I wish I weren’t just coming off a full day of airline hell…then I might have an easier time finding the words to savage the thinking behind Sun Microsystems move from their SUNW ticker to the JAVA symbol. Lots of folks have already weighed in, with reactions ranging from bemusement (most outsiders) to anger (as I’ve heard from Sun insiders). The justification from Jonathan is that this is all about brand equity and that OpenOffice and Java are two of the best known brands on the internet. He goes on to say…

“It’s hard to know exactly, but I’d bet more people know Sun via OpenOffice than know us through datatcenters. That’s an astonishing assertion, but with the internet now reaching billions of end users, the number of consumers on the internet dwarfs the number of IT professionals. The numbers are staggering.”

Sure, lots of people have heard the word “Java” and maybe kind of know about OpenOffice or maybe even use it. I’ll grant that. However, the PEOPLE WHO ACCOUNT FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF YOUR REVENUE SPEND THEIR MONEY ON SUN SYSTEMS – AND THAT’S HOW THEY KNOW YOU! I just spent a few minutes looking at Sun’s most recent 10-K. Surprisingly, they don’t seem to break out software revenue from hardware revenue – it’s all “Product Revenue”. If I’m wrong, and they do disclose software revenue, let me know – but I sure didn’t see it. Given what I know about Sun, I would hazard a guess that pure software revenue – not associated with a Sun system (non-o/s revenue, independent of a system sale) is a very low percentage of total revenue. Single digits? Less?

I don\’t know, I’m tired, maybe I’ve gotten this all wrong….maybe other companies should look at changing their ticker to something more descriptive. Maybe Home Depot should be “WOOD”, Wal*Mart “JUNK”…I can think of at least one IT industry company who should be forced to change their ticker to “AHOLE” by law….

Changing the symbol to JAVA isn’t all that huge a deal…it won’t make their systems disappear or slow them down. But it does send a message, and the message is “hardware isn’t as important to us as it used to be.” Which doesn’t seem like a great message to send if you’re a company who depends on hardware and associated service revenue to make your annual nut.