Sun says it's giving Dell an ass-whoopin

Sun's claims that its new Galaxy servers leave market leader (by a huge margin over Sun) Dell in the dust. I guess Sun is feeling confident in its benchmarks and not waiting for the market to validate its findings. The prankster executives at Sun hired a plane to fly a Sun banner over Dell's headquarters and are unleashing an ad campaign (some censored by publications), with themes like 'Dell rhymes with hell.'

It's has beer drinking football fan, in-your-face appeal, and is also a calculated appeal for the attention of CIOs with large budgets. If the products perform as advertised, Dell, as well as HP and IBM, have a product development challenge on their hands.

Quoted in a news.com story, Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said, "It's probably not possible to be head and shoulders above the competition in the x86 space. There just isn't that much opportunity for being compellingly different. That said, they're nice boxes, with good management features, prices and performance." Maybe he underestimates what Andy Bechtolsheim has done with Sun's new rack mount servers. And, maybe not. Awaiting Michael Dell's response, who won't be easily vanquished or resort to trash talking, and more feedback from the market and users.