Thursday February 08, 2007

Diary of a startup - Weeks 5 and 6

Weeks 5 and 6: It amazes me sometimes how much Monty's thinking mirrors Sun's reading of where the industry is going. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that Sun is showing that it actually understands what's going on down at the street level where startups are put together. Most gratifying.

Monty has been thinking hard about server virtualization. His original architecture envisioned several servers, one for each major application, but this was really just a logical conception. Now that the time is coming to give the architecture a physical embodiment in silicon, those "servers" are beginning to take shape in his mind as virtual entities on one big box. When I talk to him this week, he seems to be channeling Jonathan as he describes the need to save on both space and power consumption when they get set up in a co-location facility. Or maybe Jonathan has been channeling Monty. When I close my eyes, it's hard to tell them apart. 

The big question on Monty's mind now, if he decides to go with Sun hardware, is whether to go with x64 or SPARC architecture. Some of the mortgage applications he will run must be Windows-based, and he's not sure how well they would work running on virtual OSs under SPARC. He thinks it might be better to go with an architecture where the native OS is x64-based. I check out some Sun literature on the subject, and it sounds as though he's right about this one, but he really needs a Sun architect to advise him.

As a services guy, I can really see in this situation how a vendor's strong services arm can be critical in a sales situation like this. Our business is not just about shipping boxes, it's also about providing expert, honest, trustworthy advice.