Sun’s sales topped estimates, according to Bloomberg, and this was all thanks to its open source software strategy, according to Matt Asay at CNET:
Sun Microsystems is getting some love from Wall Street after its sales and earnings topped estimates, as detailed by Bloomberg. Software sales jumped 21 percent year-over-year.
What is fueling the growth? The same thing that Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has doggedly said would lift Sun’s fortunes again: open source.
via Open source makes Sun’s quarter shine | The Open Road – CNET News.
If this approach is validated going forward the next year or two, will it change the software industry radically? Quite possibly. Remember this is not a five-man company selling training and consultancy services leveraged off it’s founders’ successful open source software effort, nor even a much larger company set up solely to market and sell services and support contracts based around packaged open source distributions. Sun is a big vendor, which has had to turn its ship of business around almost 180 degrees to get where it’s going now. And maybe, just maybe, it’s on a winning course now.