I have been known to be a little harsh towards Sun. This is because I expect so much from them, not because I don’t love ’em. Quality products that are truly enterprise scalable are not a commodity and few understand this as well as Sun. Given how I’ve given them crap, I should also give them kudos. Between Q2 of 2007 and Q2 of 2008 they experienced 29.2% in revenue growth. During that same time span, that’s almost more the aggregate of the other four big boys (from a percentage standpoint), Dell (14.2%), EMC (19.7%), IBM (2.6%) and HP (who actually lost revenue at -1.2%).
So while I still see Sun as a company that seems to lack a cohesive strategy for their bold vision, I cannot discount the fact that they did pretty well. I look forward to seeing OpenStorage and other innovations drive adoption and seeing OpenSolaris take off a bit more than it thus far has…