An audience of two

Tuesday October 17, 2006

Ginormabytes - for real

A week ago I mentioned the new Sun viral marketing videos, including one called Ginormabytes. In it, in order to increase capacity they were stacking what looked like shipping containers with EMC logos one on top of another.

Well it turns out it wasn't such a joke after all. We are actually doing that. A complete datacentre in a standard shipping container - 8 racks, with all the wiring and liquid cooling. And everything is fully serviceable. The density is amazing; they showed us a prototype stocked with SunFire V20z systems, but can you imagine if that thing was full of Thumpers?

Short of space? Park one in the car park. I joked with Ben that you could even use these things like Lego bricks and literally build your office with them.

But I do have to question the logic of the non-physicists in Marketing who, having heard that the project was codenamed "blackbox" decided it would be cool (yes, pun intended) if it was painted black. White would be much more practical. Or as Dave Walker suggests, it might work well in military green, or camouflage.

And what's with the dayglo logo? Yuck!

Business Week article on Analog Devices Inc.

Business Week has published an article on dodgy accounting practices by Analog Devices Inc. The first practice highlighted was accelerated vesting.

Last October, Analog speed-vested options valued at $188 million, which pumped up its 2005 aftertax income by $134 million. Only Viacom Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. boosted earnings more from accelerated vesting, according to Jack T. Ciesielski, publisher of The Analyst's Accounting Observer.

Sounds like Sun's been doing something iffy too, right? What they actually did was to vest only the outstanding stock options that were so far underwater they would expire before they were ever worth anything again. I think the cut-off point was above $10. Personally I've got some options price at $56 and even though I'm confident that Sun is heading in the right direction I'm not dumb enough to think that they'll ever make me anything other than bitter.

So yeah, Sun avoided taking an artificial accounting hit for something that was totally worthless. Bite us.