A ray of hope for Sun

Sun has found a good customer for its x86 servers, for once:

Sun has sold hundreds of its new "Galaxy" line of x86 servers to eBay to power the auction site's search technology. eBay is using the X4200 and X4100 machines, which use Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processor, as well as Sun StorEdge storage systems, the server and software company said Monday.

Well it's about time that Sun started to recover from their post-dot com bust. Granted, this deal isn't really the kind of mega dollar deal that they really need. Each of those servers costs between $2,500 and $7,500 according to Sun's website so this is worth just a few million dollars in sales to them. Then again, their stock is down to something like $3.90/share so just about any news is good news at this point for Sun.

A stronger Sun is of course a good thing for Java developers, in fact it's probably what would end up saving the future of Java development. Eye candy aside, if the divide between IBM with SWT and Sun with Swing is any indication, if IBM were to take the lead in steering the future of Java development, .NET would end up winning hand over fist.