Yeah, i got to say, this whole Jonathan Schwartz contribution on blogs.sun.com does make my blog a lot easier, i mean there is no way i could even make some of this stuff up, even through deductive reasoning based on press releases and product announcements, so it is with great satisfaction that the current CEO proves my point every time he engages his community, especially when he publishes internal missives to his executive team, which go a long way to explaining why they are all completely paralyzed trying to anticipate what to do, as in the face of all irrefutable evidence that a change is needed, PTB basically says Sun couldn’t be better:https://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/innovation_loves_a_crisisI must admit i have never managed a single employee, particularly when your credibility is severely tested (nor been in a urban warfare environment, which seems to be somewhat comparable), so i don’t know exactly what i would be telling Schwartz if i was his therapist or whoever he consults for advice that is not directly relying on him for their livelihood, and maybe i over-looked this responsibility if i truly do care about Sun’s survival, but i think i have thrown enough ignored suggestions to convince myself that i am not merely a flame-thrower…but to save the mentally strained at Sun some time that they should be spent looking for other jobs as a back-up plan, i will provide some analysis on what the CEO is trying to communicate in his diatribe on politics, economics, and Sun’s business model via the e-mail published above, which i can only presume is his only mass distribution statement on the current state of affairs: (this is my take on his thinking, so the conclusions are based on my understanding of this analysis of the current conditions)1. Congress is responsible for the current crisis, since it has not passed a “bail-out” package, as of this writing, though that has since been recitifed, so placing blame on politicians, and the political system in general for the decisions of the financial community is not necessarily a tactic that Jonathan will be able to rely on, depending on a whole confluence of factors, such as stock market stability, loan market liquidity, and number of businesses that exist at the end of 2008…essentially when a CEO starts playing political analyst to describe the market opportunity for his company, you better hope you are either in Russia or else run for the hills, because it is going to get ugly…2. I know i am going out of order, relative to the points i want to make as they relate to the e-mail in question, but i got to respond to the question that Jonathan poses, and so toward the end he says: “which OS will we pick” in terms of a customer buying decision…hahahaha…i mean if i was on Sun’s Board’s compensation committee, i would immediately introduce a clause that says that if at anytime, Jonathan makes such a public statement again, that his bonus is deducted 25% for complete incompetence and lack of understanding for the market that he is supposedly competing in…for one, the decision on an OS is entirely predicated on the skills of the customer’s IT department, so that if the IT minions are experts in SQL Server database technology or develop using Visual Studio, then yes, of course, they go with Windows for their x86 server line-up…if a customer has been savvy and over-spent on open source experts, then they have the flexibility to choose Linux…under no scenario, other than if the customer has an existing locked-in contract for Sun servers previously, would they ever choose openSolaris, that, in fact, would be grounds for being fired as an IT manager…so, this question that Jonathan poses, though i understand he has bet his career on its validity, is completely a false positive, it is not a true question that anyone, and i mean anyone, makes relative to Sun’s OS…let’s move on, just wanted to make sure we were still completely clear on why Jonathan Schwartz has no business being in this business… 3. O.k., so we got a cursory mention of Glassfish, so at least Jonathan could reference this e-mail in the future, when it finally becomes obvious even to him and his executive team that they have no competitive advantage outside of Glassfish, that they were aware of the asset they must utilize in these market conditions, but it is admittedly sindwiched in between the virtualization product-line and openSolaris nonsense (hahaha), so there is really no way for a Sun “leader” to pick-up this e-mail and say to themself: ‘wow, i guess we finally are de-emphasizing WebLogic, and going to go after the Enterprise Java market opportunity’, even though that is the only defensible market that Sun competes in…therefore, this e-mail, though it contains some of the basic premises of how Sun will survive, has absolutely no focus, is truly just a lingo-laden emptying of the brain of all things Sun-related, with no actual direction, and no clear instructions of how these “leaders” should take their orders in compete in these dire market conditions…one last time, well actually, i will continue to hammer it, until Mark replaces him: Glassfish is the only way forward…4. No mention of how MySQL is to replace current database accounts, so the general assumption is that you take MySQL in to greenfield accounts, like where a customer has not yet selected a database: ummm, o.k., that is exactly like 3 customer worldwide outside of a brand-new start-up, every customer on the planet must begin their operation with the exact plan of what their database strategy will be, and here MySQL could be relevant, but the much more salient opportunity that Jonathan completely fails to grasp, and has failed to grasp ever since he spent $1B on MySQL is how to convert existing Oracle customers to the open source platform, that is actually viable, but somehow Sun, with all its infinite open source wisdom, has not understood, has not articulated, and therefore, has not executed on, which means that there is no way the Sun GSO sales force will have any idea how to present a migration strategy, simply because there is none…i don’t 100% fault Jonathan for this, directly, but his inability to grasp software, fundamentally, means that he has not invested in a migration plan across Sun to replace Oracle account control on their hardware, and it basically means he is allowing Ellison, Phillips, Catz, and Co. to live for free on his dime…amateur hour reigns at Sun Microsystems, still…5. Finally, there is plenty of additional fluff that i am not going to single out, as the above are the major points, and basically i will conclude this post with the argument that this e-mail essentially represents a massive missed opportunity, again, for Jonathan to demonstrate that he has any grasp of the compamny that he gets paid $10M+/year to lead…so, as i take a glance at finance.google.com and look up JAVA news and share price, we can see that they are supporting a market value of approximately $1B, with cash removed, so for all the status of the Java programming language and platform, for the installed base that is hard-won, and relatively difficult to lose, and the Silicon Valley real estate assets, the market essentially expects Sun to fail… ahh, yes, and yet there is no movement to check this guy? i mean he sends out this e-mail in a tone that some psychologists would quickly dismiss as representative of a man in a state-of-denial, and there is nothing that anyone on Sun’s Board does? we are all, Sun shareholders included, expected to just ride this out, and trust a guy who personally claims in this e-mail that he is well-positioned to lead the company because he apparently survived the dot-com fall-out, i means is that not his main argument in this e-mail, that only he is positioned to lead this company because of the job he did following 2001?…hahahaha…c’mon guys, vacation is over, the kids are back in school, you have business to attend to, and i don’t want to see most of you go to jail for failing your fiduciary duty as a Board member, do something about this…i guess paralysis is comprehensive when it comes to fighting him, i remember looking in the eyes of a lot of people at Sun who were paralyzed by his implicit threats, but those days are gone, the record, including this e-mail, speaks for itself, there is no longer any denying that he has failed, and more importatly, has no specific plan to get out of the mess he created…so, what are you going to do? wait for the Feds to clean-up? or are you going to just call a meeting and figure it out?…i don’t know, maybe i am not seeing something, but it really doesn’t look to be that difficult of a choice…i honestly don’t know why you would risk your own livelihood for his, i mean, i just don’t get that…i know there are some people, like McNealy, who i would consider sacrificing for, maybe not anymore, but there is no way, you could get me to hail a cab for Jonathan Schwartz, let alone stake my career on his turn-around prowess…its going to get really ugly before it gets better… Java