Tuesday September 28, 2004 Solaris x86 users, commend yourself
Recentely, my manager required me to read Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends & Influence People to improve on some of my people skills, and rightfully so. I often have a habit of being quick to critisize people for some of their weaknesses. And this certainly holds true for their use of operating systems. Especially should they not be using a superior operating system on their laptop or server, as me and many of my colleagues do.
As I started to read this book, it came to my attention that peole that do go to the trouble of using Solaris should be commended, rather than those who don't being ridiculed.
One of my colleagues (and friend), Jim Grisanzio, was recentely having me help him load Solaris which now includes the Java Desktop System on his laptop, and as he pointed out some of the weaknesses in comparison to the alternative operating systems. I immediately became defensive. As I think back on it now, Jim should be commended for going to the trouble of installing and using our product, as there are still a few shortcoming when using such a robust and power system on commodity based laptops in today's world.
It sometimes seem unimaginable to me that anyone would think that using Solaris on their laptop would have any room to complain, after all, it's come so far in the past year and many features are available to make our lives easier and allow more people to use Solaris in their environments. But we still can learn from our competition and we need to listen to the users more to make their lives not only as easy, but easier than the competition where possible.
I have helped countless people install Solaris on their laptops and servers inside Sun within the past year and a half that I literally can't count them. And I think this really shows that people are able to use Solaris in an enterprise environment and that it is certainly getting easier to use every day. These are people that previously were not using Solaris on their hardware in many cases, so compliments are in order to all of them. Sure, Solaris is not perfect, but neither are we as humans either. And as we continue to listen to the customers more and make the changes that they have been asking for over the past, the better it will be in the long run. It's really gratifying that Solaris has come so far over the past year and a half, and it's gonna get that much better over the next year and a half. If we continue to make it better, we won't need to ridicule our competition any longer, and the product will continue to speak for itself. The users will see the benifit of using and developing on such a great system, and our userbase will continue to grow. Unlike our competition who often ridicules our product for it's shortcomings, the time is here for us to turn that ridicule around and heed their advice on the shortcomings they see, and better our own product as we've been doing for past year and a half so intensely.
Reading some of the comments about Sun on some of the public online news sources can certainly make one want to take the high ground. However, our product has the features in it already, with more amazing features being added, that Solaris can stand on it's own ground without us having to defend it. Thankfully we do have such a great product that it can do that, and we should let the product speak for itself.
( Sep 28 2004, 03:18:44 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [5]