years to come! This article is another proof-point that Sun preys on customers' inclinations to believe that "what they don't know won't hurt them", milking their customer base as much as they can before alerting them of 11th-hour changes in their technology directions. Customers need a technology partner with integrity-- Make sure they know the difference!

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2878365,00.html

There is also a follow-up analysis piece at http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2878648,00.html

Finally, an HP-authored competitive note has been published on this article-- I've attached it for your perusal

Joseph B. Knight
Tru64 UNIX Ambassador, ASE

BCS Competitive Intelligence Brief August 2002

*HP Internal and Channel Partner OK*

August 2002 Page 1/1

Sun Publicly Acknowledges Moving Away for Solaris and Sparc - Customer's Left Behind

Summary: In a recent interview, Sun's Chief Engineer 1 , Rob Gingell, has laid out the strategy for Sun's future and it is clear that Sun is moving away from the Solaris/Sparc architecture to Linux. What does this mean for Sun's customers, are they sold a dead-end platform without a future? They have to be wondering this right now. The article can be found at:

-Reference (A) Part 1: http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2878365-1,00.html
-Reference:(B) Part 2: http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2878628,00.html

Key Points and Sun Quotes from the above article

ü Showing disdain for Solaris, Sun is saying that their OS is not a differentiator “Every Unix in the world runs almost all of the crap that's in Solaris….”

-Quote from Sun Microsystems Chief Engineer, Rob Gingell, as reported by references (A) and (B) ü Sun is moving away from Solaris to Linux, still no mention of Windows “If it proves to be true that Sun only stays as a Unix company, then of course we're victimized by anybody that does cost reduction in the Unix space. But the deal here is that we ain't staying there.”

“ … Maybe we call our thing Linux by Solaris or something like that."

- Quote from Sun Microsystems Chief Engineer, Rob Gingell, as reported by references (A) and (B)

Analysis: Sun cannot afford to pour millions of dollars into Solaris. What Sun does not understand is that customers want reliable, available, scalable, serviceable systems for UNIX. By dropping support of their OS, they will lose control of their entire system reliability and integrity. Sun will announce that this is proof of their love for Linux and try to differentiate their Linux from other Linux distributions.

ü Sun Acknowledges Locking Customers into Sparc was wrong and is dropping Sparc, to? (IA-32 or Itanium maybe?)

“…if you were already invested in a bunch of our products, you were actually bound to SPARC and you have to be kind of pissed at us.” -- Quote from Sun Microsystems Chief Engineer, Rob Gingell, as reported by references (A) and (B)

Analysis: Sun cannot afford continued investment in SPARC chips. SPARC has been a performance laggard for years and the gap is increasing. Sun customers should correctly be upset with Sun now stating that locking users into Sparc was wrong, when for the last several years Sun has marketed this as a customer advantage. How can customer's trust Sun's marketing message?

“This is a case where we need people [Sun Engineers] to pick up their heads and say, "I'm a chip designer. I can actually design any chips. Not just SPARC chips. I design chips that go inside systems and do other things. I can do other sorts of things.” -- Quote from Sun Microsystems Chief Engineer, Rob Gingell, as reported by references (A) and (B)

Analysis: Sun cannot make these changes overnight, but Sun, in releasing this news now, is risking losing lot of engineers and support staff. Sun has yet to articulate a clear roadmap with detailed upgrade paths for this change. Sun has yet again left their customers hanging.

Bottom-line: The above clearly states that Sun is leaving behind their technology focus of Sparc/Solaris, once again telling the world that they got in wrong. Sun has yet to articulate any real details or migration plans? What does this mean for their customers? Are they left with a dead-end architecture? It seems so. With HP customers have a clear vision of the future with well thought out and smooth transition plans to Itanium running their choice of operating system, HP-UX, Linux or Windows. Sun is not offering a real choice with this open - source smoke screen but locking customers into their version of Linux. The best choice is clearly HP.

According to the article Sun's Chief Engineer is responsible for crafting a cohesive technology strategy for Sun. µ