Chris Saul's Blog

Tuesday April 21, 2009

Happy Birthday, Queen Elizabeth

It's the Queens' birthday today - she's 83.

Happy Birthday, I say.

Can Britain really justify its Royal Family? That's something that's open for discussion and that merits a longer blog post. I predict such a post will emerge during a future business trip to one of the less thrilling countries I cover. I also predict that I will give a general thumbs up to the concept, much to the disgust of my more 'progressive' friends and colleagues.

To summarise that future post, regardless of sentimentality and the qualifications of the more junior members of The Firm, does the current Managing Director* do a good job and is she worth the money? Absolutely.   

* Managing Director = CEO, for readers residing across the pond. In the olden days, we used to have directors running our companies with an MD at the top of the pile. These days, we are forced to deal with Chief * Officers, as your American traditions are forced upon us. It sounds ridiculous to me, particularly when you give us things like 'Chief Gaming Officers', but such is life.

Oracle will love Sun Ray

I like this article.

We know what product Oracle really want from Sun - the Sun Ray, which just happens to be what I sell!

Joking apart, there is a good fit for this particular product set. Who knows how things will progress, however.

The article mentions Ellison's 'The Network Computer'. My first job out of university was for a London PR company that represented Oracle's spin-off network computer company. I still have the mousemats somewhere, if someone's interested in seeing a bit of thin client history. If I remember rightly, I organised a meeting or two for Network Computing Inc, as I think they were called, in London and Holland.

My interview for the job at the PR company also included my presenting about the desktop and 'network computing', which meant talking about Oracle and Sun's plans. I knew nothing about the IT industry at the time, but enjoyed learning a lot very quickly. The 'thin client' side of things seemed promising.

I had no idea that, 12 years on, I would be making a living out of thin client computing, working for one of the companies I was talking about during my interview, with the second about to acquire that company. It's amazing where a graduate job you get thanks to your knowledge of French and German can help you end up...