One of Sun’s internal debates is what “Solutions” are. Currently in my mind there seems to be ambiguity between a Solutions or Utility proposition, and what Sun seeks to organise around. Bob Macritchie (EVP Global Sales) opened the conference with a presentation on Sun’s sales model. He spoke in balanced terms between solutions (consultancy/project) and programme (commodity/utility) . He was clear that he wanted GEM (geographic organisations) autonomy, presumably using both loose and tight controls, but he did describe them as billing engines. This does not imply a lot of faith in their intellectual property generation but it may have been a throw-away remark. The model is fine, certainly of value to our customers and probably fun to work in. His slides contained enough material to suggest that he believes that the establishment & proving of value can be monetised as can transitional i.e. project service. On the other side, he clearly sees the Client Solutions practices as driving product and hence “wrapping” product sales. However since its my view that Sun sells data centres (& components) I can live with that (as if I’m successful so can he).

Its how to show people that considering their IT platform architecture and economics, in the context of data centre rather than applications platform that remains difficult.

ooOOOoo

Originally posted on my Sun/Oracle blog, republished here in Feb 2006. This is another peice of CEC 2005 reporting.

Solutions or Service
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One thought on “Solutions or Service

  • 10th February 2016 at 3:53 pm
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    I got this wrong! Sun made several critical mistakes in Strategy at this time, and I misunderstood some of the signals and statements made. I copied it across because I want a complete record and re-reading this has reminded me of some stuff that was happening at the time. I was also too optimistic about the talent at the top, and their desire and need for innovation in the field.

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