Comments on: Should Sun Mind - or Outsource - the Store?

By: Speaker City » links for 2007-01-25

Speaker City » links for 2007-01-25 — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:54:04 +0000

[...] tecosystems » Should Sun Mind - or Outsource - the Store? Then ask yourself: are Amazon, eBay and so on likely to outinvest and outsupport Sun’s dedicated team? Seems likely, from where I sit. I mean how bad could one click purchasing of Sun’s x86 gear really be? (tags: sunw redmonk sog) [...]

By: tecosystems » Closing the Loop on Sun Startup Essentials

tecosystems » Closing the Loop on Sun Startup Essentials — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:32:20 +0000

[...] When last we chatted about my experience with the Sun Startup Essentials program, I’d just received an order confirmation for my Ultra 20 Opteron workstation. That was January 23rd. [...]

By: James Governor

James Governor — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:04:33 +0000

Stephen your outsourcing point is an excellent one. Why not just outsource to Amazon? or perhaps a strategic alliance of some kind. The world is flat posits Fedex’s skills in this area, if memory serves me right.

By: sogrady

sogrady — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:39:45 +0000

BillSaysThis: yup, wholeheartedly agree. there are many levels of fixes that can be applied, ranging from the simple to the complex - i.e. the outsourcing i recommended. all would be welcome from this customer’s perspective.

Mads: you’re absolutely right to make the distinction between high and low end sales, b/c the buying behaviors - not to mention expectations - are entirely different. i also think you’re correct in asserting that Sun will need to learn on the fly how to deal with an entirely different kind of customer, and indeed that to a certain degree their future success will depend on how well - and quickly - they can learn.

James: yes indeed, and i’ve got a bit of personal experience with Sun resellers in my distant SI past. i’m not sure, however, that Sun can rely on resellers here - i think they need to take ownership of the channel much in the fashion that Dell does.

By: James

James — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 01:45:16 +0000

Sun has always had resellers, and even then they’ve always been hard to buy from (I’m sure you recall the original Joyeur posts). They did try selling servers via ebay: http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=auctions.sun.com but that seems to have died.

By: Mads

Mads — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:48:24 +0000

I don’t think this is all that clear cut an issue.
Sun has often been hard to buy things from, and the story is often worse when you’re outside .us.
That Sun wants to keep control of the process is fine for the large gear, when I buy something costing into several hundred thousand, I expect attention. But when I’m buying machines costing next to nothing, where Sun is more or less competing against whitebox vendors, then I want them at the click of a button. No hassle, no middle men, just speedy delivery at a competitive price.
I think that Sun is often forgetting that they’re aiming for a new type of customers without having anyone in the organization used to dealing with that type of customers.

By: BillSaysThis

BillSaysThis — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:28:34 +0000

Even without outsourcing the store, filters could be added in, say, the data validation routines or database triggers so that tasks are routed to the sales team based on appropriate criteria captured in the form.