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Judith L. Estrin Chief Executive Officer Packet Design, Inc. 3400 Hillview Avenue, Building 3 Palo Alto, CA 94304
Dear Ms. Estrin,
On May 23rd I wrote Curtis Sasaki, Vice President of Engineering, Desktop Solutions, to express my concern that Sun intended to cease support of the Solaris x86 platform for its StarOffice office productivity suite. Now over three months later, I have yet to receive a reply. As a Solaris community member and Sun advocate, I believe it to be indicative of the long-standing problem of senior management's lack of commitment to resolving our complaints. As a stockholder, I believe ignoring correspondence is inconsistent with what should be Sun's customer service policy.
Since before Sun's wise purchase of StarDivision in 1999, StarOffice has been supported on both the Solaris SPARC and x86 platforms. Beginning in 2002, when Desktop Solutions stopped distributing the updates for StarOffice 6.0 for Solaris x86, it became apparent that something was amiss. The community raised the issue with managers in Solaris Marketing and eventually those updates were released along with those for Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Solaris SPARC. This winter, when Sun announced the first beta program for StarOffice 6.1 without Solaris x86, the community raised our concerns with those managers in Solaris Marketing and I was hopeful that our advocates inside Sun would again be able to get StarOffice back on track. This spring, when the final beta release was announced, again without a build for the Solaris x86 platform, it became clear that our advocates had been unsuccessful in convincing the decision makers in Desktop Solutions to support our platform. Finally, I tried in vain to reach out to Mr. Sasaki. Despite the best efforts of the community, and the large number of customers who use StarOffice for Solaris x86 on their desktop systems, it is now clear that there will be no StarOffice 6.1 for Solaris x86 when it ships this fall.
Sun has at its disposal, a dedicated group of Solaris users who act as our customer representatives. I have long hoped that they would become the foundation for a formal Solaris Customer Council. This group is available to management to advise Sun on future directions, to act as a sounding board for new initiatives, and to voice customer concerns. Unfortunately, this group has been underutilized since its inception following Sun's January 8th 2002 press statements killing the Solaris x86 product. Senior management has yet to make a public commitment to using the Council to improve its business. Our advocates, Sun's representatives and facilitators on the Council, are not empowered to address many of our concerns, particularly those like StarOffice which cross product groups or divisions.
While customers are lobbying Sun's current and potential ISV partners to support Solaris platforms, management, by ceasing support for StarOffice for Solaris x86, has sent the message that it is not fully committed to Solaris. Sun management fails to appreciate the enormous potential of Solaris as part of a homogeneous enterprise solution, from the mobile desktop on the lap of a SunONE developer to the 100 processor server in the data center. It ignores demand, as evidenced by the preponderence of laptops submitted to Sun's community certified Hardware Compatibility List, for Solaris desktop systems. Instead, it pitches Project MadHatter Enterprise Linux Clients and only promises eventual support for Sun's existing workstation and thin client systems customers. Management has failed to empower those inside Sun who want to satisfy our needs, faltered in its efforts to provide parity between Solaris architectures, and has gone down the wrong path, seemingly “Mad as a Hatter.”
The Solaris x86 customer community's open letter, dated March 21st, 2002, to Sun Microsystems' Board of Directors led to the first high-level response from Sun Management to our concerns. I hope that you can again help our community from your position on the Board to get answers to my questions:
As a Solaris advocate and a Sun Microsystems stockholder, I am convinced that your attention to these matters is desperately needed.
Thank you.
John Groenveld |