Is Sun Losing its Spark?

Great Scott, what's going on? Sun and Microsoft recently agreed to bury the hatchet and concentrate on integration, not instigation. Is this good news for customers? Yes and no. Yes because it's high time someone began making an effort to make systems more interoperable. No because when big vendors make nicey-nicey with each other, especially when lawyers are involved, it's often time to run the other way. Sun Microsystems always pitched itself as the anti-Microsoft, with chairman and CEO Scott McNealy entertaining many a conference audience with jabs at his huge competitor. In an industry of maniacs, McNealy outclassed them all with his anything-but-Microsoft mania. So it looks like no more Microsoft one-liners from McNealy, at least for now. Hopefully, he will still keep his sense of humor, $2 billion settlement or no $2 billion settlement.

Beyond that, it's always healthy to have vendors snarling at one another; trying to outdo and one-up one another with differing approaches and technologies at one level; while cooperating on another for customers' benefit. "Coopetition" is a way of life in the IT industry. But if things get too homogenized, and too standardized, we lose innovation and competitive advantage. Microsoft Office has nice features, but it's a shame that 95 percent of the world is locked into a single supplier for word processors, spreadsheets, and desktop databases. Sun's StarOffice, though it has too much the look and feel of Microsoft Office, is nevertheless a refreshing (and more cost-effective) alternative. We need runners-up to keep nipping at the heels of market leaders, to keep prices down and keep quality up.

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