We Don't Have What You Need...Yet
Nick Kloski, Systems Technical Marketing
I am an optimistic person. My job position in Sun is officially “Solutions Engineer” which is an interesting title only when you consider that everyone else in Silicon Valley has the word “Engineer” in their job description. (I once saw a badge at a local theme park in the North Bay which had the ride operator's name on it “Suzy” but also had underneath it her title, “Experience Engineer”. She must know the badge dude.) So, let's take out the word Engineer. What am I left with that describes me as a unique and vibrant person within a cool and dynamic place like Sun? “Solutions.”
Not as bad as one might think actually. My area in Sun is a great one to be in, mostly because of the passion various people bring to all the varied things going on in this realm: Web 2.0 My job in Sun is to figure out what Sun does exceptionally well, develop technical solutions to prove that, then tell everyone about my experiences. I do a little bit of everything from attending product meetings (some more interesting than others), to jumping on a terminal and configuring MySQL, to working with the research group at Sun on crazy future projects.
So here is my operating premise: Sun does not have what you need....yet. Because through the work from my group we can design something that addresses your problem. My area is Web 2.0, let's look at the toys I get to play with to build neat Webby2.0 things:
- Cool opensource software, like Lustre, Hadoop, memcached, Glassfish, Drupal, pretty much anything and everything interesting going on
- MySQL
- Any OS I want (though Solaris OS rocks for a few reasons)
- Storage both performy and bulky (in the best sense of that word)
- The latest servers both x86 as well as SPARC
...And a cool lab to run these things in. 
...And these are only a few of the things at my disposal!
My ongoing challenge is to assume:
Sun has not yet shown you (the customer) the cool things we can do to the best of our ability. Sun can do better, my team can do better, I can do better.
Sun does not have what you need....yet.
What can Sun do for you, or better, for the world? Best to start large, in my opinion.
Nick
(I really am technical, I promise! Future postings, if not guided by your comments will be on various topics I think are interesting....comment on this blog to guide my thoughts on how Sun can do rockingly cool things :)
