Sun Auctioning Software, Hardware Bundle On eBay

Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy unveiled the auction, which he said was to provide a complete development environment, in his keynote at the JavaOne show Tuesday morning. Sun is offering 12 of the systems--which include a three-year subscription to Java Studio Enterprise toolset, a Solaris 9 operating system and a three-year subscription SunSpectrum Silver Support, along with a new workstation based on an Advanced Micro Devices Opteron processor--on eBay via the Web site, www.ebay.com/sun. The bidding price started at 1 cent Tuesday morning and the highest price for one of the development systems was up to $1,725 by 12:30 p.m. PST on Tuesday.

In a keynote Monday, Sun President and COO Jonathan Schwartz said Sun was pondering the idea of putting together a bundle of developer tools and resources and a server on eBay with a reserve price of 50 cents to $1 and asking developers to bid on it.

Later that day, Sun Executive Vice President of Software John Loiacono told CRN that Sun would move forward with an auction in the next 60 or 90 days, but said it wouldn't necessarily use eBay as the venue. He also said Sun, Santa Clara, Calif., would use dynamic bidding-style pricing to sell systems comprised of hardware and software going forward.

In a question-and-answer session following McNealy's keynote Tuesday, Schwartz said that the move to sell products on eBay had been approved by Sun's channel partners and that Sun would leverage them in its efforts.

"If you look at what we're doing with auctions on eBay, every channel partner out there should assume that we will incorporate them in that selling and marketing process," Schwartz said. "We are very much committed to using the new business models, our technology and awareness to cultivate our largest partner community ever."