EXOTERIC - Information Worth Sharing: ex·o·ter·ic
-adj
1. Not confined to an inner circle of disciples or initiates.
2. Comprehensible to or suited to the public; popular.
3. Of or relating to the outside; external.

Sunday the conference started. I ended up sleeping late (mucho jet lag) and then walked over to the conference center from my hotel. I met up with Linda Flanagan and Charlie Ellison at our booth. We played around with the laptop I brought and got the slides up and running. We have a couple of handouts explaining the OEM agreement with IBM that has Solaris 10 supported on x Series and Blade Center hardware.

That evening the event kicked off with a reception in the main pavilion where our booth is located. There were more than a few surprised faces wondering what Sun was doing at an IBM event. We explained that it is all about choice, and the advanced technology in the Solaris 10 operating system gives IBM customers another option for their IT infrastructure.

Charlie and me at our Sun Booth.

The number one question we got was does Solaris 10 run on IBM Power series (no, just x86 based Intel and AMD based systems), and when will it?

Monday we attended a few sessions on IBM's server offerings in addition to manning our booth between sessions. We were joined in the booth by Josef Waclaw, who is a Sun Business manager from Berlin. The evening had another reception and we had lots of good conversations with IBM technical folks and some of our other partners who are also attending the conference.

Tuesday morning we had to get in early to attend the official Welcome and Keynote speeches. I have to say that the IBM strategy is practically identical with Sun's strategy. IBM is very much aware of the current environmental factors with expanding datacenter energy use and rising energy costs. They used the tag line "Big Green", instead of Big Blue. I attended another IBM session in the afternoon and got a look at what's coming in the x Series space.

The Keynote session.

This is a really big gathering of IBM'ers. This hall is large and it was packed all the way back.

After yet another evening reception (more tapas and drinks), we decided to venture into the city to have a real dinner. I ran back to the hotel, changed clothes and dropped off my stuff, then headed back to the conference center. We walked over to the train station and took it to the main Santa Justa station, which is near Linda and Josef's Hotel. Josef had a car, so we braved the city streets and headed over to Charlie's hotel so he could change. Thank god for Josef's portable GPS! Getting there was an adventure in driving down some streets barely wide enough for a car. We ended up walking from Charlie's hotel over to the Plaza Nueva and then over to the Catedral to a nice traditional Spanish restaurant. After a nice dinner I'm back at the hotel and hopefully will be able to get to sleep. Every night I've been wide awake because of the nine hour time difference! It is tough trying to get up when back home you would just be going to bed.