Simon’s Blog

Seems like we’re likely to be days weeks away from the first publicly available download for Sun Microsystems’s new Enterprise-class virtualization system, xVM Server.   A lot of people have been waiting for this.  xVM Server will form an important part of Sun’s software stack.

Over the last few years, Sun has been pulling together a genuinely impressive collection of software assets. These include:

On The Server

• xVM Ops Center - a data center management platform that enables people to manage collections of servers, scaling from a few servers to thousands of servers, distributed geographically.
• vVM Server - a server virtualization platform
• Solaris - an operating system
• MySQL - a database management system
• Glassfish - an application server
• VDI - a system for enabling centralised management of virtualised desktops
• Java - a platform and programming for running software inside high-performance virtual machines running on major server hardware/OS platforms from IBM mainframes to smaller servers running Windows, Solaris, Linux and AIX.

On The Desktop Client

• xVM VirtualBox - a desktop virtualization system
• Netbeans - an IDE for software developers working with multiple programming languages and platforms such as Java, C/C++, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, UML, developing software to run on servers, desktop computers and mobile phones..
• Java SE - a programming language and platform for running desktop applications and browser-based RIAs inside high-performance virtual machines running on all major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris
• JavaFX - a programming language to make it easier to build feature-rich graphics user-interfaces

On Mobile Phones

• LWUIT - a Java ME-based user interface library, for building graphical user interfaces applications that run similarly across MIDP 2-based mobile phones
• JavaFX Mobile - a Java ME-based system for running rich applications that run similarly across MSA-based mobile phones
• Java ME - a programming language and platform used for programing constrained devices such mobile phones, Blu-ray players, LCD televisions and set-top boxes

On Smart Cards

• Java Card - a programming platform that enables applications from different vendors to be developed that run securely on smart cards, in particular, SIM cards used in mobile phones

By any standards, this is a pretty incredible collection of software assets that should enable Sun to evolve from being a company that makes its money simply from selling commodity server hardware (that’s only going to get less profitable with time) to being one that makes its money from whole systems.  By adopting an open source strategy, the company has positioned itself well to grab significant shares of: the operating system market; the database market; the desktop and server virtualization markets; and the cloud computing market.

If the company executes well, there’s no reason why this should not translate into rapidly growing revenues and profits in the medium term.  It’s interesting, therefore, that the stock market currently values all these assets at zero.   I’ve seen this kind of thing happen time and again, with shareholders/investors and analysts simply failing to understand where the value lies in technology companies.  However, make no mistake: if Sun Microsystems gets acquired (because it’s share price is very depressed at the moment, so it could easily represent value for someone at this price), it won’t be for its hardware; it will be for its systems potential.