Sun 'too good to go down'?

Why do publications such as silicon.com cover corporate results? And when we cover them, why do we only write about some companies?

The answer is fairly obvious: if you buy from a company or, more commonly, buy a certain product or service, it's a good idea to be sure that product or service has a future – that it won't suddenly disappear because its creator goes out of business.

So good and bad results tend to be a staple of business pages the world over. Right now, of all the big IT vendors, such attention has been focused on one player more than most – Sun.

The industry view is that Sun is a blue-blooded provider and a useful antidote to much of the mainstream in IT. A CEO of one database software company at the start of the year told silicon.com Sun won't fail because it simply has so many good engineers.

Ever hear of a football team that, despite the end of the season approaching and a precarious league position, has 'too many good players to go down'? Well Sun has flirted with the bottom of the table for a couple of years.

In his analysis of Sun's current position, Tony Hallett makes the point that a great vision takes second place in most users' and analysts' minds to great sales and offerings in the present. That's been Sun's problem lately.

And even then there are question marks. Sun says it is embracing Linux but acts happier to be the owner of Solaris, casting doubt over users' peace of mind running the operating system in the face of SCO's claims. It also claims Linux is an "edge play", while vendors such as Dell and IBM are positioning Linux as a high-end alternative to Unix and other OSes, running on clustered Intel boxes or mainframes.

Sun chief researcher and co-founder John Gage is also speaking in the UK this week. His vision is at least as compelling as McNealy's. The goal, he says, is to "build something that can last forever from parts that are imperfect – the components come and go but it's the system that matters".

Who can fault such a position? But ask how Sun's N1 systems management framework is conceptually different to the 'on-demand' or 'adaptive computing' initiatives at IBM, HP and elsewhere and again it isn't clear. Maybe it doesn't have to be unique.

Sun's systems credentials remain first class and reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated but for a company that is focusing on simplifying computing sometimes it's strategy isn't as straight forward as it thinks.