Looking over my colleague’s entries from today, it seems as if I can skip the conference summary, as he’s already done that for you. Head over here or here for his excellent recaps. What I’d like to pull out of today’s Sun Analyst Conference presentations is instead related to the role of dynamic languages and Java.
As did James, I thought Ning’s Marc Andreessen was an interesting and compelling choice as a customer reference. For a vendor that is often perceived, like IBM, as relevant only to Fortune 500 types, this is an important shift. Because while they now have products within reach of SMBs, they don’t have the resources to touch them directly – ergo, lowering the barriers of entry and allowing customers to sell themselves will be critical. Jonathan Schwartz stressed repeatedly that Sun increasingly would emphasize the indirect sale; to customers, as he put it, that Sun might never meet (these would be classified as “those that might pay you” in my model [1]). Customers just like Ning. How many Web 2.0ish startups, for example, do you know that would forgo the Dell/Linux combo in favor of Sun/Solaris 10? Not sure about you, but I don’t know many. There are still lots of developers out there that don’t know a.) that Sun makes x64 gear, b.) they have an operating system that runs on it, or c.) all of the above.
But the Ning gang did indeed forgo the generic x86/Linux route. By calculating the ‘loaded’ cost of hardware – factoring in not solely the initial cost of the hardware itself, but the power it would require, the space it would take up, and the overall support expenditure – they determined that Sun was far more economical. As Ning figured such things, the loaded cost (AKA TCO) of a whitebox Linux box running Intel chips was $10,350 over 36 months. Sun’s AMD boxes running Solaris 10? $4760. Whatever you might think about those numbers and how they were generated, it was pretty apparent that they surprised the Ning gang. So as far as the operating system and hardware are concerned, Sun’s apparently won over the man who popularized the browser.
What makes Andreessen a really interesting choice, however, is the context. A couple of months back, Andreessen spoke before I did at the Zend Conference and had little positive to say about Sun’s language and platform, Java. News.com’s record pretty accurately reflects my recollection of his talk there, saying:
“Java is much more programmer-friendly than C or C++, or was for a few years there until they made just as complicated. It’s become arguably even harder to learn than C++,” Andreessen said. And the mantle of simplicity is being passed on: “PHP is such is an easier environment to develop in than Java.”
To be fair, he did acknowledge that the Ning infrastructure is itself a hybrid of PHP and Java, describing the technology as follows:
“My new company is running a combination of Java and PHP. This is something I get no end of crap about,” he said of the technical decision. “We have a core to our system that is built in Java. It is more like an operating system, like a system programming project. Then we have the entire application level–practically everything you see is in PHP.”
I’m not entirely surprised that Sun would be willing to give someone so lukewarm on their flagship language the stage; not only was it a high value appearance, most of the Sun folks I’ve spoken with both here and prior do readily admit that languages like PHP certainly have an important place in the world of application development. As Hal Stern said in one of the breakout sessions this afternoon, it’s not a matter of Java or PHP, it’s very often both – as perfectly evidenced by Ning.
But while Sun will discuss with complete candor the role that such languages will play in the enterprise, they thus far have done little product-wise to support such developers. Unlike IBM or Oracle, Sun’s done little above the operating system level to engage with large scripting communities. Unlike OpenSolaris, which as discussed yesterday as done an excellent job of forging ties to a variety of languages and platforms, the rest of the software assets continue view competing languages through the Java lens. Rather than talk about Ruby, it’s JRuby. Rather than talk about PHP, they’ll talk about Caucho. Rather than talk about Python, they’ll push Jython. Taking nothing away from those or other projects such as Groovy, they are not the centers of gravity in the development space. There are a great many dynamic language developers who either won’t or can’t run a JVM, so a Jython or a JRuby that will run on top of one is not of interest – it’s more likely to be a non-starter. Java advocates might come back and remind me of JSR 223, but given that that effort began in ’03 and is still listed as in progress, I stand by my contention that the Java world has not done enough to make room for competing approaches.
In the end, I think Andreessen might be the perfect representation the potential and limitations of Sun’s current software story. The good news is that Solaris is once again a compelling platform that offers significant benefits for applications outside the traditional market. Oh, and they put out some nice tin. The bad news is that the message is still too heavily weighted to the Java approach, which is problematic in a world that is increasingly adopting languages that are lighter in weight and more easily learned.
In other words, I’m in agreement with Tim Bray that while Solaris is getting “good reviews,” Java’s a bit “boring.” And I think that Andreessen illustrated that quite clearly.
[1] See #2 here.
