Watching Sun

Despite being snowed by a series of work and personal issues that have reduced my blogging, I’m still doing tons of newsreader-ing.

On the corporate blogging front, I’m enjoying Sun’s blogger feed. It’s a great example of how blogs and RSS can amplify, complement, or challenge your view of a vendor that otherwise attempts to control its perception exclusively via the media and advertising.

For example, you can see what happens went a courier drops an expensive server:

There’s the “working mom’s” blog (she really sounds too busy to blog).

Then we’ve got this honest appraisal from a Sun employee:

Sun used to be this amazing place full of life and promise. Lately, though, it’s become a rather depressed, confused mess. Our management keeps changing. Our products keep changing names. We live under the constant threat of layoffs and office closures.

On the serious side, Sun PR Jim Grizanzio offers his selection of Scott McNealy and Jonathan Schwartz quotes from Sun’s Q4 announcement. Meanwhile, Schwartz himself has taken to Red Hat pricing with a stick in this post.

I might be catching up here, but Red Hat bashing sounds like a new tactic for Sun. On the surface it seems a little odd because I recall meeting with Jonathan last year and he sang the praises of the Red Hat-based application stack as the Microsoft Office-alternative nirvana. Although, given the new Microsoft pact perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised.