Check out the article "Learning From Palm's Pain" in the Wall Street Journal from Tuesday, March 6, 2007.  I am not a big reader of the Journal.  Really only read it while traveling as Avis puts one in the car.  So I don't know the writers there or in this case the source.  The article says the column is written by breakingviews.com (an online financial commentary site).

But back to the article.  In short, the case they are making is that Palm is doing poorly and has lost market value because of a critical mistake in their strategy.  They have not created a closed system and therefore don't have a lock on their customers.  It says "In a nutshell, Palm failed to build competitive barriers around its devices, so consumers weren't locked into its products.  The Palm Pilot became a dinosaur once cellphones could store contact details and other information."

While the last sentence may be true, the I completely disagree with the first.  Proprietary systems do give a company short term protection, but ultimately the market forces choice and open systems.  Some examples.

• AOL (American Online) created a closed system, built up a huge number of subscribers and locked them in.  But they have since come crashing down to earth and recently opened up their system in order to compete with Google and Yahoo.
  

• RIM (Research In Motion) is one of the examples they use in the article.  They have done well with an email client.  I believe they will ultimately fail as we all want access to our email from multiple devices and we want to chose the best device(s) to do this.
  

•  Music downloads is one of my favorites.  First the record companies tried to avoid the whole concept.  They didn't get involved and just hoped that it wouldn't happen.  It did so they tried to sue anyone who distributed music.  That failed so they have been signing agreements and DRMing (Digital Rights Management) music.  This is starting to fail as it limits what devices you can play the music you purchased.

I am happy to say that we at Sun don't buy the proprietary model.  We are doing everything to drive open standards and open access to our products.  We strongly believe that this is the right long term model.  Lets compete on vision, technical leadership, great products and the value we provide in insuring that they work and work well together.

After seeing the front page of the Mercury News business section - had to write a blog entry to add some color!

I have been at Sun for over 18 years. A couple of lifetimes in the computer industry. So I have seen the good and the bad and am now enjoying the good again. This was a pretty hard recovery. We exited the dot-com boom with the wrong products, we had gotten lazy and we lost some of that fire.

We went through a long drought where we spent much of our time reducing costs (everything that you can think of, and of course a good number of people). The first couple of RIFs, while they were a new experience, didn't seem too bad. We had gotten a bit fat and truly needed to go on a diet. But the next couple of RIFs hurt. These were good people - people that we could have used. People that we still miss today.

But thanks to Scott. And a lot of the credit goes to him. We tried very hard to retain our R&D spend. He knew that we had to invest in the development of new products to get out of the hole that we were in. As he said many times, you don't cut your way to profitability. You invent. He was exactly right - even though Wall Street didn't always agree.

A couple of other things that he did that might not be visible on the outside included a real focus on quality. Our quality had slipped as well during the dot-com bubble days and we needed it back. He drove a daily 8am (pacific) call to review hot customers where all his direct reports were required to attend and participate in solving customer issues. This lead to significant improvements in processes that have resulted in excellent product quality today.

And he found ways to keep the energy high across all employees. This can be difficult when friends are asking if Sun will survive, bonuses were not being paid and friends were being let go. But it is why we still have the strong team that we do (and why I am still around!).

Now we have a new leader. Jonathan is both similar and very different from Scott. They are of course both very smart and committed to the company. They are both excellent with customers and know what has made us what we are today. But Jonathan has taken us to the next level. As the article says - he is partnering where we did not partner before. He is a quick study. He really listens, communicates well, is fast to make decisions and drives disconnects or overlaps our of the company.

Boy is it great to be back. We have the best and most complete set of products that we have ever had at Sun. The acquisitions of Storage Tech and SeeBeyond (EAI, B2B and the core of our SOA platform) mentioned in the article, as well as others completed earlier such as Waveset (for identity management) and Kealia (AMD based servers) have really helped us helped us to fill out our product line and make us incredibly competitive.

Now lets get back to kicking butt and having fun! (something Scott frequently said ...)

What gets us into trouble
is not what we don't know
It's what we know for sure
that just ain't so

Mark Twain

Just finished watching the superbowl - as did many of you I would expect.  I am a football fan, and a big user of my DVR to skip commercials.  But not today - not on Superbowl Sunday.  Given what the advertisers pay, I have to see what they believe is worth $2.5M / 30 second slot!!

Quickly - my top 10.

10. Coke: Black History - perfect for a game with two black head coaches

9. Snickers: Mechanic - sharing a snickers ... and a kiss

8. GoDaddy.com: Marketing - hot chicks

7. Revlon: Sheryl Crow - just because it is Sheryl Crow

6. Bud Light: Faceoff - rock paper scissors, rock wins!

5.T-Mobile: My Favs - fitting for Charles B

4. Blockbuster: Mouse - using a mouse to go online for movies, a real mouse

3. GM: Robots - just awesome, machine w/feelings

2. Bud Light: Hitchhiker - you know he picked up the chainsaw guy too

1. Sprint: Broadband - connectile disfunction

Oh - and the worst, Van Heusen. Why did they spend the money???

So there.  If you didnt' actually see the commercials.  Here is a link.

http://sports.aol.com/nfl/superbowlads

It is amazing how companies are evolving in their use of software - especially in the enterprise.

There is a spectrum of use ranging from big heavy mission critical enterprise software to light weight less critical mashups.  Companies are looking for the fastest way to deliver solutions and are often looking to developers for help on the use of some of the latest technologies in delivering these solutions.  This is all being driven by two phenonemon.  The speed at which companies are needing to deliver these new solutions.  And the technology that is becoming available.

Looking at the first, there is more than ever the need to quickly act or respond in order for companies to compete.  Everyone that I talk to, regardless of whether they are in healthcare, telco, financial services or any of the other industries.  They face incredible competitive pressure to reduce cost and generate more revenue.  It all comes down to being agile.  Delivering quickly.

The other side of this is technology.  With open source and communities, new technology is being developed and maturing at a rate never seen before.  And with SOA, we are seeing for the first time the kind of reusability that we have talked about for years - with the kind of reliability that big enterprises expect.

We are bringing the best of these together in ways not long ago impossible.  With our open sourcing of our middleware stack and all of the capabilities of SOA, together with many of the web 2.0 tools and languages, the future is very bright for our customers!

We at Sun have been talking about open sourcing for quite a while now.  But not enough people seem to know how fundamental this is to our strategy.  Amazing given that everything that we are doing in software is in open source.  But I digress ...

The whole concept of open source seems simple.  Put you stuff out there, get others to work on it with you, and the result will be a better product, built faster and it will be better aligned with what the users / customers want.

 

That is it in a nutshell.  And it has been proven to work.  So why write about it in my blog?!?!  Well .... it is actually a bit harder than it sounds.  It is a new and different way for developers to work.  They spend time writing code.  But they also need to spend time building a community, answering questions and trading ideas.  Things that seem like a waste of time, but are at the core of why this model is productive.  More people are looking at the code, asking questions, making suggestions and thinking of new ways to use and extend it.

 

We have recently made some great progress with the stuff that we are working on - Open ESB.  We are doing more blogging.  Growin the number of external committers and contributors.  And the wide variety of locations that are involved is mind boggling!  Much of what we are doing is modeled after and an extended part of The Aquarium (Project Glassfish).  I am incredibly happy to see the progress and very happy to see the contributions coming in.

 

And just before the end of the week, we found out that two new bindings would be added.  Awesome!!

You all have seen it - nothing that I could say better than Jonathan or James.  This is big.  Our continued commitment to open source.   Lots in the past including Solaris, and today with the Java technology and we are not done ...

 

I focus on SOA / Business Integration and specifically our Sun Java Composite Application Suite.  The products that we have today are amazing - a combination of what we acquired with SeeBeyond and what we had within Sun.  And the products that we build next will be even better.  And they are of course being done in open source.  Check out the Java EE SDK and Java Studio Enterprise releases.  They are the beginnings of our next generation and are all being done in open source TODAY.

  

Keep an eye on us!
 

I had no intention of writing in my blog today.  I have way way too much to catch up on this morning.  But after reading the story "Humans living far beyond planet's means: WWF," I felt obligated in some way.  This story is all about humans using more resources than the planet can provide, and my first thought was - what are we Sun doing to help with this.

Well actually, a lot.

• The latest buzz from us is around Project Blackbox

• Of course there are our eco-friendly systems

• And we have a VP of eco-responsibility and our eco-center

So there you have it.  I feel better ...

I don't typically read an article and get as annouyed as I did with this week's Forbes cover story "The New Barbarians or The Cheap Revolution."  This is an article all about the changes in the technology industry that has been taking place over the lase maybe 5 years.  I have no problem with the premise behind all of this.  "Free Software. Bargain chips.  The always-on Internet."  All completely valid.

But the real story was about Bill Coleman's new company Cassatt and how it is a perfect example of the new companies that are a part of this revolution.  When I read this, my blood pressure started to go up.

• Bill does not open source his software.  But I would bet that his product has open source software in it ...
  
• Bill's software is not free or inexpensive, so how is he a part of this new model?!?!
  
• It is actually REALLY EXPENSIVE.  The example in the article talks about $2M to install on a 1,000 server cluster.
  
• He has raised $30M * 2 to fund his company.  Sounds pretty old world to me!
  

Then using Sun as an example of one of the technology giants in danger really put me over the edge.

• Sun (we) use to make most of our revenue on big vertically scalable servers.  But we have since added the most performant, power conscious and competitively priced set of servers in the industry!
• We contribute more open source software than any other company.
• We have even open sourced our chips!!
  
• We have dramatically changed the economics of software with our Java Enterprise System.
• We have eliminated the barrier to access of our software by making it available for FREE.
  

The list goes on and on ...

Granted the article includes a few other examples and companies, but it was really all about Bill and Cassatt.  It was either a great advertising piece or it is Bill trying to get back at Sun for hiring back his former EVP of Software - Rich Green.  You should read the article and decide for yourself.

It isn't often that I read an article and feel obligated to immediately sit downand write a blog entry, but this one has me pretty worked up.  It is the article "Upnext: 'YouTube' of video games?" on the San Jose Mercury News today (Aug 14, 2006).

This article talks about how Microsoft is going to lower the cost of its development tools to $99 in order to to get lots of people working on games for the Xbox 360.  How they are going to create the YouTube of games.  Get high school and college students to develop games that are sold on Xbox Live.  It is a dream come true ...

But Microsoft completely missed the point.  High school and college kids are interested in creating video games.  They would be psyched to share thes with their friends.  Get access to the guts of the Xbox 360 and see what they can create.   But why the $99????  Does Microsoft think they will make back their huge investment in the Xbox 360 from these kids?!  Don't they understand the culture that exists?!  Clearly - the answer is no.  If they did, they wouldn't compare their discounted and crippled tools to YouTube, where it doesn't cost ANYTHING to post videos.

Sony, are you listening?  Microsoft has opened up a HUGE opportunity for you.  Create a community.  Give them the tools that they need.  Don't charge them for these tools. Make it easy and fun to build games for the Playstation 3. You are really late with your box.  Don't make the same mistakes that Microsoft is making.  Grow and foster the community and make your money back from all of us who want to buy the box that has the best games!!

On the weekends - I typically take long bike rides.  Great time to think and to catch up on all of the podcasts that I don't have time for during the week.  If you don't listen to them - maybe you should.  There is soooo much good stuff out there - NPR, PRI, CNET, Business Week, etc.

I rode a couple of hours, so I listened to three - BOL (Buzz Out Loud), NPR Science Friday and PRI's The World Technology. There was a number of interesting topics.

• Can anyone make money doing podcasts and videocasts

• Why is E3 shrinking rather than growing

• AOL's new business model and letting go 5000 people

These things really don't seem very related, but thy are.  It is all about changes in business models.  Who is making money, how they will make money, who the buyers are and who is being left behind.  Things are changing at an amazing rate.  Technology is driving this, creating new opportunities and enabling new competitors to emerge.

It reminded me of a conversation that I had with an Executive Advisory Council about SOA governance models.  We discussed creating a community of customers to share best practices.  I asked if they all would be interested in participating.  All but one company said they would.  Surprisingly - when I asked them why they were not interested, they said it was because they saw their SOA governance model as a competitive advantage.  But when I asked if that would still be the case after everyone else shared what they knew - they realized that this would change everything.  It could not be a competitive advantage in the future.

So back to the point.  New technologies and communities change everything.  If you assume the old models of business will be the new models - your competitors will pass you by.  I believe Sun is in a good place given all of this.  We are very focused on driving the participation age.  We are committed to creating communities and driving technology into these communities.  We participate very broadly.  Our open source initiatives, our blogging and our developer communities are all examples of this.

I love the speed at which things are changing.  I like where it is going.  And I like our chances as business models continue to evolve!

Great things are happening and customers are beginning to notice ...

Lets start with Horizons.  This is a new conference that we carried forward from the acquisition of SeeBeyond.  It is focused on customers who use the Java Composite Application Platform Suite.  This is the suite that enables customers to create a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Briefly, we showed our customers the awesome progress we have made in bringing together the best of what we acquired with SeeBeyond with the best of what we had at Sun - in our recent 5.1 release.  We heard of the successful projects they have completed and what they are planning.  And we filled them in on our roadmap.

There was JavaOne.  As usual - huge crowds, awesome announcements, great partners and great new products.  The one to pay attention to is all about the ability to create composite applications using  Java EE SDK SOA Starter Kit and Java Studio Enterprise.

This is a key component of our value proposition.  To grow the developer community around SOA by providing the ability to create composite applications.  And this is not just for integration developers but ALL Java developers - starting from our development tools through our suites.

And we have made available the source code for our next generation Java Composite Application Platform Suite / SOA platform.  This is called Open ESB.  It is based on JBI / JSR 208 and is a great opportunity to grow the developer community further in extending developers and partners around the platform.

And lastly in  briefings with potential customers on the road and in our executive briefing center.  They are meeting with our competition and signing up with us.  From the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) that we have at the core of our platform, to the capabilities that are layered on top.  From the delivery and management capabilities to our service offerings.  What they are talking about, we have ...

It is awesome to be in the position of SOA leadership!

I just returned from a visit to Hyderabad India.  As a result of the SeeBeyond acquisition, Sun now has a site there in addition to our site in Bangalore.  Nearly all of the folks there work in my organization.  So it is important to me to visit them on a regular basis.  This was my second trip there.

I will talk about the growth of Hyderabad later in this entry, but first let me talk about connectivity from end to end on my trip.  And when I say connectivity, in this case I mean wireless access to the internet!

• I of course have wireless in my house
• There was wireless at San Francisco International Airport
• There was wireless in one of my two Lufthansa flights - the legs to and from Frankfurt and Hyderabad
• There was wireless at the ITC Hotel Kakatiya Sheraton, the hotel where I stayed

This really means the only places that I did not have access were on the way to and from the airports and in my travels around the city of Hyderabad.  With the recent announcement of Google and Earthlink providing wireless in San Francisco, and the article that I read while in India that there will be wireless in what they call Hi Tech City, we are getting close.  Now I just need a battery that will last the whole trip or easy power in cars and airplanes (I know that with the right adaptors, I can get most of what I need today).

A just a bit more on Hyderabad.  This is a city that is really growing fast in the IT sector. While I was there on my first visit, the newspapers reported that Infosys had decided to build a site for 25,000 people.  This time I took a quick tour of what they call the Hi Tech City. There are some beautiful buildings there housing a large number well known high technology companies.  And there is a lot of room to grow.  I expect that this together with a pretty solid infrastructure will allow Hyderabad to continue to grow in importance.  I believe we are well situated at Sun with our main location being Bangalore, but also with sites in both Hyderabad and Pune.

We did it!! (Ok, we are just getting started, but this is BIG)

If you have read my blog before - much of it is about broad changes taking place in the consumer technology space.  But every once in a while I have to talk about things near and dear
to my day job.  And this is one of those times.

On August 25, 2005 Sun Microsystems acquired SeeBeyond, a pioneer in the integration and composite application space.

At that time, we announced the Sun Java Integration Suite as a part of the Sun Java Enterprise System.  This was the renaming of the existing ICAN 5.0.5 suite that SeeBeyond had been selling.  We also announced a number of other things related to the future of the Java Integration Suite, including continued and additional platform support, the commitment to publish a roadmap, plans to integrate more tightly with other Sun products  and so on.  And we made a commitment to deliver the next release (5.1) as per the original SeeBeyond schedule - Q1CY06.  That is, we would not slip as a result of the acquisition!.

I am very very proud to say that we have delivered on that promise and much more with the release of Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite 5.1, the Sun Java ESB Suite 5.1 and the Sun Java B2B Suite 5.1!

We not only delivered 5.1 on time, but we created new suites that combine technology and products from both SeeBeyond and Sun into the most complete SOA based composite application platform in the industry.  Where the Java Integration Suite was the SeeBeyond products and technologies, the new suites are this and more, delivering a much broader set of capabilities, packaged up to align with the business needs of our customers.

I have to gloat on my folks a bit.  If any of you have been through an acquisition, it is not easy.  There are lots of distractions.  There are new job titles, different compensation and benefits, new management, different tools and different processes.  The list is endless!

But through all of this - the team stayed focused and has delivered the best release yet.  Here are some of the features added to what is already the best business integration and composite application platform in the industry.

• Design & Operations Enhancements
• Separation of roles in lifecycle management
• Much improved and more flexible tools
• New WSDL and XSD editors
• Auto generation of connectivity maps
• Quality & Performance Enhancements
• Alignment w/Sun Products
• Tight integration with Sun's award winning Portal
• Leverage of Sun's industry leading Identity Management System
• Standards Acceleration
• Java EE 1.4 run-time
• JSR 168 portlet
• WS-Security
• Application Server Platforms: Sun with  JBoss, WebSphere, WebLogic coming soon
• High Availability
• JMS/MQ Grid
• Sun Application Server Enterprise Edition
• Accessories
• eWays
• B2B protocols
• Composite Applications
• Service Offerings
• Common Services Framework
• SOA Framework

The measure of success of an acquisition will not be fully realized for quite some time, but this team is off to an incredible start. I very much look forward to this release extending the lead that we already have in the market.  But don't take my word for it. Talk to our customers.  Take a look yourself.  Our focus is now in putting a release out on the web as part of the Solaris Enterprise System.

Sign up now for an early copy or download it yourself shortly.  I think you will be impressed!

I like to be very positive about new technology.  It is cool.  It allows to do more.  It allows us to do things in different ways.  But today is just one of those days where I feel like I am just a bit of a beta user of this technology.

It started with my phone.  If any of you have read my earlier blogs, I have a Treo 650.  Coolest thing.  It is a full palm and a pretty nice phone.  It takes pictures and movies.  It has bluetooth.  And it is pretty small.

But there are just too many bugs.  I now reboot just about once a day.  This is not just turning it off, but opening up the back case and poking the reset button.  It appears that this is because of the interaction with the browser.  The more I use the web, the faster it seems that I need to reboot.  The real issue is that it effects that phone.  There are times when I dial and it just doesn't connect.  Not that it gives me a message that the connection fails, but it returns to the phone UI with no message.

And if that isn't bad enough.  My iPod Nano has died for the second time.  The first time it got a strange battery message and would no longer charge.  I used the Apple website for support, got a box, sent it back and got a new one after maybe a week.  I used the new one twice.  Today I was getting ready for a run.  I was going to check the battery but it would not boot and do anything.  It started up but none of the buttons (the click wheel) were functional.  I switched the hold button on top of the Nano on and off.  This caused it to reboot and it was back in the same state.  So this is my second bad Nano.  Very cool but pretty much useless.

I could go on about Comcast and my DVR as well.  It works, but has all sorts of glitches as well.  I have been able to work around those (and my Treo glitches as well).  But it is making me wonder ... am I just a bit too early with this stuff?!?!