We just announced our quarter.  We are seeing awesome momentum.  The sales and backlog for our new hardware is growing.  The sales and pipeline for our software is very strong.  We announced some great wins.  This is getting fun!

As a SOA / Business Integraton software guy, lets get into why this is happening.  There are really two reasons.

• We have the best SOA platform

• Our customers are over the SOA hurdle

This is what it is all about.  Meeting with customers, talking about their plans, working together to define what they need, and then implementing.  This is what I mean when I say we are over the hurdle!

I met with a major handset manufacturer today.  They wanted to hear more about SOA and Business Integration.  We started off the presentation with why SOA.  They said "move on, we are already there ..."  We tested this with a couple more important points.  They stopped us again and told us where they are and where they plan to be in two years.

They expect to implement 300-500 web services this year and a total of about 2000 by the end of next.  They will of course build composite application along the way.  But what they said is that in two years, they will be done.  There will be no more web services that they can think of to provide.  It will be all about delivering cost savings and new value to their customers.  So they just wanted to engage in what we had to help them ...  How cool is that!

This is not a special case.  I am hearing this more and more.  And with the products that we have, it is an easy conversation.

This is REALLY getting fun!

I am somewhat of a technology guy, but I am continually frustrated with some aspects of the technology that we are becoming more and more dependent on.  Here are my rants and gripes.  I am sure that some of you out there will help me through these with pointers to solutions to my problems:)

• Why don't cell phones work well for CALLS?!?!

• Why is SBC/Yahoo DSL sooooo unreliable?!?!

• Why do I need a DVR (and why is the software buggy)?!?!

• Why is it so hard to share music across my music players?!?!

• Why is networking some complicated / confusing?!?!

I am sure that there are more, but this is a good start!

First blog entry since break.

Had an excellent time with a week before our break being purely vacation in Hawaii and the week of break being Christmas, family, friends and New Year! Didn't really think about work much. Did think about technology. Seems that it is everywhere. Hawaii is clearly a bit behind, but that is a good thing. Was a bit of a shock being away from the internet for almost a week and then coming back to the Silicon Valley where it is really just a part of life.

The couple of things that got me excited enough to write a blog entry were the interview with Hal Stern on Open Source and the buzz around the Google announcements about to come out today. Maybe I should have waited on that one, but I don't think that it really matters:)

Hal really gets it.  I wish the industry would as well.  The world is evolving very quickly around platform software.  There are LOTS of small companies that have started efforts in platform software that need to move up the stack quickly.  How many BPM companies are there out there?  At my last count over 50.  There is clearly the need, but not the market for this many.  Most will be acquired or go out of business.  The rest will attempt to move up the stack.  We have seen this story before - it is just moving more quickly now.  And Open Source is driving it.  There will only be a hand full of platform providers in the future.  These providers will have Open Source as a part of their strategy (well - all but one of them).  They will provide the services around the supported platform that they create from these open source bits.  We will be one of them!

The other is Google and their awaited announcement around alternates to the Windows operating system.  Web based versions of most everything that we all need and use everyday.  This is not new.  It has been evolving to this for a while.  But with Google and Yahoo jumping in - it is becoming real.  They have mass reach.  This will accelerate the change that was inevitable:)   And the Yahoo!Go stuff that Yahoo just announced.  These together with some of the startups who are using AJAX to build powerful tools shows that we are about to go mainstream with real web based tools.  Wonder what Microsoft is thinking?!?!

I guess all of this airline time is of some value. I get a chance to read or skim LOTS of magazines. It sure would be great if I had access to the internet, but I think I touched on that in an earlier entry.

In any case, here are a few pieces of food for thought.

• There are 40 million users signed up for Myspace.com. There are 4.5 million people signed up for World of Warcraft.
• The younger generation are spending 5 1/2 hours a day doing a combination of TV, Video Games, Computer, etc. During about 1 1/2 hours of this time, they are doing more than one.
• Us older folks use the internet to get information, read email, buy things, and so on. But we depend on the phone and face to face for most of our interaction. The younger generation doesn't see this delineation.
• Skype sold for somewhere between $2.6B and $4.1B (54 million registered users in 225 countries).

It is everywhere. It is my phone. It is my blogs. It is video games.

It is new ways to communicate, to share, to participate.

I just joined Yahoo!360 . This is Yahoo's first attempt at creating an environment where individuals can contribute to the content on the internet. It is not perfect, but it is a start. The future of content will come from the many rather than the few. The only question is how ...

I wrote in my blog a week or so ago about movie theaters. They will disappear. Of course I went with my wife on a "date night" on Friday. And it was a great time. But I watch far more movies at home or on the road or in airplanes than I do at the theaters. So the end is not here yet. But with things like Yahoo!360, we are starting to see ways that will allow individuals to truly Participate. To truly Share. You can blog. You can add pictures. You can post a blast. This is just the beginning.!

I am very excited to see what comes next ... Will we see far easier ways to contribute other types of content? Will there be ways to contribute video content? Assemble snipets into something more? Or will the future of video be high quality animation?

Participate. Share.

I love the announcement that we made yesterday - to make our software available to developers for free (yea, there was more to the announcement, but hang with me). Finally, developers can use the right tools for the right job without having to worry about the cost. I expect that as soon as we make our integration software available the number of developers will explode.

Let me back up a bit. In the past (that was the day before yesterday ... and before that), the software that developers had access to was impressive, but limited. Free software is out there, including tools, but in most cases this was a limited functionality version, or it was something that you had to build yourself. In short, it was neither complete nor integrated.

There was of course the traditional model for acquiring the software that you need - get a project approved, evaluate the products necessary to build it, make the selection, get approval and purchase the software and finally start the project. This approach has worked for years.

But in both of these cases, tradeoffs have to be made. What developers can now do is get everything they need. A complete platform with all of the capabilities to build solutions right, without the initial burden of cost!

And what makes this even more interesting than the acquisition cost is the breadth of capabilities that are available. We have the most complete, integrated and secure platform ( Sun Java Entperprise System ). And all of it is being made available! As the guy who is responsible for the business integration software ( Sun Java Integration Suite ), as soon as we make it available (next quarter), I expect to see a HUGE number of downloads. I think that this is truly a turning point for the use of integration capabilities in the development of applications.

So as the title says, "Developers - Bring Them On!!"

I hinted in my last blog entry about the future of movie theaters - this was a result of my listening to a radio show in LA last Tuesday. Some of the things that the host said really got me thinking. He read a good part of an article from the LA Times called "In a losing race with the zeitgeist." There is sooooo much truth to this that I had to write a blog entry.

The short of it is that technology and the internet are driving change just about everywhere - even with movies. People are not going to the movies like they have in the past. Yes, there are still theaters being built, but we are at a tipping point for this industry. The cost of a movie has gotten too high. A family of four with some food can easily run you $75. Seventy five bucks!! There are advertisements now before the movie starts. The quality of the movies is often not what you would expect (film rather than digital in general). The environment is not the best, often times messy and with noisy people around you.

Some theaters have recognized this problem and are doing everything that they can to improve the experience. A good example is Regal theaters, who are installing digital. The cost is really high, but they recognize how important it is to grow (or maintain) their business.

But the bottom line is that the whole industry is going to change. Simply moving to digital will not solve this. There are a number of drivers behind this.

• Movies are coming out on DVD faster than they have in the past. In a growing number of cases, this is only three months.
• The cost of home theater has dropped dramatically. A large flat panel monitor that cost $15,000 a couple of years ago can now be purchased for closer to $2000!. And surround sound has also dropped to the point where it is affordable for a much larger segment of the customer base.
• New deliver / distribution mechanisms such as Netflix, Pay Per View, Tivo, and downloads (to many devices)

Together these signal the demise of the movie theaters. People want to see what they want, when they want it. I may still go to the theater for a "date night," but I doubt that this will be enough to keep the bit theaters in business ...

This leads me to my next thought. What will happen to the content creation industry around movies??? A good topic for an upcoming blog!

Well - tomorrow is Thanksgiving (for us in the states:)). This is great news. We will eat a HUGE amount and watch football. I will likely get in a bike ride before all of this fun starts. So what does this weekend and turkey and stuffing and football have to do with Sun, the participation age, and more importantly SOA and business integration. NOTHING:)

That is not to say I will not be thinking about it, and that is not to say that we will not do a bit of shopping (as much on the web as possible - I don't want to deal with the crowds). And that is not to say that I will not try out the whole theme of participation on my family and friends. But no, I will stop here. There is no other connection.

But wait until next week. I was in LA and heard a great radio show (while making the LONG and PAINFUL drive from Monrovia to Burbank yesterday evening on the way to the airport). They were talking about the end of the movie theater ...

The world is changing soooo quickly. Just got back from the airport (again). The experience is getting better. I was flying southwest to Monrovia and was thinking about how very different it is now. My admin checks me in 24 hours in advance. As a result, I get an "A" boarding pass. Basically this is my seating priority. What it means to me is that I can show up just before boarding and get a good seat - which really means I get a bit more time to sleep in the morning:)

Once I am there, I quickly grab my coffee and plop down and do some email. Once they start boarding I jump into the end of the "A" line and get on the plane. No need to wait in line, as long as you are not "B" or the dreaded "C" (middle row:)), you get a good seat.

But lets back up a bit. There is wireless in the airport. So you can be connected. I have my TREO 650 phone so that I can be connected. On the plane I am out of luck but I can do work or things in a disconnected mode (this will get better soon as airplanes add Internet capabilities). Our cars are getting connected. My house has wireless so that I am connected anywhere (I am typing this at the kitchen table).

This is the fundamental change that we are all going through - and is leading to what we at Sun are calling the Participation Age. It is NOT all about work. It is everything that we do. Keeping up with the kids soccer practices and games. Doing Christmas shopping. Travel plans. Even as work gets more challenging, I am able to keep up with family and friends better than I was a few years back. And it is just beginning.

What will it look like in a few years. The big change will be going from infrequently connected to mostly or always connected. And the capabilities that are available that take advantage of this will grow and change. Yahoo is calling it the "Social Media" - see the article in the SJ Mecury News Business section of today's paper. I am not convinced that they got it right, but things like tagging pictures will end up being a part of the story. It is clear that individuals contributing content WILL be a part of how the internet grows. Where this content comes from, how it is added, and then how it is used in everyday social interactions is where the fun will be, and where new products and companies will be created.

I am convinced that Sun will be there providing the enabling platform to deliver this. And the integration software that my team has (from our SeeBeyond acquisition) will play a major role. Just think about the hardest problem that exists within an enterprise. That is integrating the many systems that they have in order to provide new value or solutions. And now think about it in terms of the Internet and the many capabilities that are being made available. It all sounds like a huge integration problem to me!!

Time to move up to the big leagues. My first very public blog.

So what is the purpose of it? Why did I decide to jump in? What do I have to say that anyone would want to read? The purpose is simple. To share my experiences and throw out tidbits that might be of interest. I guess we will see if anyone wants to read it:)

For those of you who don't know me, I am a long time Sun guy. Been here for over 18 years. Held most jobs within Software, and did a stint (3 years) in IT. I am now running the SOA / Business Integration products group. This is made up of the products and technologies that we were doing at Sun in the integration space along with the products group that came with the SeeBeyond acquisition.

Today is the first day of Sun's Leadership Conference. It is a great time to hear how the big bosses think we are doing, insure that we are aligned and spend a bit of time networking. It is absolutely awesome to hear what else is going on in Sun. I am and will always be impressed with the sheer horsepower that we have and the things that each organization is able to accomplish. StorageTek and SeeBeyond are perfect additions to the products that we have, and more importantly, the people are of very high caliber and fit right in. This is why I have been at Sun for such a long time.

That by itself would be good a good day, but it was only the beginning. I had a chance to talk to a couple of our customers as well. I will not mention the names, but I was on the phone with two of them, and things are going very well. These customers are using the latest technology to build what we call Composite Applications. Combining services using business process to deliver new applications that create business value. They are getting it done with our stuff! As I said, the people are why I am still here, but the customers are why it is so rewarding and fun!

And the last thing - personal productivity. I am (of couse) typing this at my SunRay. But I will not go into that. I believe Jonathan talked about that in his blog. What I did want to mention is how cool my new phone is. I got a Treo 650 with Cingular service. What a great phone, email, application platform. I can message my admin, take calls with my bluetooth headphone, and basically keep up no matter where I am. I am not one to feel like I need a tether to work, but this is a huge productivity boost. I have quickly become a convert!

All in all, a great day. That's it for now.