Jonathan does it again
Yet again Jonathan Scwartz continues his policy of openly and very clearly describing Sun’s strategy for all to see. I have never seen the like of it before, although I can only commend him for it. As always I strongly recommend that you read his blog regularly, but here are a few snipits from his latest post which I liked:
On his positioning of the role of Linux today:
But let’s be clear. Do I expect an investment banker at Goldman, Sachs to pick up the Java Desktop System? No. No way. He’s not our target demographic, not a route to make 120 million into 1.2 billion. A call center in Bangalore, a factory in Tennessee, a generation of kids that care more about ringtones than Win32 legacy? Dedicated internet terminals in shopping malls, touch screens in phone booths, the world’s academic environments? There’s a market calling.
Which I found interesting because many of these applications are best served by embedded or thin client approaches rather than a full Linux distro.
Why is music download on phones measured in the billions of dollars (vs. the paltry music download business on PCs, even with iTunes)? Because phones are authenticated (with a JavaCard SIM, I’d add). Authentication and convenience fuel commerce.
I liked this because the idea is simillar to a key issue for enterprises, how to turn the debate from cost to value, in my view you do this by making it very easy to provision services when you need them and only pay for them when you use them. Either that or make provisioning so low cost that the volume rises to the point where convenience makes it worthwhile having continuous access.
the growth of a cross platform Java, Firefox and OpenOffice are a leveling force, driving the affordability, security and portability of internet access.
Driving up the common denominator that people can assume to be on everyones desk. Jonathan describes it as a levelling force, but the key thing is the the level is rising!
Of course at the end of the day he needs to make money:
Monetize the resulting demand for infrastucture software, service and hardware. What’s making the net work behind all those connected cell phones, set top boxes, automobiles, airplanes, medical devices, PCs and game machines (I could go on)? The very secure network infrastructure at the core of Sun’s business. Who demands infrastructure of that scale? The network operators (the world’s communications companies – satellite, wireline, mobile, you name it), and the leading services run through those networks (financial services being the most obvious, along with entertainment, media, and every other web service the world’s contemplating for internet deployment, in-house or otherwise).
How big is that infrastructure market? Huge. And it isn’t shrinking. We do billions of dollars in business with those companies, serving the very consumers described above – and our bet is they’ll continue to grow. If you’re going to bet on the value of the network, who better to partner with – rather than compete against – than the network operators and service providers.
