Dave Edstrom's Catalyst Edstrom Photons-Electrons

The vote by the stockholders was approved to sell Sun Microsystems in July 2009.

This will be my last blog at Sun Microsystems.  I do not know what the future holds at this point.  I imagine that I will be told along with everyone else when/if the Oracle acquisition of Sun occurs.  I am ending my blogging at Sun because it just feels like the right time to do this and I want greater flexibility in expressing my personal views.  I do clearly understand and respect the legal requirements when  a company is being acquired.

I chose the photo above because my best memories of Sun were at Sun's Club for High Achievers and that was called Sunrise Club.  I was fortunate in that I was selected to go to 7 of them in my career.

Sun Microsystems will be just a memory, but a GREAT memory for those of us who put in a lot of blood, sweat, hard smart work, and fun all while creating lifelong friendships.   I came here as a true believer in "Open Systems for Open Minds" and that has been part of my DNA.  I will always bleed Sun purple :-)

What was the most fun I had at Sun?  That's really easy.  Working with Dave Patterson at Berkeley to reinvent the machine tool industry with MTConnect. 

What was I the most proud of?  My oldest son, John, being selected Sun's Campus Ambassador of the Month out of over 500 Sun Campus Ambassadors.

What team effort at Sun am I most proud of?   That is much harder for me.  I would say it would be a three way tie:

• The East Coast Technology Center (ECTC) that was an all SE volunteer group that created a Technology Center that held over 400 benchmarks and POCs in the Dunn Loring and McLean, VA Sun Microsystems offices.
• Software Genius University (SGU) This was also an SE led effort working with a variety of groups around Sun that put together over 740 hours of content.
• A little background history...
  
  Sun SGU grew out of the extremely successful Software Genius Program (SGP).  The
  genesis of SGP was a conversation that Scott Radeztsky and I had in the fall of
  2005 when we asked the basic question, "what can we do to help the SEs to
  embrace the developer and Sun's software stack?"  In January 2006, we kicked
  off the Software Genius Program Council (SGPC) where the SEs in Americas
  Software Practice created ten courses, or twenty hours, of software training.
  This program had one goal - to ensure Sun's Systems Engineers were properly
  equipped with the necessary software knowledge and skills to be successful.
  
  Sun SGU served a very important need when it was announced globally on July 1st
  2007.  SGU now has 740 hours of course work in it and the best of that content
  will be transitioned to Software University.  There are countless individuals
  who should be thanked for the (literally) 1,000s of hours that went into Sun SGU.
  We will continue to make the necessary student competence mappings transitions
  from the Sun SGU's University certifications levels to Software University's
  Accreditations much like we did with the global Solaris training that came out
  of Dan Berg's organization last FY.  We will make it very clear regarding the
  how, when, where, why and what as we go through this effort.
• Last but not least, was the  High Performance Workstations opportunity that put $2BILLION (Billion with a B) into Sun Microsystems over the years.

• A little background history...

  When I first spoke with Sun Microsystems, it was the summer of 1984 and Betsy MacLean (later Ferry) and Steve Ferry had recently went over to Sun Microsystems from Systems Development Corporation (SDC) a Division of Burroughs Corporation.  I met Betsy and Steve while we were all at SDC.  It is interesting to note that SDC based in Santa Monica, California, was arguably the world's first computer software company as noted by Wikipedia.  I was not smart enough to go over to Sun in 1984 :-)  

  Sun was founded in 1982 with Sun standing for Stanford University Network (SUN).

  In 1986, I was an SE for SDC and technical lead for a HUGE and extremely challenging opportunity for High Performance Workstations opportunity where Sun Microsystems was the digital workstation and Masscomp was the analog workstation of choice.   At the end of 1986 and long after the completion of the bid and benchmarks,  I started talking to Sun Microsystems about working there.   I started on May 4th, 1987.  

  Betsy hired me and was a great manager and leader.  My mentor was Neil Groundwater who was clearly the smartest person in computers that I had ever met.  In the summer of 1987 we found out we won the HPW business that has since been worth at least $2 BILLION to Sun Microsystems over the years - yes that is B as in BILLION. Steve Ferry was THE Sales Rep on this opportunity and to this day is far and away the best Sales Rep I have ever seen/worked with and a great friend to this day.
  

I already thanked Scott, Bill, Andy, Vinod and John previously, but you can check it again here.

For everyone else, there are way too many people to thank from fellow employees to customers to partners and most importantly - family and friends.

Most importantly, I must thank my beautiful wife - Julie - for all her support through thick and thin.

 If you are interested in following Dave Edstrom's blog, my private blog is at:

Dave Edstrom's private blog

I will definitely keep blogging on software, technology, life and of course Corvettes :-)

You can also reach me here via LinkedIn:

My private email is edstromvette@yahoo.com

I would be a liar if I did NOT state that I am bummed that Sun Microsystems had to end this way.  As the often quoted old poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. (1807–1892) goes:

"Of all sad songs of tongue and and pen, the saddest are these, what might have been....."

Stay in touch, take care and remember the three things that I, Dave Edstrom Sun employee #3705, always tells people:

1. Life is short.
2. Death is certain.
3. If you do not make your own decisions now, time will make them for you....
   

Dr. Roger Smith, CTO for PEO STRI, asked me a very thought provoking question:

"What one piece of career advice would you write on the back of your business card?  Imagine that you are about to give your business card to a young person entering your profession. But first, you turned that card over and wrote a short piece of advice to help them get started in their career. What would you write on the back of your own business card to help this person? "

If you would like to see the results of Dr. Smith's queries and/or provide your career advice that would go on the back of a business card, then please go to this site.:

Dr. Roger Smith's Advice on Back of a Business Card Site

I think it is very cool that Dr. Smith is doing this because the type of advice that I saw others provide are priceless!

My personal response was the following:

       I do have three things that I tell any young person, four things if I think they will listen and five things if I know them.

For any young person, my career advice is:

1) Life is short.
2) Death is certain.
3) If you do not make your own decisions now, time will make them for you.

If I think they are listening to me:

4) Always pay yourself first.  I tell the story about the importance of compound interest using the twins story on my blog.


                NOTE: The entry above is from the presentation that I give to Colleges and Unviversities.

If I know them well or their parents well, then I add the final piece of advice:

5) Never, EVER, sleep with someone who has MORE problems than you do.

My middle son Michael Edstrom graduated with a 3.95 GPA from Broad Run High School in Ashburn, VA last month.  Michael will be joining his brother, John, at Virginia Tech next year. Michael was in the top 10 percent of his class. The top ten percent was from  a 3.94 to a 4.46 average.   It was a class of champions, as brought out by this article:

                   "Dr. Ed Markley is not one given to hyperbole.

               In 13 years as Broad Run High School's principal -- and 27 years as a principal overall  he's not been one to heap on meaningless praise.

               That's what made what he said to the 342 members of the Class of 2009 on Saturday, June 20th, particularly meaningful.  This is probably the most outstanding graduating class that we've ever had.

                            First of all, you're great people, almost to a person. I couldn't ask for better kids.

Markley then recounted how this class led a school that received consecutive Governor's Awards for academic excellence, won four state athletic championships this year alone as well as producing a state champion in debate and earning $1.6 million in scholarships. By any measure, he said, this class was exceptional."

Broad Run's 2009 valedictorian was Nam Nguyen with a grade point average (GPA) of 4.46. The salutatorian was Corinne Lepe with a GPA of 4.39.

The top 10 percent of the class, with GPA's ranging from 3.93 to 4.46 included:

• Laurie Adams
• Justin Alexander
• Gi-Tae Baik
• Robert Bobbitt
• Allison Bogle
• Vanessa Bornholdt
• Nicole Bruno
• Catherine Casares
• Monica Chiu
• Michael Edstrom
• Nancy Ellsworth
• Kathryn Finney
• Jessica Foster
• Kelly Friedmann
• Hubaida Fuseini
• Michelle Gabro
• Elizabeth Geary
• Kelly Giltner
• Jacqueline Glass
• Kaleigh Ham
• Katherine Hayden
• Devon Hudson
• Cortney Jiggetts
• Christine Jordan
• Diana Kao
• Mari Kent
• Rohan Kothakapu
• Nicole Lavella
• Han Lin
• Julie MacDonald
• Wesley Malychev
• David Mann
• Jean Manuel-Tayag
• Scott Miles
• Mary Mitesser
• Alyson Mullee
• Patrick Murphy
• Jenny Nguyen
• Thang Nguyen
• Shannon Northcott
• Stephanie Parker
• Eric Pasztor
• Marissa Petty
• Michael Pokrass
• Ashley Pruett
• Michael Schweikert
• Erik Shamloo
• Sravan Tumuluri
• Christopher Tydings
• Megan Waterman
• Bradley Whitwell
• Ashley Williams
• Jaewon Yang
• Eric Zoepfl

It was truly an amazing group of kids.  For the list of the top ten percent, see here.

This is very cool recognition:

Sun is number 13 in Computerworld's list of the "100 Best Places to Work in IT 2009".

Having been here at Sun for over 22 years, I absolutely believe it.  I wonder where we were ranked during the dotcom heyday?   If you know, please leave a comment here on my blog....

 I should have blogged about this announcement of my new role when it occurred on June 4th, but I was so busy with JavaOne and a lot of customers, that I have not had the time for blogging.

 Since this is the first day of Sun's FY10 and I am on vacation here in Ocean City, Maryland waiting for the morning fog to burn off, I thought I should mention my new role Chief Technologist (CT) for Global Systems Engineering (GSE) in the Software Line  of Business (LOB).  That is a long title, but one that I am very, very excited about and thankful to have this new role at Sun.  I was the CT for North America and then the Americas (including Canada and South America). 

 Sun is still second to none in the ability to create strong software communities in the open source world.  We are continuing to tweak the monetization framework to adjust to this evolving economy.  Without question, open source already has won and it is just a matter of time before everyone realizes this.

Below is a snippet of the text from my announcement on June 4th, 2009.

Dave joined Sun in early 1987.  In 22+ years at Sun he has held a variety of positions working with a broad range of products and applications for a wide ranging set of customers in both commercial and government markets. Dave has been in the computer industry since 1978 and has held programming, management, sales and systems engineering leadership positions for a variety of companies, and has been working with Unix since 1981.  Most recently, Dave was the CT for North America's SW Practice holding this position for almost five years.

Dave led the creation of Software Genius University (SGU) with some of our top SEs in the Software Practice and across Sun that delivered 760 hours of content. Each week, Dave hosts a technology webinar, with Brian Leonard, for Sun's global
 employees and Sun's global partners.

Dave was the "father" of the Mid Atlantic Area Technology Center for Sun.  This multi-million dollar Center had over 300 customers through it in just over seven years and has posted world class industry leading benchmarks.  The Center won the 1996 World Wide System Engineering Creativity Award.