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Heads Up 8/97
Shades of Lady Macbeth from Microsoft
Sun Microsystems' August 19 introduction of its Enterprise 450 workgroup
server appears to have touched a nerve in Redmond. As Sun resets the bar for
price-performance, interoperability, ease of use and reliability for workgroup
servers, Microsoft is busy second-guessing Sun's role in the server
marketplace. This seems rather odd to us. After all, what would compel a
company like Microsoft to stage such a vehement protest to Sun's product
announcements on its Web site?
Microsoft's barrage of disconnected protests clearly indicates that it fails
to understand what we announced, and more importantly, why we introduced the
Enterprise 450. The reality is, it had nothing to do with Microsoft, and
everything to do with what our customers are asking for. Plain and simple.
Sun is 100 percent focused on enterprise network computing and developing
products to help our customers run their businesses better. We are not in the
travel agency business, the ticket business, the travel guide business or the
talking toy business. We are in the business of serving our customers.
It should come as no surprise to Microsoft that Sun's ability to create
synergy in its product line is something our customers have come to depend
upon - customers like Rick Bentz, who is responsible for all technology
operations at Hershey Foods Corp. As recently reported in the Wall Street
Journal, Mr.Bentz picked Sun over HP and IBM, because, "They [Sun] have a good
proven solution. We consider them to be very focused."
 So, what really happened on August 19 is that Sun challenged
the competition by bringing its sophisticated, data-center technology to the
workgroup, increasing ease of use, affordability and providing PC
connectivity. The real news is that Sun has introduced aggressive pricing on
its servers, operating system and key applications.
Customers need scalable solutions, not promises. They need
to tie their desktops to the enterprise. As the workgroup changes and server
demands move beyond simple file and print functions, customers are looking for
a way to upgrade their LANs and deploy Internet, intranet and extranet
applications. To meet those new demands, the Enterprise 450 offers Sun's
customers superior reliability, scalability and manageability, all at a price
that has our competition a little bit upset.
Industry performance results (SPECWeb96) show the Ultra
Enterprise 450 has twice the Internet performance of NT.
Sun is coming from a position of strength, leveraging 15 years
of experience in developing, managing and supporting enterprisewide systems
and networks.
Sun and its ISV and channel allies are making it easier to
deploy enterprise-class applications in workgroup environments.
SunLink technology provides plug-and-play interoperability to
ANY client, without modifying the desktop.
David Douglas, director of marketing for Sun's workgroup server division
sums it up nicely. "The benchmarks results offer compelling
evidence that Sun can deliver what has been seriously lacking in the
workgroup space: scalability and enterprise-class performance. The
Enterprise 450 is the first in a family of enterprise workgroup servers that
Sun
has designed based on the experience gained while developing its family of
enterprise and departmental and data center systems."
If you enjoyed this Reality Check, check out our previous articles.
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