There have been some strange things that have happened in this world that I would never have expected. The Red Sox winning the World Series, Macs with Intel processors, and are things I never thought I'd see. But none of the them seems as strange as this to me.
Sun is selling Windows servers.
I just can't believe it. I mean, it makes perfect sense to me in that Sun has a great sales channel and they'll never eliminate Windows from many customers, so many some money selling them Windows as well as Sun servers. But I just can't believe the SUN, the face of Unix workstations for so many of us in college, is selling Windows.
Scott McNealy was so anti-Microsoft, that I assumed he'd run the company forever and battle the beast from Redmond for the rest of my career.
I guess if Bill Gates can resign, if Compaq and DEC can disappear, if AT&T can disappear, whoops, they're back with the i(will overcharge you)Phone, then I guess Sun can sell Windows servers.
I think it's actually a great move by , Jonathan Schwartz and should help Sun continue their comeback in the computing world. Maybe those few shares of SUNW my Mom still has will be worth something one day.
Sun's only selling x64 systems, and a limited number of their systems support Windows. They also get Solaris supported as a guest OS for Virtual Server and Virtual PC, so that's a win for them. I know that margins are tight, but for customers that buy Solaris servers now, this means they can have one less vendor, something that shouldn't be discounted. Being able to make larger deals will help Sun over the long term and may help them make some gains against Linux in the data center as well.
