When it rains, it pours. And when the sun shines, you'd better wear sunscreen. You want a tan, not third-degree burns.
Mr. Market is certainly pouring sunshine on Sun Microsystems
In other words, put the champagne back on ice. This is not the magical turnaround you have been hoping for.
Me, I wanted to see some fresh thinking out of Sun's management. Instead, I only got the usual potpourri of "Wow, we can do benchmarks!" and "We're still releasing new products!" For example, you might think that Sun could make a move in the red-hot virtual server sector, based on its xVM virtualization platform. But the virtualization and software management division saw a 29% yearly slide in sales, while rival VMware
The company keeps plugging on both the hardware and software sides of the house, as if Sun were a miniature IBM
But Sun lost a step somewhere. It became an also-ran, with flagging sales and a multiyear stock slide. Now, even little Linux veteran Red Hat
My suggestion is simple: Split the old Sun into two businesses. Let one company figure out how to sell chips and servers, while the other gets a handle on turning a profit from open-source software. Hey, I've seen more radical splits than that lately. At least this one would actually make sense.
Further Foolishness: