I see you're firing up to 6,000 people. Analysts say you're in more trouble than a pregnant cheerleader, and that you've been that way for a lot longer than nine months. Analysts think you should spin off your hardware business (but then, they thought you should spin off Java back in 2003...) And those are your small problems. Your bigger problem is that you're clearly not very clever.

You're sitting on an (admittedly kinda crappy, but then so is Microsoft's, hey) office suite, and you're sitting on a not completely obscure programming platform. When Microsoft got those, they proceeded lickey-split to lock in the corporate desktop market. You know, all of those half-arsed drones writing Excel macros and Access "applications". Those little crappy hacks that actually run a considerable proportion of the global corporate gestalt. Much as that might displease the big ERP, CRM, BI, BPMS, and KFC vendors. I defy you to find just ONE enterprise which wouldn't come crashing down if all Microsoft Office automation craplets were purged overnight.

We're a hardware company!
Office VBA craplets lead to SQL Server. Maybe also Visual Studio and .NET. Innocent dabbling in shared folders leads to a full-blown SharePoint habit. I'm not saying Microsoft's market is the same as Sun's here; I'm saying Microsoft made more out of their advantages than Sun did. I'm also not saying that Sun was already sitting on the kind of desktop market share Microsoft had which enabled this platform lock-in, all I'm saying is that Sun had the means to do so.

Corporate strategy consultants make Ferrari-leasing big bucks by consistently muttering something about turning weaknesses into strengths. So it must be true. However. This completely misses the point which Sun so emphatically demonstrates that strengths must be isolated lest they inadvertently beget other strengths. Can't have too many of those spoiling our surprise for the investors.

Lowering our standards for what may be defined as "ideal" to "that would have been nice", in an ideal world Sun wasn't stupid and the marketing drones write their clever little craplets in Java. Or groovy. Or whatever. Point being, when their craplet becomes so vital that the IT munchkins are tasked with maintaining it, they actually stand a chance in Hell. And the enterprise's IT systems aren't locked into one vendor; what with Java being open source and what have you not. Quite apart from the containing office suite itself also being open, consuming and excreting OASIS-approved angle bracket soup. Which, for that poor enterprise architect who is brought in to clean up the systems interoperability mess 18 months later, is a relief. In the same sense that it is a relief that one's job is actually theoretically possible to execute successfully. Oh, and in this ideal not-stupid Sun world, Microsoft Office is something some arcane niche of society uses kind of like how lawyers will still be sending God appeals in WordPerfect come Judgment Day.

Instead, what have we? Sun gradually disengaging itself from the OpenOffice.org project without so much as a public statement of policy or explanation. This is really sensitive, because, well think about it. Without OpenOffice.org, Linux stands a toilet's chance in a Taco Bell of making it out of the back office. Which is fine with me, but there are a lot of other people out there who think it really ought to be on desktops. I would rather discuss foreign policy with Pat Robertson than use Abiword or gnumeric for Real Work(tm). If OpenOffice.org becomes unsustainable, the only good thing whih will follow will be that the Ubuntu pointy-clicky how-do-I-LOL-make-my-firefox-LOL-shiny nation will quietly pirate Windows 7 and pine for the good old days when the weather applet was skinnable.

If I had a dog, it would not be as clever as Sun's management. Assuming of course that my dog couldn't fetch. Because if it was smart enough for that, McNealy would have its CV on his desk pronto.