Musings

Congratulations OpenSSO -- “Best innovation” Award

2009-05-07T09:34:42+00:00

Just wanted to pass along the news that OpenSSO has been awarded the Best Innovation Award by Kuppinger Cole

In the category “Best innovation”, the award went to the OpenSSO initative, founded and supported by Sun Microsystems. Their project, OpenSSO Fedlet has provided a lean solution for the Identity Federation.

Congratulations to Daniel, Pat and team.

Which Application Server to use with MySQL?

2009-04-29T05:16:00+00:00

At the MySQL User Conference last week I had a number of attendees come up to me to ask which application server they should be using with MySQL. They were looking for something that was fast, lightweight and compatible. To me the choice was obvious -- GlassFish!

So why GlassFish?

Project GlassFish, was launched when Sun open-sourced its application server and the Java EE Reference Implementation, was Sun's first step toward open-sourcing the entire Java platform. Less than a year after the initial launch, the GlassFish community delivered the first release of the GlassFish Application Server, a production-quality, Java EE-compliant application server, followed by a second release in 2007. Today, GlassFish is the leading open-source and open community platform for building and deploying next-generation applications and services. The GlassFish application server has been downloaded more than 18 million times since 2006.

Another choice might be Red Hat's JBoss application server that was released in 2006. Although JBoss has had some success in the past, I would caution that there are some issues around backward compatibility and features that are not supported in the commercial release of the product. In addition it seems to be pretty far behind as far as latest features around JavaEE are concerned.

In contrast, the GlassFish application server is backward-compatible; features released today will be supported in future freely available versions as well as future Sun-supported commercial versions of GlassFish Enterprise Server. Additionally, the freely available GlassFish application server is ready for production right out of the box. For these reasons, I recommend GlassFish application server over JBoss!

Tomcat application server is extremely popular with Java developers who only want to only use servlets, but it doesn't support the full Java EE stack. So why use only a bit of Java when you can use the full reference implementation?

GlassFish, LAMP and Weblogic.

2009-04-16T06:00:00+00:00

Just received notification about an exciting new webinar on GlassFish and LAMP is scheduled for May 13th. (Yes we like the 13th.. lucky for some). There are many developers using LAMP out there, but I also hear from enterprises that the issue soon becomes how to support and handle the integration issues around the LAMP components. For a view of how we have solved this issue be sure to sign up here.

While you are waiting for the webinar, you might be interested in this white paper on how GlassFish can be a great alternative to WebLogic. Give it a read especially if you are looking on how to migrate your non-ERP type applications to way lower TCO offering.

-Mark

Saving Over Oracle with GlassFish ESB -- A real case study

2009-04-14T05:02:00+00:00

I just spent some time reviewing what Pretium Telecom did with GlassFish ESB and their business results. Pretium Telecom is a large provider of fixed telephony in the Netherlands. The company’s 130 employees provide traditional, low-cost services to over 200,000 customers.

So what were their business benefits of using GlassFish over Oracle?

Accelerated development cycles by 40%–50%
Cut the total cost of ownership by approximately 50%
Gained the ability to launch a new VoIP offering three months earlier than projected

These are amazing results, but I can't say we were too shocked. Our TCO calculator might give you some insight into what you can save. On a 20 socket machine supporting 5,000 employees Oracle cost about $8M, whereas GlassFish ESB comes in at $2M.

Perhaps you are in the same place as Pertium and want to save millions, but are not sure about whether Open Source and GlassFish ESB is ready for prime time. I recommend you download GlassFish ESB and give it a try and hopefully you can be our next success story. I think Ruud de Greef, Chief Information Officer, at Pretium Telecom, says it the best:

“ In the past, we were suspicious of open source for business deployments, but there has been a big change in open-source technologies over the last couple of years. Products like GlassFish ESB and GlassFish Enterprise Server deliver a professional and reliable environment to base your business processes on. ”

Gartner's View on GlassFish from Jess Thompson

2009-04-10T08:07:44+00:00

Just wanted to give you a pointer to a great article by Jess Thompson from Gartner on GlassFish Portfolio. This article does a great job of setting up the case on why enterprises should look at open source (and why they shouldn't) and how GlassFish helps address these issues...

Give it a read and let me know what you think.

If you want more details on GlassFish check out http://www.sun.com/glassfish.

GlassFish ESB Saving Lives?

2009-04-08T15:40:19+00:00

As a technology vendor, it is always interesting to see what our customers are using our technology to solve. Some projects are interesting, others border on the mundane, and yet others really have the potential to change the world. The Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) project is one of those that will have a dramatic and positive impact to millions of people.

Imagine the possibilies and lives that will be saved by having health care records being shared between providers. Suddenly going on vacation and having to go to a strange hospital will be much safer: the doctors there will know about your ailments, drug interactions, even if you can't communicate with them. Deaths due to drugs being prescribed to patients that are alergic to them will hopefully decrease because the drug allergy information will be shared across providers. Naturally this is a complex problem to solve with many issues around privacy and security, but I am very happy to know that GlassFish ESB is at the heart of the solution.

Need more details:

eWeek: Sun Software Key to Electronic Medical Records Network
ZDNet: Sun showing NHIN work at HIMSS
Interview with Vish Sankaran (Program Director Federal Health Architecture)
Or the over 140 articles and counting on Google...

The problem with Proprietary Middleware Stacks

2009-04-05T17:14:00+00:00

There is a great saying that it took a long time to invent the wheel, but replicating it is easy! I think the main challenge with proprietary stacks is exactly this -- paying for a business model on a wheel that in its day was revolutionary, but today is old and not effective. Does your car still drive on a granite wheel -- didn't think so! The open source "wheel" has taken the best designs from the proprietary world and enhanced them, and in doing so created some great new solutions at lower costs.

What I am not suggesting is rip-and-replace! But I am suggesting you look at your whole application needs and see when open source alternatives like GlassFish will work.We have seen some really interesting cost savings by using GlassFish over the proprietary alternatives -- savings of up to $3M in some instances.

Now before you think that open source is just for those hot web 2.0 garage startups.. consider that T-Mobile is using GlassFish with some great results.

"High availability allows us to meet our stringent uptime requirements and the Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server enables us to cost-effectively deploy new services while meeting our performance and availability requirements," said Erez Yarkoni, vice president, T-Mobile, USA.

The other issue to consider with proprietary vendors is lock-in. Basically for the proprietary vendor lock-in is key to success. With lock-in they become a sole source vendor for your needs and they can charge what they like -- and may have!

The combination of high-cost, proprietary products and vendor lock-in frequently constrains businesses from embarking on new software initiatives -- something that customers I speak to can't afford to have happen.

Additionally, the capital expenditures and associated financial risk required to deploy proprietary products can either delay the profitability gains of new software initiatives or simply prevent enterprises from attempting innovative ideas to drive new revenue streams.

For example, proprietary products from BEA Systems/Oracle are far more expensive to acquire than open-source alternatives and don't offer enterprise developers the flexibility to customize to fit the business' changing needs. Although developers can submit feedback, the cycle of development is long and, with a limited number of engineers working on the software, new features and updates are delivered much more slowly than in open source.

To ensure that problems can be addressed as quickly as possible and to reduce operational costs, enterprises can chose a comprehensive open-source platform backed by an established commercial entity that provides support and understands the interdependencies not only of that platform but of other third-party products that are already in the enterprise's IT infrastructure.

I invite you to share your story, or read other stories from real users: http://blogs.sun.com/stories/

Open Source and the Enterprise

2009-04-03T10:50:07+00:00

I keep hearing from customers that I visit that cost is becoming (or has become) THE issue to deal with in 2009. More and more of these customers (and they are the large enterprises) are opening the dialog with "How do we save by using Open Source?" It is amazing that just 3-6 months ago open source was a hit and miss topic, but now it seems to be firmly in the mainstream.

Most enterprises that are considering open-source software typically want the best product from the different categories to make up a complete Web application platform: a Web server (like Apache), an application server (like GlassFish or JBoss), scripting (like PHP and Ruby), an Enterprise Service Bus (like OpenESB or MuleSource) and a portal (like LifeRay). Adopting this approach has some significant benefits but also presents its own challenges:

Cost/time to integrate the disparate projects together
Ability to effectively patch and maintain the disparate projects
Support of the product if/when problems arise and who can provide a fix for the product to address business critical issues

I would love to year how you are trying to handle these challenges. I know my colleges working with the proprietary vendors have decided to declare open source more expensive than proprietary, but I find that argument nonsensical.

I promise to publish any results here as well as how we are trying to solve this at Sun. Our approach might surprise you.. more to come...

Oracle Fusion Increase Prices 40% for SOA -- Does that make sense?

2008-08-20T07:00:00+00:00

Many customers and prospects I speak to today have a similar problem.. how to get the best ROI of 20% of IT spend. After all the other 80% goes to maintenance of existing systems.

The challenge is huge since the business is looking to IT to drive strategic business value and increase revenue to the company by either creating offerings that increase revenue per use (ARPU) or drive the business into new areas that result in more subscribers.

Now some proprietary software vendors have put the added squeeze on customers by arbitrarily increasing software license costs (Oracle just increased their Fusion costs by over 40%) with no additional value add. This is absolutely amazing since there is ZERO new value just a huge increase in cost. For those customers looking for other options I recommend you try our TCO calculator at http://www.sun.com/logic to see what Sun can save you by just changing your software vendor. In addition we promise no stupid software audits and if you decide to change you hardware topology go ahead.. again no additional costs!

Here at Sun we are about providing real business return for you by only charging you for the value we add. So if you are wanting to save over $6M on your software costs for SOA register for our SOA offering and see how much return you can create for your business.

-Mark

OpenSSO Huge Customer Demand

2008-07-23T11:44:31+00:00

Enterprise software customers are increasingly choosing open source software because it gives them greater flexibility, access to cutting-edge technology and faster time to market. Over the past year and a half, we've seen tremendous interest and participation in the OpenSSO community from hundreds of companies around the world.

Based on customer feedback from Medavie Blue Cross, Alcatel-Lucent, and others we have been feverishly working to create OpenSSO Express, basically a completely supported and indemnified product from Sun from the OpenSSO base. Give it a try and let me know how well it meets your needs.

What is LAMP?

2008-07-23T07:04:38+00:00

We have been having a lot of interesting internal debates about what to call our new offering in the LAMP space -- see release: Sun Microsystems Unveils Enterprise AMP Stack.

As we all know LAMP started off as being (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) but if I use Ruby am I suddenly not a LAMP developer am I a LAMR developer? Or if I use Apache, MySQL and PHP on Windows, am I a WAMP developer? And what do I call it if I use Progress, or Python, or ?

Internally we often call our Solaris stack SAMP, but again it just seems strange that for each variant we have another 4 letter acronym.

So what should we have called our offering? Basically we are supporting Apache, MySQL and PHP on Linux, Solaris and Windows.

-Mark

How to save $2.76 Million USD

2008-06-27T07:41:19+00:00

We have been working really hard at creating a compelling offering for customers that want to be freed from proprietary database and application server vendors that are arbitrarily raising their prices. We have just announced a New GlassFish and MySQL Offering that gives unlimited usage based on the number of employees in an organization. If you have not heard the news listen to a recap here, or read the full press release here.

For a typical customer with under 1,000 employees running application servers on 20 dual-CPU, dual-core x86 servers and running database servers on 10 dual-CPU, dual-core x86 servers, the three year total cost of ownership (TCO) for proprietary software will exceed $3 million USD. The three year TCO for GlassFish and MySQL Unlimited for this same configuration is just $240,000 USD – a savings of over $2.76 million USD. For details on the comparison see http://www.sun.com/mysql/glassfish

At last a solution that doesn't require you call your software vendor if you decide to add database instances, or deploy on more machines, or change hardware configuration, or ...

Check out the site and let me know how much your company will save.

Oracle helping you switch to GlassFish?

2008-06-24T07:28:48+00:00

Sometimes what competitors do really help with our own marketing efforts. With the flood of customers downloading GlassFish and MySQL, I was wondering what was up and thanks to Eduardo for putting his finger on the compelling event -- forget the economy, Oracle raises it prices!

I encourage you to try out an alternative, TCO friendly option of MySQL and GlassFish. What is there to lose? Oh perhaps a few payments to Oracle!

-Mark

Calling All Geeks -- Twittering Teddy Bear

2008-06-18T12:08:05+00:00

OK, this must be the ultimate geek thing to do... making a twittering teddy bear. Thanks to Guy for tweeting about this...

How 2.0: How to Make a Twittering Teddy Bear from My Home 2.0 DIY on Vimeo.

Wonder what else I could use in my house? Maybe the Twittering washing machine, or twittering fridge?

-Mark

More coverage on our JCAPS/SOA Announcement...

2008-06-11T12:48:01+00:00

What is always fun to see, as a marketing person, is what the press does on all the announcements and briefings we do. Some reporters just look at the press release and repackage it for their readers, others package the news absolutely incorrectly, and the ones I really love are those that listen to the news, but can drill down a little deeper and show insight. John Waters from Application Development Trends is a great example of the latter...

-Mark

A big day for SOA

2008-06-09T15:33:46+00:00

We have been feverishly working on the next release of our JCAPS product and I am really happy to report that today is the day that we announce it to the world. Although we are just announcing it today, we have had many customers using it already and making sure it is ready for prime time. The press release has all the details but for me the these 3 features excited me the most:

1) Built from Open Source

JCAPS 6 is built from the OpenESB community. The importance of this is two fold -- for the JCAPS customer it ensures that the product is more open and mitigates the risk of vendor lockin, for the potential customer or general developer out there they can use the Enterprise Service Buss features of OpenESB, knowing that if they find the product indispensable (and I am sure they will!) they can migrate up to the full featured version of JCAPS. As a side benefit for Sun and our sales team it reduces the sales cycle.

2) Powerful update to the tested and popular JCAPS 5

For existing customers this is the "must have release" since we have been listening to your feedback and have added additional features like support for BPEL 2, event notification and JBI (reduced vendor lock-in). For prospects and customers waiting for the "right" SOA platform, this is it. The feedback from our early access customers has been fantastic, but don't take my word for it, give it a try by downloading OpenESB today and giving it a whirl!

3) Focussed on real customer pain points

SOA gets a bad name because it doesn't solve world hunger (wish it did, but it doesn't!) But what it does a fantastic job at solving is the "single view of the customer problem" -- see my posting on Sibel for me information.
Basically the product allows for the real time consolidation of master data (like customer, patient, supplier, citizen, product, etc) providing businesses with the tools needed to solve one of the biggest challenges today i.e. customer retention and acquisition. This new product is in the Master Data Management market and is aptly called Sun's Master Data Management Suite.

Let me encourage you again to read the release, download and use the OpenESB and let me know what you think of the product.

Are you an Identity Hero?

2008-05-12T10:16:08+00:00

Do you have what it takes? Do you really think that you can beat the Sarbox monster? We know that the real world is ripe with real identity thieves and villians, but we also know that you will enjoy the game online before deploying a real identity solution to your enterprise.

Enjoy, and let us know how you do!

Babies and Fathers

2008-04-28T20:26:42+00:00

As most of you know I have a 15 month old baby boy and I am sure I didn't appear in any of these videos, but you never know...

All Ink Must Be Good Ink

2008-04-28T15:52:45+00:00

Not sure you have all been following the news in Europe this week, but it seems that Jerome Kerviel has found himself a new job. This is the same person who lost more than $7.7 billion for his prior employer -- Societe Generale and almost caused the stock market in Europe to tank. So what job did he get? You are not going to like this answer -- he is now an IT Consultant!

Isn't this just crazy? I would have thought that, assuming he didn't spend the rest of his life in prison, he would have never been able to land a job again. Can you imaging reading the resume and hiring this guy? Absolutely amazing...

Latest news on the Fedlet

2008-04-24T13:50:46+00:00

CIO Priorities 2008

2008-04-10T08:32:49+00:00

I was reading Larry Dignan's blog on ZDNet this morning and the found the discussion on what Business are expecting from their IT really interesting.

This really mirrors what I have been hearing from our customers around cutting costs, but at the same time attracting and retaining customers. Quite a tough act to follow since fixing business processes, and attracting and retaining customers probably are on the "increase cost" side of the equation. So then how do these CIO's reduce cost?

Speaking to our customers they are looking at Sun to create disruptive technologies that allow them to reduce costs while providing increased functionality -- one tough requirement to follow. We continually innovate to make this requirement a reality. Consider Java Enterprise System -- where we take a complete pre-integrated middleware stack and price it on a per-employee basis -- yes, no machines to count, sockets to count, etc. -- Disruption of pricing models. Or consider our GlassFish Application Server -- where we provide a complete Java EE application server that is freely deployable.

So if you like the CIO's cited in Gartner's study are trying to reduce costs but gain and retain new customers, I recommend you consider Sun's portfolio.

Congratulations -- New OpenOffice Website...

2008-04-09T08:16:56+00:00

I have been meaning to blog about this for a while, but if you have not been to the new openoffice.org website, you really need to go there and see the complete redesign of the page. It is absolutely amazing!

Gone is all the clutter and tons of words, replaced by a simple page that really draws the audience in.

I wish more web pages were build upon this simple premise that home pages are gateways that need to draw the audience in and provide simple navigation to the pertinent information.

Congratulations again to the community redesigned OpenOffice.org.

Stop Treating Your Customer as Sibel!

2008-04-08T07:00:00+00:00

I have just had quite a fight with my financial institution who did not think it appropriate to contact me to tell me my stock sale had not been completed as I had requested. The customer service representative didn't know that I had other dealing with the bank and treated me, I suppose like they do with all new customers, with a high degree of "who cares!" and told me that it must be my mistake. I escalated to the management and when they realized that I had other dealing with them -- mortgage, investment, savings, etc. they were suddenly all apologetic and refunded me the difference between what the stock was sold incorrectly for and what it should have been sold for. Maybe in the initial rep had known all my relationships they would have done a better job at making me happy

Straight after this episode, I was standing in line at a security gate at my local airport where they allow frequent flyers from one particular airline the ability to bypass the security line. Again I was astonished that this airport didn't see my business across multiple airlines important to them, the fact that I travel almost weekly didn't seem to matter, but because I wasn't on some super-elite status of a particular airline I was relegated to the "standard line."

These although trivial examples brought home to me the business need for a single view of the customer. Harrods had exactly this problem until they implemented Java CAPS. Now they can view their customer as one.

Not seeing the customer as one entity sometimes have dire consequences. There has been much written about drug interactions and patients dying because the doctor and the pharmacist didn't know about other medications that the patient was on. I am glad there is a solution to this as well, and Cleveland Clinic is a great example of an organization who had implemented a technological solution to address these needs.

I urge you all to consider making your customer happier by ensuring you see one 1 customer -- not the 24 isolated interactions you currently have. If you need help, check out the white paper on what we can do to help.

Accenture and Sun Unveil New Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Security

2008-04-02T05:00:00+00:00

If you have not read the news, better read it now!

Sun has partnered with Accenture to develop pre-built solutions that make it easier and less costly for businesses and governments to protect their information systems from growing security threats. Built using Sun's identity management and service-oriented architecture (SOA) technologies, these solutions help provide stronger security, improve compliance and risk management, and offer a simplified deployment method to speed implementations, and reduce cost and complexity.

If you want more details listen to his great podcast on the topic.

-Mark

Do you need a FedLet?

2008-03-24T09:14:52+00:00

You know when Daniel posts a blog like this, there can only be something really cool and exciting about to happen.. Unfortunately he has not shared the news with me, but I was hoping that by driving enough traffic and comments to him he might spill the beans!

Come on Daniel.. what is a FedLet? Or is it a Fedlet, fedlet, FEDlet, FEDLET, ....

-Mark

Obama Passport Breach

2008-03-21T09:36:34+00:00

I was reading the news yesterday and this morning on the case of certain contractors accessing Obama's passport records and the firing of certain individuals involved. What was really interesting to me, as we consider the case as it has been reported, is that the individuals involved had the correct access levels to get this information. So in technical parlance they had been authenticated to the system, they were authorized to access passport records, but it was a business policy that was violated -- no data access for non-official business.

I wonder how many businesses have not even considered this a potential risk and compliance issue? The good news is that with Sun identity offerings and our latest product Sun Role Manager we can help customers address these needs.

Update: Now it seems that it is all candidates... I wonder what else these contractors were doing? Mmmm...

-Mark

Solving Real Business Needs

2008-03-17T06:00:00+00:00

I have spent the last few weeks traveling the country speaking to customers, prospects, and industry analysts. Discussing the trends they are seeing, what they are doing, and the problems they are facing.

What was amazing about this was a consistent theme I hear from all of them -- "How do I expand my reach while mitigating my risk?"

What is Reach and why do companies care?

Most companies are trying to reach out to more customers, partners, markets, and gain opportunities. They are looking at ways of expanding their relationships with their suppliers and their entire value chain.

Consider the following examples:

The Government of Norway has undertaken an amazing project to enable their 4.5 million citizens to seamlessly access over 200 services over the web.
Or consider the Cleveland Clinic where they provide their 2.6 million patients access to their 2,000 service providers and provide authenticated access to prescription data for the thousands of retailers that might dispense this medication.

These are not isolated examples, but rather a growing trend where businesses seek competitive advantage by extending their reach.

The other side of REACH.. .RISK!

Unfortunately expanding the reach can have a nasty side effect, expanded risk. These two trends or business forces, reach and risk are in opposition to one another. Consider "Zero-Reach" systems such as those dramatized in the movie Mission Impossible, where Ethan Hunt has to break into a physically secure location to access a machine. Almost no reach and very low risk. This is in contrast to the opposite end of the spectrum. The Internet where there is almost infinite reach, but
almost infinite risk. The business reality is that most customer facing applications live in this infinite reach/infinite risk arena.

One cannot stop risk, but the goal of any organization it to balance these forces of risk and reach to an acceptable level. Every organization, or potentially every system in every organization has to
consider the balance and determine what makes business sense.

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." -- Robert F. Kennedy

This difficult balancing act isn't easy, consider the billions of dollars lost by Jerome Kerviel from Societe Generale. Arguably they gave Jerome too much reach!

It seems that one cannot read the news without hearing about the effects of this reach/risk:

Banks failing to manage IT risk study
A new survey by Ernst & Young has found that the majority of global banks are failing to align IT risk management practices within more general enterprise and operational risk frameworks.
http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=18159
Top Banks Named in New Identity Theft Study
Report Examines Incidents at Major U.S. Financial Institutions.Shockwaves rumbled through the US banking industry this week with the release of a new report estimating the annual incidents of Identity Theft associated with the nation's top banks.
http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=724&rf=022908

Just like investing money, there is no silver bullet or optimal balance around these forces, instead businesses need to determine their "Risk/Reach tolerance level". Most organizations are forced to have a minimal risk/reach ratio by government and SEC requirements like Sarbanes-Oxley.

How does Sun help?

Sun's Software Infrastructure products and solutions are designed to help with this careful balancing act.

Consider General Electric. GE has a reach of over 300,000 employees and contractors that need access to a wide variety of telecommunication assets. Naturally this pool of people are in a constant state of flux and this creates business and financial risk. GE needed a way to ensure automated provisioning and perhaps more importantly automated de-provisioning of users access as users joined and left the company. Sun's Identity Manager was deployed to manage the risk/reach ratio by creating a system that automated the provisioning and de-provisioning of users. This helped GE reduce risk posed by terminated and contingent workers accessing email and application accounts.

We welcome the opportunity to help you solve your specific risk/reach tolerance issues and encourage you to look at our recently announced acquisition of Vaau to see how we are extending our portfolio to help you solve these issues.

Customers...

2008-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

I have just returned after spending 3 fantastic days at our Customer Advisory Council, in Florida. Let me start by saying how humbled I was that very senior executives would take 3 days out of their excruciating schedule to be away from family and their jobs to meet with us. Thanks just doesn't do justice to the gratitude and respect we at Sun have for these invaluable customers.

We covered a lot in these 3 days, from product roadmaps and tactical plans to strategic directions and portfolio gaps. We had some really frank discussions that cannot be captured in this blog, but I thought it might be interesting to discuss the trends I saw at this meeting...

Open Source -- Every customer is committed to open source, not because of any religious zeal, but rather that this is the way that adoption occurs. They see, like Sun does, that open source is a means to an end. By open sourcing products it increases their adoption by users, partners and perhaps more significantly for this audience by service providers that will be doing more and more coding. It really is about building a robust and thriving community that will increase adoption and knowledge of the product. For the customer this is key to them finding resources that know and can use the product.

Paying for Open Source -- every customer at the CAC without exception wanted to pay for the open source offering for support. Not for simple "brake-fix" support, but for patch support and indemnification. They saw Sun standing behind the product and being there 24x7 to help them with any problem they had as a huge value add. This was additional proof that the open source strategy that we at Sun have embarked upon is the winning strategy. Those vendors who ignore the open source trend will be left behind polishing that proverbial proprietary apple till it is rotten inside.
Offshore Development -- another interested trend. Most of the customers used offshore development for coding. They either used Sun's, another service provider or their own skilled resources as architects for their product, but they used or wanted to use "cheaper" resources for coding.
Information Risk Management -- every customer had either already deployed or where in the process of deploying an identity solution. The acquisition that we just did of Vaau was particularly interesting on how that bolsters Sun's leadership position in the Governance Risk and Compliance Arena.
Consolidation -- most of the customers were in the process of consolidating data centers to simplify operations and reduce costs. Sun's new xVM strategy was very interesting since it allows not just consolidation but increased utilization.
Service Oriented Architecture -- All customers had embarked down a SOA route, but few viewed this as a technology issue. They really viewed it as a new way of development (or perhaps a new discipline that created reusable services) The hype of SOA had not influenced their development, indeed some of them had not even implemented an Enterprise Service Bus (like OpenESB) but were ensuring that point to point SOA integration occurred. Others had gone further down the SOA route, but only when there was distinct business benefit.
Buying Stacks not Point Products -- Another interesting trend that again validates Sun's strategy is that most of these customers were sold on Sun's products to fix a particular problem, be it Single Sign-on, Identity Management, Single Customer View and the like, but they bought into Sun's application infrastructure they purchased Java Enterprise System (JES). The JES model and philosophy of simple pricing, the sum is greater than the parts, and complete stack is what made the deal.
Vendor Assessment=Replacement! -- Some vendors go into their customers and make them spend endless hours and resources documenting where software is being used and how many licenses they are bough. They are really like vultures hoping that they can extract a few more dollars from their customer base. Luckily at Sun we don't do this, and it was this exact practice that inspired the JES model of simple subscription pricing. What was enlightening is that as soon as a vendor starts this assessment the customer looks for ways to replace them. Why waste time with a "vulture vendor"

There was much more that we learned from this invaluable event, but unfortunately a lot of it cannot be shared on a public blog, but rest assured that the advice and direction given will find it into our products and our strategy... Thanks again to our customers for giving us the opportunity to listen.

Job Change

2008-03-09T20:26:59+00:00

I cannot believe that I have not blogged at all this year, and for those still subscribed to the blog I have committed the classic blog error of non-posting. But just like falling off a horse the best course of action is get back on the horse.

My job has changed quite a lot since my last post, I have taken over the marketing around Sun's infrastructure (aka Middleware) products. I am sure I will still muse over OpenOffice and the incredible surge of adoption of this product, but my focus will naturally shift into middleware and where the industry is going.

I am hoping you will enjoy this ride into Software Infrastructure as much as I enjoy this new responsibility

Must have upgrades to Microsoft Office...

2007-12-13T09:41:52+00:00

I was just catching up on Erwin's blog on OpenOffice, and wow.. what a ton of great information there, but it got me wondering what to give those friends of ours that are still using Microsoft Office? I am sure we could all get them OpenOffice, but what if they aren't quite ready for that yet? Well I think the following two extensions are a must!

ODF Plugin: With the Dutch being the latest government to endorse ODF, our friends need this plugin to make sure their proprietary formatted documents can be converted to ODF and used around the world. It seems that if you are going to work in almost any field these days, the ability to read .doc files is something that cannot be taken for granted , and it is being phased out. ODF is the open standard filling this void.
Presentation Minimizer: In one of my prior posts I discussed this new extension that puts OpenOffice presentations on a diet, but it also works with PowerPoint! Yes, give this extension (it is free) to your PowerPoint buddies, and they can make their presentations much smaller. My limited tests show about a 50% reduction in file size, but one comment about the Presentation Minimizer has "I just compressed 60 MB Powerpoint down to 3 MB - that's cool."

-Mark