Tune in to hear our boss, Hal Stern, Sun's VP Global Systems Engineering, interview Tim Bray, Distinguished Engineer and Director of Web Technologies. They discuss how Sun is open sourcing its APIs and why Tim belives that "the world is unfolding and it's a fun time to be in this business."
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On April 14, 2009, Sun is maximizing the economics of computing with a full range of new systems delivering breakaway efficiency and savings, simplified networking, enterprise manageability, and maximum scale and performance. For over two decades, Sun has been a thought leader and innovator in open network technologies, consistently furthering its vision, "The Network is the Computer." Building on its 25+ years of design expertise and excellence, Sun is continuing to lead the market in Open Network Systems with its new line of servers that will help you maximize and optimize current and new IT infrastructure investments.
Join us for the live webcast and live chat with John Fowler, EVP Systems, and Andy Bechtolsheim, Chief Architect & SVP Systems, plus special guests as we unveil our new line-up of Open Network Systems.
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It's time for me to pack my bag.
Oops. Wrong one. Here:
Because once again, Sun is gearing up for the 13th consecutive Customer Engineering Conference (CEC) in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I'm invited!!
CEC will take place Sunday, November 9th through Friday, November 14th. This global gathering will deliver essential training with focused technical tracks and breakout sessions to approximately 2000 Sun Customer Engineers and 200 Sun Partners who will be provided the opportunity to learn, network, share best practices and ultimately strengthen Sun's customer facing technical community.
Attendees will hear from top Sun executives such as Jonathan Schwartz and Peter Ryan as well as top technologists such as Greg Papadopoulos, Marc Tremblay, Mike Shapiro, Bryan Cantrill, Hal Stern, Jim Baty, Lew Tucker, and Subodh Bapat.
If you are a Sun employee, you can join us in Second Life at the CEC 2008 Sun island to engage in live forums, including the general session on Monday and special Second Life only sessions with Hal Stern.
You might even see me there:
Or in the real world taking photos of YOU!
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Check out the live webcast and live chat at 1 PM ET on October 13 with Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President of Sun Microsystems, and John Fowler, EVP Systems, plus special guests as they discuss how the new Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 is redefining mid-range computing (webcast will be recorded and available for on-demand replay).
Don't miss the This is Something vlog to see what the insider experts are saying about the new Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440.
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The Divas would like to give a shout out to our colleague and great friend Peter Reiser, who is featured on the Global Neighbourhoods Social Media website.
Peter is a Principal Engineer out of Sun's Switzerland office. He is the Lead Architect for the Web 2.0+ implementation for Sun's Customer Engineering community- project SunSpace.
To learn more about SunSpace and how to build vibrant communities, visit Peter's website.
Congrats Peter!
The industry's only open solution spanning virtualization and management from desktop to datacenter...
Check out Virtual Steve's BLOG!
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This is a special edition of our SunStars blog. We would like to recognize the winners of the Sun Microsystems Asia Pacific Systems Engineer (SE) of the Year Award for FY08:
Gold Medal Winner
Takafumi Sasaki (Japan)
Silver Medal Winners
Shailesh Bhadoria (India)
Jongjun Son (Korea)
Bronze Medal Winners
William Lo (Greater China)
Andrew Foote (Australasia)
Tepparit Ritthongpitak (Asia South)
Congratulations to all the winners - GREAT JOB!
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You know how much we like to brag, therefore it is our pleasure to inform you that four engineers from our very own Global Systems Engineering organization at Sun received the prestigious Innovation Award for the Sun Systemic Security Project last week at the Sun Leadership Conference award ceremony:
Glenn Brunette, Distinguished Engineer, Chief Security Architect
Joel Weise, GSS Principal Engineer, Chief Technologist, Sr. Security Architect
Rafat Alvi, GSS Principal Engineer, Sr. Security Architect
Bart Blanquart, Security Architect
Pictured at the awards ceremony from left to right: Greg Papadopoulos, Rafat Alvi, Bart Blanquart, Glenn Brunette, Joel Weise, Jonathan Schwartz
This team developed solutions that have enabled Sun to improve its products to better comply with our customer's security policies and requirements, develop new architectures and best practices that solve key customer security challenges and position Sun as an architectural and security thought leader across industry and government.
This is a fantastic achievement, so please join the divas in congratulating the Systemic Security team for winning Sun's Innovation Award!!
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Find out more on 7/9/08.
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Isn't this the SECOND year in a row that the Divas has to blog (brag) about Sun being named by Ethisphere Magazine as one of the "World's Most Ethical Companies?"
Congrats to Sun!!
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What Hungarian city is administratively divided into 23 numbered districts, always written in Roman numerals??
If you don't know, you will have to pay a visit to this month's SunStar, Erik Fischer, to find out!
How long have you been employed at Sun and where are you located?
I am with Sun since 1994, which means that I am in my 15th year at Sun. (Happy Anniversary from the Divas 
! )
I am dwelling in the Budapest, Hungary Sun office.
What is your current job role?
At Sun, you don't have one job, you have many .
I am a Principal Engineer and also managing the Hungarian Systems
Engineering team. My background is computer and CPU architecture,
compliers, operating system architecture, application and system
performance measurement and tuning, and High Performance Computing.
My working hobby is security and CGI. So, the background and the long
time experience makes me to have not a single job, but to help and
contribute wherever I can. It is indeed a very pleasing situation,
since the toughest, hardest and most challenging problems find me
and I am happy to solve them! I am also handling the official press
conferences on technical subjects and organizing and participating
in many customer, partner and community activities. Finally I develop
a bunch of tools for fun.
Because they are SuperHeros, Sun Stars use their Super Powers to get the job done. What are your Super Powers?
Well, I hardly believe, that I am a SuperHero, but my abysmal and everlasting love towards the architecture of microprocessors helped Sun and our customers a lot all over the world. It is truly one of the major passions of my life to let people know and understand more about the wonderful world and the technical beauty of the microprocessor microarchitecture. So I grab every possible opportunity to talk about it and help. Well, it might qualify as a Super Power...
What do you like best about working for Sun?
The talent, the excellence and the fantastic engineers that surrounds us all at Sun is the foundation of the company and what I like best.
Have you had the opportunity to assist customers in creating energy efficient data centers? If so, please give us an example.
I am an advocate of the energy efficient computing using our UltraSPARC T processor family, which I demonstrated and introduced at many customers and conferences.
Do you have a favorite blog or website? What about a favorite movie?
I do not have a single favorite site. I am a strong believer, that the Internet as a whole is one of the marvels of what technology can do to serve people. The Internet is something very close to mobile telephones and mobile communication which gives an unprecedented communication freedom to all of us. The wonder of the Internet is the community, the content and the possibilities both on gathering information, doing business or simply just reaching the other side of the world. This is fascinating, entertaining and also challenging at the same time and I love it!
Regarding movies, I am die hard fan of the moving pictures, but can not name just a single one. There are so many marvelous and beautiful movies and also there is a large number of very entertaining movies. I own a DVD collection of around 600-700 disks, each one is my favorite - and I can not have so many older ones - so if would be definitely a long list to name them all...
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
I regularly posting at various forums in my native language on the field of Solaris and microprocessors. I am also member of Facebook and LinkedIn.
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
I am member of IEEE CS, I am a Sun Principal Engineer, member of the Sun Technical Systems Ambassador group, member of the Sun HPC Aces community and participating in several Hungarian Unix related user groups.
If you could go back or forward in time,where would you go?
Well, it is not an easy question. There were many-many interesting and wonderful moments in the history of our small planet, furthermore the future looks also very-very interesting. However, if I have to pick just one moment, I definitely would like to see the times (if they will come at all) when the human race leaves this planet and starts to colonize other habitable planets or finds intelligent life forms.
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about?
As I already mentioned, I am a die hard fan of good movies. I am also the fan of contemporary classical music and own around 1200-1300 CDs full with truly wonderful - and sometimes hard to listen - music. I also very much enjoy contemporary literature, especially from South-America, from the Mediterranean region of Europe and from Japan. I am a collector and reader of science fiction and own around 2000 books. Also enjoy the history of computing machinery, drawing huge and small dragons and learning the Maori language. I try to ride my bike as much as possible and if my sons give me some free time, I make nature photos.
If you have an external blog, please send us the url.
I have my own web site, which is under construction currently: www.nomac.org
Sun is excited to introduce a new line of innovative x86/x64 systems and the continued build out of its x64 server line with the addition of Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processors.
The Sun Fire X4140, Sun Fire X4240, and Sun Fire X4440 servers all feature AMD Opteron processors.
The High Density and ECO efficiency of the Sun Fire X4140 and X4240 are ideal for virtualized Web 2.0 environments, while the exceptional capacity for Internal Scalability and a Highly Available design make the Sun Fire X4440 the choice for complex, business critical Database applications.
In addition, Sun extends the value of its current x64 product line by offering Quad-Core AMD support for the Sun Blade X8440, Sun Fire X4200 M2, Sun Fire X4100 M2, and Sun Fire X2200 M2 servers.
Upgrade to Quad-Core today!
Did you know that during the 2007 Oktoberfest there were 6.2 million visitors, 69.406 hectoliters of beer consumed and 58.446 units pork knuckles eaten??
I bet our latest Sun STAR, Constantin Gonzalez, can tell us many more interesting facts about his home town of Munich, the capital of the German state of Bavaria!
How long have you been employed at Sun and where are you located?
I've been with Sun for more than 10 years now. I live in Munich, Germany with my wife Friederike and my 21 months old daughter Amanda.
What is your current job role?
At Sun, you don't have one job, you have many .
I work for Franz Haberhauer's Platform Technology Team in Sun Germany's Global Systems Engineering (GSE) organization and I'm part of the international Technical Systems Ambassador group.
We evangelize new hardware and OS technologies to customers and take back their feedback to the product groups. Interesting technologies today are Sun's new CMT processors, x64 systems and of course Solaris. Grid Computing and Visualization are other favourite areas of mine, as is Web 2.0.
Most of the time, I stand in front of partners and customers and present about interesting Sun technologies, do pre-sales consulting for customers or help out in internal projects. For instance, I've been lately involved in creating a Solaris training curriculum for GSE in europe.
We also have a group blog called Solarium in which we blog in German about interesting Solaris features, tips and tricks.
What do you like about working for Sun?
I'm a computer scientist (that's a formal term for "geek") by nature, and at Sun you get to play with new and exciting technologies every day! But the biggest part are people. No matter who you work with, there's always a sense of helpfulness and, well, Sun spirit to it.
Please briefly describe any projects you are involved in that support Sun's vision to see everyone and everything participating on the network.
There's a podcast we produce in Germany for the system administrator community at Systemhelden.com. That's german for "System Heroes.com". (There's also an english version at systemheroes.co.uk). The podcast is called HELDENFunk ("Hero Radio") and it's produced by a couple of people from (product) marketing and myself. We feature interviews with interesting people: Sysadmins, bloggers, principal engineers, Sun partners, etc. By encouraging people to podcast (and to blog, participate in wikis, etc.), I try to turn them into active participants in the network.
You may not expect that from someone who's supposed to sell tech stuff, but the reason that user generated content in web 2.0 is successful is because it is authentic. You can't create a portal for sysadmins without having sysadmin/tech type people behind it. Also, it's a great way for me as an SE to reach a bigger audience than would be possible with traditional presentations.
Have you had the opportunity to assist customers in creating energy efficient data centers?
I was involved in introducing customers to UltraSPARC T1 and CMT in Germany. For example, I worked with a financial customer in showing the efficiency and throughput benefits of the T2000 for their Java based application server infrastructure. I've also helped a telco OEM beta test the T2000 for video streaming to handhelds and it proved to be a great streaming server!
Do you have a favorite blog or website?
It's amazing how many bright people blog on blogs.sun.com. You could spend hours reading them! Also, there's some fascinating stuff happening at the Foresight Institute which deals with advancing beneficial Nanotechnology. Who knows, we might end up using tiny rods and gears instead of silicon for very futuristic CPUs...
When commuting or traveling by car, I like to listen to a couple of podcasts, such as the one from Extremetech.com, the EGM live podcast, the German Podcast for Alternative Computer Systems, the Blick ueber den Tellerrand, which is a German web-2.0-in-business podcast, or BrainCast, a German podcast about your brain.
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
Yes, sure. In Europe, Xing is very popular. I'm also on Facebook, LinkedIn and even Twitter.
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
I'm a member of the Sun Technical Systems Ambassadors, a worldwide group of senior SEs that serve as a link between customers and the product groups for CPU, System and HPC related technologies. I'm also a member of the German Unix User's Group " GUUG" and a senior associate at the Foresight Institute.
If you could meet anyone tomorrow, who would it be? Why?
I'd love to meet Rhys Fulber, an amazingly creative electronic musician. He does everything from
electronic to punk to metal to sweet pop and if I had more time, I'd spend it learning to create music on my own .
Other interesting people I'd like to meet would be Robert Scoble, the famous blogger and Ray Kurzweil, the inventor, futurist and author.
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
My dad is from Chile, my mother from Germany. I was born in Germany, went to
kindergarten in Colombia, elementary school in Turkey and Germany, then I
finished high school in Italy. So I grew up multilingual with Spanish and
German, then added English and Italian to the mix .
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about (sports, causes, etc.)?
I'm always passionate about the future. That's why I like to be at Sun and why I think Web 2.0 plays such a significant role in the world's culture.
At home, I have a lot of gadgets that are "future" to family and friends.
Those are mostly part of our home theater. It's one of those hobbies that are
never finished and where you always find something to improve on: Better
sound, better picture, streaming audio/video from a ZFS file server in the
basement, you know. But it's also one of those hobbies that bridges technology
with people: There's nothing like watching a great movie with family and
friends, nice picture, clean sound, a good wine (or beer, depending on the
movie) and no hassles or endless commercials you'd otherwise get at one of
those crowded multiplexes .
Do you have a blog?
Yes, Constantin's Blooog!
Maybe Constantin will add the GSE Divas to his blogroll
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Last week the Project BlackBox truck made it's way to the Sun Microsystems New Jersey office.
Although it was parked in this Diva's favorite parking space, it was a fun event.
As you can see, the truck is now making it's way to New York City for it's April 8 & 9 visit to Broadway. (45th street between Broadway and 6th to be exact)
No...not to see a show, but to invite you for a private tour of the World's first Virtualized Datacenter! In addition to this event, Sun will announce a new family of virtualized servers that "Scale More with Less" on Wednesday, April 9, at the Millennium Broadway Hotel (145 West 44th Street - NYC)
Please join us, our favorite VP, Hal Stern, will be presenting!
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What is this Sun STAR doing in front of a ship in Santander, in the North of Spain? What do you think?? A dedicated Sun engineer will use all available resources to help out a customer or colleague!
Introducing ---> Juan Carlos Fernandez Martin!
Juan-Carlos, how long have you been employed with Sun and where are you located?
I joined Sun 2 Jan 1997 so let me think uhmmmm 11 years, I didn't realize it was so long, it looks was yesterday when I started.... I am located at the Sun office in Madrid, Spain.
During this 11 years we have moved from Torre Picasso in the middle of the city to Parque Empresarial "Parque Norte" that is not exactly in the downtown but I am happy because it take me 10 min to come to the office, and 5 min to go back home (Guess why ?)
What is your current job role?
My current role is Solution Architect, but I have been 6 year as Benchmark Engineer, 4 year as System Engineer on Migrations and last October I moved to Finance Business unit.
Have you had the opportunity to assist customers in creating energy efficient data centers?
In LBS (Life before Sun) I worked for a Siemens partner, and he tell me his biggest dream to see a Mainframe application to run on a Unix system (at the level it was sinix, Unix from Siemens) . I worked very hard for 9 months but when I showed him the results , and how easy it will be implement at the customer data center, he was nearly crying. This was a great moment.
What do you like about working for Sun?
Each new project is a new challenge, where in addition to helping a customer, It allows me to learn something new, so from this point of view I am very happy to work at Sun, and I am always ready to learn anything.
What is your favorite "junk" food?
Without doubt is "Tortilla española", not only tourists who like it, also me of course.
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
Yes, I participate in LinkedIn, Neurona, Xing, but it take me too much time but really now, I only maintained Linkedln.
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
From the first days I joined Sun I started as Technical Ambassador, now I would like to continue as Solaris Ambassador but there is not free place for me in this moment, so I am waiting a free slot.
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
Oh my family, I have a wife and two daughters, the biggest is studying at the Heidelberg University in Germany, so I learn to use the skype and tools like this, that allow us to be in touch with my daughter.
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about?
Always I have curiosity for Mayas, Incas, etc civilizations, so any time I found a book that tell me about this civilizations I read it without sleeping until I finish. That's really what I like.
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What do Hamburger Aalsuppe (eel soup -- without the eel??) and Joerg Moellenkamp have in common? They are both favorites of Hamburg, Germany!
Joerg, how long have you been employed with Sun and where are you located?
I'm at Sun since July 2001. I'm located in the Hamburg office.
What is your current job role?
Blooded Sunnie .... okay, more formally: I´m a Senior Systems Engineer at Global Systems Engineering. I see my primary role as an evangelist for Sun´s technology at customers and partners.
What do you like about working for Sun?
You see the world (okay, mostly it´s Germany, but I wasn´t in Las Vegas before Sun's Customer Engineering Conference (CEC) 2007 and I won´t visit it for vacation now. I didn´t like the city, the event was cool), the colleagues are nice, it´s paid well and they let you play with cool systems. And well, once you work at Sun you never have to buy a t-shirt or a polo again ... okay ... almost never.
Please briefly describe any projects you are involved in that support Sun's vision to see everyone and everything participating on the network.
A few years ago I invented and developed an secure online payment system for a mobile telephone provider. It was based on challenge-response and deliberate media breaks between web and mobile phones.
In the mean time I worked on many web projects as a networking specialist, as this was my specialty before and at Sun.
I´m an avid user of Web 2.0 services. My bookmarks are at del.icio.us, my favorite music is visible at last.fm, the list of my flights in the past are at flugstatisitik.de. I just don´t like services based on my actual location out of security reasons. People know where you are at a given time, but they know as well, where you aren´t.
My main project to support that vision: www.c0t0d0s0.org. A blog about Sun, my life at Sun and all the rest. It´s an important part of my life since three and a half years and it´s getting quite successful now. 5000 Visits a day. 500 to 600 subscribers (but: web analytics is to computer science, what astrology is to astronomy).
Have you had the opportunity to assist customers in creating energy efficient data centers? If so, please give us an example.
In LBS (Life before Sun) i worked as Senior Director for Networks and Infrastructure at Canbox Systems AG (Senior ... what a joke, I was 27 at that time). I was the manager and the lead architect for the world wide datacenter project. Two datacenters (in Singapore and Boston) were used one, but the one in Germany (in the nice but small city Oldenburg) was a complete new one. My team worked on more efficient cooling at that time and the usage of the heat in the datacenter to heat our offices. But then came the German version of Chapter Eleven as one of the smaller explosions of the burst of the dot com bubble.
Since i´m working at Sun I help my customers by working together with them to make their datacenter more efficient ... and by selling them CMT servers, of course
Do you have a favorite blog or website?
Oh, my feedreader collects 300 feeds. Hey ... I´m a news junkie. My "A-Blogs" list contains 10 blogs on average. But "favorite blog" is singular. That´s a difficult decision. The blog with the longest history of being in this list is Schneier on Security. This blog is written by the security luminary Bruce Schneier. Yes, the Schneier who knows Alice´s and Bob´s shared secret
What about a favorite "junk" food?
My favorite "junk" food isn´t really junk food in it´s normal definition. It´s a pastry called Franzbrötchen. It´s made out of flaky pastry dough with cinnamon and butter. This pastry is something local to Hamburg. Just a few kilometers outside of Hamburg it´s getting increasingly harder to buy some.
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
Yes ... I´m participating in LinkedIn and Xing. Xing is somewhat similar to LinkedIn but more popular in Germany.
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
I´m part of the Solaris Adoption team here in Germany. And I try to form a community of people around my blog. Hey, and I´m member of the SunDragons, a dragonboating team founded by some Sun employees.
If you could meet anyone tomorrow, who would it be? Why?
I would like to meet Hector Berlioz, as i want to know if he was really that weird as the massive orchestration of the "Grande Messe" suggests.
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
The facts I want to share, are already in my blog, and the ones, I don´t want to share ... well, I won´t write them here, either Okay, one fact I didn´t publish in my blog so far: I´m a fan of the German soccer club Werder Bremen, but I´m not a really passionate fan. It´s more like local patriotism, as I lived near of Bremen for a longer period.
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about?
I´m an avid semi-pro photographer. You can look at some of my photos on Flickr. In spring and summer I try to get as often as possible on my mountain-bike and try to avoid hitting jaywalkers. I´m a fan of classic music, jazz and electronic music.
*******
Visit Joerg's blog at c0t0d0s0.org: The Sun in a Lighthungry Universe
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Direct form the silk capital of the world, and the home of Interpol, we are thrilled to introduce you to Dominique Merle, Engagement Architect!!
How long have you been employed with Sun and where are you located?
I have been working at Sun for 14 years and I am located in Lyon, France.
What is your current job role?
I am currently developing and managing the Sun resellers network in France. On a day to day basis, i simply share my knowledge to partners through training, help on Request For Proposals, with the help of Quentin and William, two trainees.
What do you like about working for Sun?
Always something new to learn from a technological point of view. At Sun there are lot of smart people you can learn from. Diversity, autonomy, many contacts inside and outside Sun.
Please briefly describe any projects you are involved in that support Sun's vision to see everyone and everything participating on the network.
I maintain several CEpedia wiki pages (Sun's internal Customer Engineering wiki) to share information with my colleagues in either French or European. I am impatient to have this CEpedia opened to our partners.
I am also a Solaris ambassador and promote Solaris with Solaris Installfest. I leverage as much as possible my network at Sun and the work of other colleagues.
As a Java Certified Architect, I am also a fervent advocate of software at Sun and I always try to synergize different entities, different subjects, communities or colleagues. I recently organized a master software event at Sun Grenoble Engineering Center mixing partners, customers, campus ambassadors and Sun people. I believe in what we call "best practices" and I am often looking how my colleagues in others countries are doing tasks.
Do you have a favorite blog or website?
What about a favorite "junk" food?
For a French, food is very important and can't be neglected. I like to have lunch or dinner in a typical "bouchon" at Lyon where we can eat andouillette with a Beaujolais wine and have a talk with friends!
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
If you could meet anyone tomorrow, who would it be? Why?
Steve Jobs, the boss of Apple. I would like to know the recipes of Apple's success.
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
I am from a family of 10. I have six sisters and three brothers. We had no TV at home as we were living in a farm. At the age of 17, I asked my father if I could go to study after the baccalauréat and he said a sentence I will ever remember "if you work, I will pay for your studies".
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about (sports, causes, etc.)?
Jogging. I usually run a marathon each year. It's a battle against myself. I did my first marathon three years ago after a period at the hospital. As an objective, I decided it was a good way to recover and to see if i could do something who seemed to be unreachable.
Reading. I read at least one book a month. It's my "intellectual food" and a way to relax and see what the others are thinking.
*******
Please visit Dominique's blogs: Sun blog in English and his French blog.
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Born in France in the Doubs department, this Sun Star even has a family crest:
Introducing Benoit Chaffanjon, Principal Engineer for Sun's Customer Benchmark Center:
Benoit's family is from the Beaujolais
area where they have been producing Fleurie
wine since the year 910. It is to be noted that the original domain name "Les Chaffangeons" stayed. His ancestor, The Vicomte Bertrand de Chaffangeon changed his name to Monsieur Chaffanjon in 1789 to escape the French revolution
and save his head from La guillotine.
Great stuff Benoit! Now on to our interview...
How long have you been employed with Sun and where are you located?
I have been working at Sun since May 1998. I was initially located in Menlo Park, then in Newark,CA (a bridge away) now back in Menlo Park. We are opening the new Sun Solution Center in MPK15 early February 2008.
What is your current job role?
I am the Principal Engineer for the Customer benchmark center. My role is to assist our customers to get the best performance out of their solutions. I also help our architects to validate their designs. In addition, I publish characterization white papers to assist our customers choose between all the different type of chips & servers available.
What do you like about working for Sun?
The Sun culture is simple and powerful. As Scott McNealy used to say : "Kick butt and have fun !" It also takes time in a large company to develop a network of experts who can help you.
Please briefly describe any projects you are involved in that support Sun's vision to see everyone and everything participating on the network.
I am a strong advocate of the Sun Customer Engineering Conference. This phenomenal event designed for the customer facing Sun engineers is an exceptional opportunity to exchange & learn. This year's event was in las Vegas and I used the opportunity to present my vision of how to analyze performance. Just google "Pessimistic Performance Analysis" to find out.
Do you have a favorite blog or website? What about a favorite "junk" food?
Definitely Wikipedia. A phenomenal web site showing worldwide knowledge in multiple languages. Of course I can also advocate for the Internet Cello Society or the Sun Microsystems Golf Association.
Regarding junk food, I strongly recommend to skip all junk food in 2008. You would have saved enough money to bring your family to the French Laundry.
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
LinkedIn definitely.
If you could meet anyone tomorrow, who would it be? Why?
I'd like a meeting with all the major religious leaders in the world (including the pope Benedict XVI) to discuss the Golden Compass atheist trilogy and its implications.
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
I started my career as a college math teacher but also as a week-end boomerang teacher (yes !). I built more than 250 boomerangs including very dangerous models in milled aluminum. These models, not for sale anywhere, are to be used only on an empty beach at 6am ... They can fly up to 300 feet at a speed of 150 mph and come back in your hands. If you want to see one, let me know....
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about (sports, causes, etc.)?
Well, you will find some passion with the 156 HP Kawasaki Concours 14. If you like speed and want more acceleration than a Ferrari Testarossa, check it out!
Before driving this airplane (sorry -bike), you will need to complete the excellent class provided by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation.
Thanks for teaching this Diva some French during the interview! Or should I say "merci"?
*******
To learn more about Benoit and what's going on at Sun's Customer Benchmark Center, read his blog: Mr Benchmark.
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When Joel Weise isn't fulfilling his role as Principal Engineer and Chief Technologist for the Global Systems Engineering (GSE) Security Office at Sun, he's enjoying the view while flying an Enstrom F-28!
How long have you been employed with Sun and where are you located?
7+ years and work in Menlo Park, CA
What is your current job role?
My 'day job' is to promote Sun as the thought leader and strategic provider of secure solutions.
In this role I work with GSE, Engineering, Labs and other areas of the company to research, identify, design and integrate security into various Sun products and services. I act as the Sun Microsystems representative to the American National Standards Institute and work on the X9F4 sub-committee on security. We are currently developing a new standard on Secure Remote Access. I am also the chairman of the ISSA Journal editorial board and help set the editorial direction of the Journal.
What do you like about working for Sun?
Sun is without a doubt the most fun place I've ever worked! Sun provides me with the latitude to work in a number of different engineering and data processing disciplines - I never feel boxed in as I suspect the average 9-5'er is - I'm always given the opportunity to seek out new and different ways to challenge myself.
Please briefly describe any projects you are involved in that support Sun's vision to see everyone and everything participating on the network.
I am working to define Sun Microsystems, Inc. strategy with respect to security and integrity for network-scale systems. This includes the use of autonomic self defense techniques and adaptive security.
Do you have a favorite blog or website?
I'm a news junkie - Yahoo News, CNN, BBC - anything with the latest news story.
What about a favorite "junk" food?
Burrito al pastor y cerveza negra modelo
but sushi will always do
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
No - being a security geek and privacy freak I do not participate in any social networking sites.
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
Within Sun, I am the co-chair of the Security Ambassador community and a member of the GSE Patent Review committee.
Outside of Sun, I am a life member of the Sierra Club and a founding member of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA).
If you could meet anyone tomorrow, who would it be? Why?
Any of the Founding Fathers or Framers (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, etc).
What exactly were you guys thinking when you were writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
I collect books on botany and always wanted to be a forest ranger or naturalist.
In the technical world, I am one of the co-inventors of the multi-application smart card (US Patents 6005942 and 6233683).
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about (sports, causes, etc.)?
I think of myself as more of the individualist that likes a good challenges - from flying, scuba diving and skiing to camping, geocaching and archery. I like anything that's a challenge with a dash of risk.
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An essential part of Redshift is the onset of distributed 'mega' data centers operated by a few large-scale service providers.
Day 3 of CEC began with a next generation data center panel which included some of today's key service providers who discussed their data center requirements.
Pictured here from left to right:
Eric Billingsley, Fellow, Finding & Research Labs, eBay
Charles Bess, Fellow, Innovation Center, EDS
Jeff Routledge, Dir, Systems Infrastructure, Fox Interactive Media
Dilep Bhandarkar, DE, Global Foundation Services, Microsoft
Jim Baty, Distinguished Engineer, VP and Chief Architect of Sun's Global Systems Engineering organization was the host.
That was a hard act to follow, but the next speaker was certainly up to the task!
Don Grantham, Executive Vice President, Global Sales and Services, closed the event by thanking the 4,000 engineers in attendance for a job well done.
We would like to thank them as well. What an outstanding group of engineers!
suncec2007
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Mike Briggs was recently awarded the distinguished title of Sun Principal Engineer. This position represents the point in an individual's technical career where their contributions have extended beyond organizational boundaries and beyond the demands of their regular job function. We have worked closely with Mike in our current role and couldn't agree more!
How long have you been employed with Sun?
I joined in 1984 as employee 340.
Where are you located?
Alamo, CA about 30 miles East of Menlo Park.
What is your current job role?
My current title is Principal Engineer. My main mission in life at Sun is to foster collaboration and to enable engineers (primarily customer facing) to contribute to, and participate in the community.
Past roles at Sun have included Regional Systems Engineer Manager and Technical Product Marketing Manager.
Please highlight past or current special projects that you have worked on at Sun.
I'm part of a small team that is behind OneStop and CEpedia. OneStop is arguably the most successful collaboration at Sun, and the CEpedia is hot on its heels.
I edit a monthly newsletter called the Technocrat that goes out to 2200 subscribers. We recently shipped our 48th issue.
I spend a lot of time with search. This includes coding and architecting IC Search, as well as hosting search for OneStop, CEpedia, SAE, Sun Solution Centers, and the Communications and Healthcare Industries.
Name 1 - 2 people (internal or external to Sun) that you would like to have lunch with.
Neal Stephenson. I'd love to hear how and when he thinks Virtual Worlds and Metaverses are going to become an intrinsic part of our lives.
Favorite blogs or websites? Mike has a personal page on Sun's internal CEpedia site.
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Project Blackbox will be visiting multiple locations in the U.S. - Sun sales offices, customer and partner offices and military bases. You can see exactly where it is right now!
More interesting Blackbox info:
+ Discover Sun Tour info and registration.
+ Project Blackbox official site.
+ Innovating@Sun podcast.
Rumor has it this tour will be traveling to Canada, Europe and Asia sometime this year.
We'll be at the March 6th NYC Tour - hope to see you there!
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SUN & INTEL ANNOUNCE A BROAD STRATEGIC ALLIANCE!
READ THE ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Sun
Intel
SEE THE PHOTOS:
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