185 Winding Steps

The Tiny Data Center

The Huge Lantern

Here's what I learned from the placards inside the lighthouse: From it's start in 1846, the Gibbs lighthouse keeper wound a 1200 pound weight by hand every 30 minutes to revolve the lighthouse lens. The lantern itself was originally kerosene. In 1964 electrical equipment was installed, and today the whole lighthouse process works automatically: computers maintain the light, and the APC equipment and a diesel generator make sure it keeps shining even during terrible storms that bring power outages. Which is pretty important given that 39 ships were wrecked off the Western end of Bermuda in the decade before the lighthouse was constructed. Now that's a mission-critical data center!

Additionally the lighthouse stands on a hill that is 245 feet, and the lighthouse itself is 117 feet tall, which is why it can be seen from 40 miles away. And I can personally attest to the fact that most of Bermuda can be seen from the top of the lighthouse. Gibbs Lighthouse - where data center truly meets the cloud.

My view from top, facing west

Every year in our IT industry we enthusiastically embrace a different buzzword as the panacea of IT. Recall grid, virtualization and ILM – all laudable technologies that solve IT problems, but not fitting the definition of panacea. This year the buzzword seems to be cloud.

I'm an ardent fan of technological innovation – without it we're missing one of the most important ways to truly change the world in which we live. And I believe cloud is game-changing technology. Being a true geek, I'm genuinely excited about the potential cloud offers in changing the IT landscape dramatically: if done right it doesn't matter how compute, network, and storage interact inside a cloud... leaving broad room for innovation that would be considered too disruptive in today's datacenter... paving the way for a new generation of applications that will solve problems many of us haven't even thought of yet.

Yet cloud is no panacea. It takes hard work to solve IT problems: scale, security, compliance, data portability, privacy and so on. In addition the use of cloud requires changes to IT process and organization, with risk around every corner. But there's reward in embracing clouds – reward in using IT to enable businesses to enter new markets more quickly, using cloud to reduce IT costs through economies of scale, and in changing those age-old financial conversations around capital and expense.

But it takes expertise, experience, and insight to figure out how to apply cloud technologies to meet the IT challenges of today and tomorrow. Which is why our Sun Professional Services team, who have been working with customers to make their IT environments as efficient as possible, will also help customers figure out where cloud fits in their IT roadmaps. It's a perfect match – PS experts who understand where cloud technology is going and who work every day to build efficient datacenters, helping to determine where cloud fits in customer's IT roadmaps.

So if the question is “How do I get the most efficient IT environment to run and grow my business - both today and tomorrow?”, our PS experts can help determine where cloud fits in the answer - for both today and tomorrow.

Next Monday we are sponsoring our CommunityOne West event, where developers, technologists and students come together to share experiences about open platforms, tools and services. The day is stuffed with over 70 technical sessions, over 40 lightning talks and some hands-on labs. Cloud, web, social media, mobile, operating systems and platforms, and more. And after all that, there are some rocking parties in the evening to light up everyone's smiles - like the one last year where I tried hitting a piñata blindfolded.

But an event does not make a community - Monday is not the beginning or the end of this technical community. CommunityOne simply provides a time and place for community members to meet and strengthen the work they do together all year round. The work that goes on in community forums on-line (like Sun Developer Network), in local events (like Sun Tech Days), and in the many blogs, tweets, skype-facilitated meetings, and so on and so on, round-the-world, round-the-clock, year-in and year-out.

This past weekend I had the privilege to join a different community at their annual event: the AngelRide. Where over 400 riders and volunteers come together with a common goal: to fund a hospital outreach program that brings joy into the lives of children with cancer. The outreach program is an extension of the Hole in The Wall Gang Camps - a wonderful set of camps around the country for youngsters with cancer to have some fun, to find some peace, and to feed the spirit they need to face their cancer battles. What I found this weekend was a strong, loving, and dedicated community of people who work year round to ensure the AngelRide logistics are seamless, to offer a web site and pictures community members can use to communicate their mission, to sweat and train hard so that the 135 miles of Connecticut hills don't look so impossibly daunting, to deliver to the ultimate goal - raising the most money to makes the kids lives easier.

While this past weekend's AngelRide was a beautiful event, the true beauty could be found in the smiles on the Angel rider's and volunteer's faces... Because the community once again raised funds for an outreach program that puts smiles on kids faces... And that's over 14000 kids the AngelRide has smiled upon so far.

Yesterday I participated in the Sun Analyst Series (SAS) with Peter Ryan (Sun's EVP of Global Sales and Services), Ingrid Van Den Hoogen (Sun's Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing) and Dave Douglas (Senior V.P. of Network.com and now leading Cloud Computing and Developer Programs, and Sun's Chief Sustainability Officer - I really believe he has the longest title at Sun).

It was a good day. We talked with industry analysts about Sun's strategy for growth (software infrastructure, HPC, enterprise virtualization and consolidation, developer community growth and cloud computing), our new business groups (System Platforms, Application Platform Software, and Cloud Computing & Developer Platforms), and changes within marketing (product and technology marketing are now fully embedded directly into the product groups). Ingrid outlined the changes at Sun and how they'll help us moving forward. Peter talked about how Sun's innovations continue to set us apart (and ahead) of other companies. Dave gave a glimpse of cloud computing at Sun and I spoke about all the great things we do in Sun Services - oh, can I mention again that we have a great remote operations management business? As I said, it was a good day. We had a lot of good conversations. Answered a lot of good questions.