Jonathan Schwartz Doesn't Matter?
June 30, 2006 – 2:30 pm by coachwei | Category Main Page |BusinessWeek 2.0 recently awarded Jonathan Schwartz one of the “Ten People Who Don't Matter” (http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/21/technology/10dontmatter.biz2/index.htm). Schwartz wrote a response in his blog (http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20060625), expressing his gratitude for being honored together with Steve Balmer and Linus Torvalds. The blog's title is ”60 days into the Job”, referring to the fact that he has been in the CEO job for only two months.
I'd agree that it is too hasty to judge him.
Yes, Sun has been lost for the last few years. They don't seem to acknowledge that the Sparc/Solaris combo are falling into niche markets (not mainstream). On the other side, they are not making enough progress on software and service. Sun has quite a few strategic assets that they can leverage to get out of this quagmire - they just haven't realized it yet.
Client side Java is one of such strategic hidden assets for Sun. Leveraging client side Java, Sun can create some really powerful product and service offerings in a way that leapfrogs all other players in the industry. Client side Java has been and is still a more robust option for enterprise business applications than .NET and Flash. JVM is still avaiable on over 94% desktops (The JVM versioning/compatibility issue can be dealt with effectively like how jRex/thinlet handle it). There are 5 million Java developers. There is a huge demand and returned excitement for “rich client”. There are 250,000 fat client applications out there running on VB/PowerBuilder. Ajax is exciting but still way inmature, and won't be able to reach the necessary performance/reliability/maturiy over the next few years.
So there is a credible opportunity for Sun to take lead in client side Java, help push it to the next stage, reclaim the industry leadership as a trend setter and make some good money in doing so(no, It is not swing. Something like jRex (XAML for Java), Rhino, and WPF for Java are more like it).
However, Jonathan Schwartz has been on the job for only 60 days - the guy deserves some more time before we put him side by side to Steve Balmer. Maybe he will see the strategic opportunity of leveraging client side Java with server side Java to transform Sun into a software/service powerhouse.
Separately, Sun also joined OpenAjax Alliance. Greg Murray is the recently appointed Ajax architect. I have not met Greg personally - only interacted with him on phone a few times. Here is his blog http://weblogs.java.net/blog/gmurray71/.
Also interesting (because Nexaweb defines itself as the “enterprise web 2.0 solutions company”), Sun's recent press release is all about web 2.0: Sun Microsystems Customers Shape Web 2.0 (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060629/sfth033.html?.v=63)
3 Responses to “Jonathan Schwartz Doesn't Matter?”
I would agree that sun has a great opportunity to take the lead as the client side platform of choice. Not only is there a JVM on 94% of the desktops, but millions and millions of mobile devices have a JVM. Sun should think about those devices as THEIR assets, and look to leverage them. Instead they just abdomen the devices for new features in upcoming JVMs and hope people are willing to upgrade. This is a completely different approach to AJAX. AJAX looks to take advantage of what is in place and “do the best they can with what they got”. Sun should take the same approach… Imagine the capabilities that could be provided even in a little weight Java engine that could run on all JVMs. That would be huge.
By Anonymous on Jul 6, 2006
Running a light weight Java engine inside browser will be a huge. Sun focused too much on the component library (Swing). It is not too late to solve JVM-browser integration and compatibility issues. Following that expose Dom though a Java library. Leave rest to us (development community).
By <a href="http://www.vertexlogic.com"> Anil Sharma </a> on Jul 6, 2006
What I heard about Sun's JVM on mobile devices is that Sun licensed the JVM technology to device vendors but does not certify the JVM on the device. This reduces the cross-platform benefit of Java and increases the cost of developing / certifying Java software on handhelds.
I am curious why Coach thinks .NET is more robust than Java for enterprise business applications. I know at least one prominent investment bank uses C# client for a lot of mission-critical transaction and it has performed very well.
By Jason Chan on Aug 26, 2006