Vinod Khosla and Sun Microsystem

VINOD KHOSLA AND SUN MICROSYSTEM

Case Write Up – Question 1-3

1. Does Vinod Khosla have a real chance at changing Computervision’s decision? Does Sun have a better product? Can Sun be regarded as a reliable long term vendor?

Sun Microsystem is a company launched in 1982 and they operate in the engineering market especially through workstation. Sun’s product is a powerful modular network-based graphics workstation. Despite this product is well recognized especially in universities, in the OEM market they still have a limited market share. Due to this no reputation and others factors Sun’s has not been able to get the contract with Computervision. On the other hand Apollo has got it, thanks to their well-recognized reputation. After that to rise their credibility and influence in the market they hired some specialists in the entire activities sectors.

In my opinion Vinod Khosla has a real chance to change Computervision’s decision, because, his product for some real factors, is better than the Apollo’s one, firstly in term of cost performance. The price of Sun’s workstation is between 5000 and 7000$ while the Apollo’s price is 25000$ so five times more with similar product capabilities such as high-resolution graphics and networking.

He should demonstrate the differences between products, especially focus the attention of Apollo’s decision of non-standardize the products, which at the beginning was consider as an advantage but not anymore. This happened because the operating system of the network technology has now become a disadvantage for Apollo’s company because they are out of the new emerging industry standard while Sun is completely in.

In my opinion Khosla should also try to explain their strategy for the OEM market, which want to reach long term goals and at the same time adapt product and price strategy.

On the other hand, all the senior executives and business people inside Computervision prefer Apollo’s workstation especially because they are more focused in it reliability as a long term vendor and in the internal structure of the company. For sure as I mentioned before Apollo has more credibility than Sun because they have a bigger company with more clients, more revenues but also more specialized employees in each sector while Sun is for sure less competitive in marketing, R&A and sales.

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