O.k., Jonathan, apologies for the obsession, and apologies for discounting your analysis on the U.S. server market, as Dell reported weak server numbers at 5% growth for the quarter…Combine this with IBM’s most recent server numbers which grew a rather paltry 10 percent (4 percent, adjusting for currency), and perhaps i indulged in hyperbole following the Gartner report…So, should i get on-board and accept that the U.S. server market is dead for the time being, and that the growth will have to come from BRIC and other emerging countries? Should I issue a mea culpa and start taking expertise from Sun’s CEO on the state of the Information Technology marketplace, and stop harassing him?Perhaps…but, not yet, and I promise not to back-down from the openSolaris critique, this is something that I have assessed over a period of about six years, ever since Solaris 8U6, and still feel that Red Hat is the buoy that will save Sun…But what to make of the hardware market, absent some all-encompassing analysis from Ashlee, who must be on vacation this week…: I don’t know, i still believe in the promise of multi-core, mixed with some middleware pre-installed and pre-configured for vertical solutions and/or high-performance computing requirements, whether that is “cloud” or not…essentially, I feel the Glassfish/MySQL combo on the T2 will be Sun’s only competitive advantage, even considering the openStorage push that is about to commence from Santa Clara…Dell will sell the “cloud” well, and IBM will grow on the backs of administrators worldwide tied to mainframes, or those who simply cannot manage their IT departments by themselves…HP will essentially pick-up the scraps (though significant scraps) from Dell and IBM in both areas…Sun, on the other hand, just doesn’t have a choice but to fight, get, and stay out in front on so-called innovation, even as this thing we call a hardware market goes through intense change and margin reduction, accompanied with Unix-replacement by Linux, Vista-maturity, and Oracle consolidation…in an election year, coupled with international geo-political/economic instability, and basically little competitive differentiation, there is not much the vendors can do to demonstrate a business model for leadership…so, Sun, you may appease the base investor community (in other words, JAVA may stabilize at its 52-week low, and not retreat much beyond that) with claims of maintaining 10% market-share as a success, but I am not going to take it lying down…absent Rock processors coming out anytime sooner, T2 and the upcoming T3 will have to hold the fort…this is doable, though scary for the faint-of-heart, especially as the cash is evaporating, not-to-mention goodwill, momentum, installed base, and even potentially a raison d’etre… Glassfish is simply dominating the Enterprise Java market, as JBoss 5 falters and lacks clarity in its actual purpose and timetable, WebLogic tries to become Fusion, and IBM evaluates whether to even support JEE5 and 6 with WebSphere, proper (outside of Geronimo noise)….MySQL is a nice thing to have, and I am not going to do any second-guessing as long as the target is enterprise deployments, and not any unnecessary Web 2.0 banter…so, as i have said many times the Niagara hardware with T2 and T3 could be enough with the middleware, if Reference Architectures were resurrected, and if Red Hat were supported…but instead of such focus we get the openSolaris nonsense, masked in openStorage marketing, supplemented by an openSPARC inspired OEM division that is a non-starter…I know it is infinitely easier to take pot-shots than run a Fortune 500 company, but i am trying not to be 100% inflammatory, for I do want to see change more than demise or eventual failure, I don’t want Jonathan’s job (i am not moving back to CA), I just want a way to piggy-back on some badly needed success, and make some money off of Glassfish, so i understand that the challenge is almost over-whelming, but there is a sliver of a chance that things could turn around, especially by 2009; i know Q1 is going to be brutal, and I know i will host another session of criticizing the public statements of the CEO and CFO, especially if it is even close to the last call…but I am willing to bury the hatchet, if Sun can do the same, i am offering an olive branch, but will fight with vigor if the response remains the same…Sun is well positioned, and the pot of gold may be within reach, contrary to my headline quotes from previous entries, but its not going to be easy and its not going to come from simple inertia, its going to come from tough decisions, and a change of emphasis, and more of what I have been saying all summer…I am not claiming to be infallible or the only one possessing the right answers, but i feel pretty comfortable that i am right about a good deal of it, and no one has contested some of the major provisions of the turn-around plan, if paralysis has set-in, and things don’t change, “Sun Alumni” will just be another way of explaining a Silicon Valley truism: almost everything goes away eventually… Java