Getting started

Now - how do you start a blog? Especially without it becoming totally "Me too!" - I guess, lets start with introductions.

Sun covers some especially large accounts with a dedicated global team - and Vodafone is one of them. This blog is written by the two Chief Technologists of Suns global Vodafone team. Yes, two, as we partition responsibilities a bit - we got a lot to cover with 27 countries and 31 more where Vodafone has partner Networks.

Adrian and Olaf act as adviser to Vodafones architecture teams and all levels of management ensuring Sun's and Vodafone's success.

Olaf Schnapauff is the Chief Technologist - Strategy for Suns Vodafone Account, globally. He is responsible for the technical strategy in our business with Vodafone, driving business development and deals wordwide. He is also a Sun Microsystems Principal Engineer, a global technology leadership position, and a Datacenter Ambassador.

His responsibility spans across all layers of IT and Telco infrastructure, Handsets and Terminal/Java strategies and covers Vodafone and affiliates across the globe.

While he is not at Vodafone (or on a plane) he keeps busy sailing and snowboarding , or relaxes with the other way to enjoy technology - HiFi and Home Cinema.

Adrian Johns is the Chief Technologist - Innovation for Suns Vodafone Account, globally. He is responsible for the technical strategy in our business with Vodafone, driving business development and deals worldwide. He has been with Sun for 9 years as part of the UK telecommunications team and during this period has worked on many leading Wireline and Wireless accounts.

As one of the two Global Technology Architects forming the Sun Vodafone CTO Office, Adrian is jointly responsible for influencing Vodafone on the selection of open-systems technologies utilizing Sun's service-driven architectures. This responsibility spans across all layers of IT infrastructure, including hardware, software, networking, applications and operations, and covers Vodafone and affiliates across the globe.

A key element of Adrian's role is to Map all Sun offerings onto Vodafone's Technology and Service requirements, from Devices (PDA, Mobiles. Laptops etc), to traditional Telecommunication Network (SS7, SOA etc), to Data Centre backend systems (CRM, Billing etc) and back to there content delivery systems (SDP), Adrian acts as adviser to the customer architecture teams and all levels of management in all these levels and maps both short and long term business requirements into an enterprise technology strategy, ensuring Sun's Products and Solutions meet and exceed Vodafone's requirements.

Adrian brings over 18 years of experience to the account, having spent many of these years in Pre-Sales roles across several IT companies. During this period Adrian has worked across many industry and technologies areas including, Manufacturing, Film and Entertainment, Web Design, Media Streaming, Colour publishing, Service Delivery Platform, IP Multimedia, Partner Education and Telecommunication.

What have we been doing with Global Vodafone since the formation of the CEM ?

Over the past few years Sun has been very heavily involved with Vodafone's Global plans which include such projects as the Service Delivery Platform (GDP) and unification of customers experiences (Vodafone Live & VFX Java in the Handset), and more recently Sun have won the Data Centre Consolidation project, a project that will see Vodafone's first steps in creating a Global footprint for their back end services, but these are just a few project we are currently involved in . Moving forward Vodafone are looking at building Global based solution with the aim to simplify their infrastructure and to create a common and consistent user experience across all areas of there business. Sun is very well positioned in many of these major projects and for the past 7 years we have been engaged at the Technical and business heart of these major industry projects is well as our strong engagement with all 27 Operating companies and partners around the world. Sun is one of the few companies who can truly say that we are engaged with Vodafone from the Handset to the Network

As the Global Sun team it is vital that we share this information with you and your teams, and share our experiences and knowledge on where we see Vodafone and the Industry going.

Why should you come back?

Of course because we will share all those crazy things happening in Mobile Technology around the globe with you - and we hope you will enjoy discussing big and little trends, funny and sad stories, and get a glimpse into our life and how we try to help with moving a mobile Lifestyle to the next level. And ... talk to us. Email, leave comments, let us know if you think we are crazy.

Now - Chapter 1 (Olaf) - 3GSM and how 50000 people look for the next big thing

For those of you not having had the pleasure and pain of 3GSM: It is the worlds largest conference for the mobile telecommunications industry. Its a beast. Everyone is there - which means some friends had to stay over 90 minutes drive away from Barcelona. Hotels have the not-so-funny way to overbook and then move people to far away affiliate hotels (of course, for the same price). We should have been clever and stayed on a nice sailing yacht in the Bacelona Marina as well - that was a cool idea Lena!

So, what is the Next Big Thing? Everyone seemed to agree you cannot continue to live of Voice and SMS (and a little Data from your Mobile Connect 3G Card. So we heared about Ring(up)tones (well, old), Games (hmm, better), Adult Content (well, on your phone?), MobileTV (a lot cooler, but peoples expectations and reality still differ), and of course the Big Voice over IP (VoiP) question - several players talk about VoiP - be it Skype collaborations or native VoiP to the handset. How does your revenue develop when you lump premium-price Voice service into the bulk or flat-prices Data stream?

Then there is Music - our (now Ex-)Boss, Scott McNeally, likes to tell everyone since 1982 or so that "The Network is the Computer" and everything moves back to the Network. Where is your Voicemail today? Still on that answering machine on your desk? Likely not, its in the network.

But where is your Music? Propably on your MP3 player in your pocket. But why? How about listening to anything you want, tailored to your taste, out of the full music archive with everything (or a lot) of the music that exists. Live, streamed over the air. For a flat fee. Not such a bad Idea. An interesting move into this future, RadioDJ. Watch CeBIT next week. Lots of interesting things going on there.

I thought the coolest thing to see what handsets and their use cases. I challenged myself to find my next big thing - the ONE device I want to carry around and work with. A Phone-PDA-Email-Laptop-on-the-move thing. There are some real cool 3G Phones. And then some way cool Email-enabled Devices. But it should of course have 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, a decent, frames-capable Browser, a (small, ok) full keyboard - while not ending up being as large as my Laptop. And it needs to sync with my Addresses, Notes, Calendar. On all Systems I use, including my company calendar. Well.

Maybe next year. For now, I guess I will need to carry a Phone and a PDA-ish Phone which serves as the laptop replacement for mobile use. I admit this year made me a mobile Email junkie. And maybe I will get addicted to MobileTV or RadioDJ this year?