As I have only been blogging for a few days, most of these initial entries are just stuff lobbing around in my head. Not well researched, insightful or worthy of traditional publication. I suppose that one of the advantages of blogging. It allows you to get stuff out of your head quickly.

I have always been an avid observer of the IT industry. My career started during the mid-cycle of the IT boom in Silicon Valley. I watched from the outside companies like Sun, Oracle, Apple changing the IT landscape and felt the impact as the technologies and services I supported changed beneath me.

One moment in my career that gave me a perspective of vendors, was attendance at an Apple Developers conference in the San Jose convention center in the 90's. It was near the Scully transition, but the clash of professional management and the traditional Apple culture was still evident. I also got to spend some time in Silicon Valley for the first time and experienced some of its energy.

Another moment was my involvement with DEC early in my career as part of the University IT services organization. At that time, the culture and energy that made that company great during the time of its founders was almost gone.

So my mind always wondered, "What happened to DEC and Apple?"

A reasonable question and I think the answer lies in the founding fathers of the various companies. The energy and culture of a company is definitely defined by its founders. Their on-going leadership is what gives the company a personality, its connection between a paper-based definition of the company (papers of incorporation, annual reports) and something real and tangible. Its true that companies succeed without involvement from the founders. Some truely great CEO's have made their mark (eg. Lou Gerstner, Jack Welch, Carlos Ghosn), but these are rare cases. From what I have read in the various biographies, they were great leaders who redefined the culture of the company. They founded a rebirth of a new company culture along with managing the business.

DEC and Apple (Compaq maybe also, but I don't know the history) give the great examples of companies who failed to deliver as the mantle was passed to professional management. Apple even proved the point even further as it reclaimed its culture and success through the return of a founding father.

So why to I like working for Sun ? A big part of it is the continued involvement of a few of the founding fathers, and some guys who are the founding fathers of significant IT industry icons. Because of this, the culture of Sun is strong, even during the trouble past and moving towards the optimistic future.

Why does Sun attract smart people (no reflection on the author of this blog) ? Because smart people don't just come to work to make money. Smart people want to be apart of a community that is trying to do something. They want to work in a company culture that strives for innovation and participation. There are few companies that existed during the first IT boom and that are in the same business that have retained that cultural tie to the founding father.

So the evolution to the next step in a vendors life is inevitable. Time marches on, and nobody lives forever. I think transition to the next phase needs to be handled much like parents to children. The values and culture needs to be carefully imprinted on the next generation over a long period of time. The child needs to experience the parents values and then at some point the child seeks independence. A vendor/company is not a business that requires hiring a professional manager and a fixed transition, its a living breathing community.