But why customers ???

Given Sun's share prices I was betting on it selling its Java operations. Throw away the Glassfish and the Fishbowlwater.

But in the UK I got all of Sun's gear thru partners ... never directly with the power that be.

Most resellers I know here and in the US aren't exclusive, they usually sell at least two of the top three vendors' systems, which means Sun will have to work hard to keep those resellers sweet against the marketing might of IBM, HP and Dell (who are trying the same trick). Now Sun will have to work harder to make sure their message gets through to the customer, otherwise a lot of those smaller customers will get switched to other vendors. I expect Sun will offer their kit cheaper via the Channel and hope the resellers will make money through "added value" services. Of course, that means the larger customers will be paying a premium to allow Sun to subsidise their SMB reseller love-in, but I'm sure they won't mind that....

DEC/Digital, didn't it?

What, they went under because their channel strategy wasn't able to deliver what the customers wanted at a price they were prepared to pay? Even though DECdirect UK had been showing the way for a few years, it was sacrificed to the "added value" of the UK tinshifters?

How did that happen?

Did anybody tell Sun? Oh, yeah, the ex-DEC managers now at Sun... small world. At least they've still got jobs though :)

... they've pulled the plug on most of the really good partner resources. I work for a partner and the help and resources are pitiful. Unless you happen to have a stash of email addresses for the really good Sun techies you are stuck with pretty much what the same information that the customers can get.

I despair !

AC for obvious reasons....

This story is uninformed. Sun has always relied primarily on partner sales.

If your bet was on them selling their Java Operations, then I wanna' play cards with you... Schwartz is all about software, and Java is king at Sun. They'll get rid of Solaris before they get rid of Java. Now, getting rid of their in-house storage ops... that may make more sense...

www.sunsucks.com

Sun's 4th qtr tends to be ok....but look out for their 1st fiscal QTR....the disaster will be announced in September....so why does it take Sun over two weeks more now to report earnings? You would think a technology company would be able to report earning quicker not take over a month.

Riders on the storm

how much faith can you have in hardware/software that you can't talk to the manufacturer about.

Value-added? Hah! All they do is introduce delays and make mistakes.

I like Sun kit but I would dearly love to be able to deal with Sun directly rather than being forced to deal with profit-skimming monkeys.

well, for us at a university, we've always bought through resellers. no change there then. as long as the support stays with the existing model, i don't care.

the rest's for the beancounters to worry over.