Innovation Blog

Innovation is not just about products and technologies. Innovation is also about the experience that surrounds a product and its entrance into the marketplace. Such is the inspiration behind Sun's new Try and Buy program which takes the concept of software trials and applies it to systems, so that new and existing customers can test Sun products in a risk-free, cost-free, stress-free environment for up to 60 days.

Sun has opened itself up far beyond what its competitors are doing, in terms of who can participate, how many countries can participate, and the extent to which open communication about performance results are encouraged, allowing its products and buying experience to speak for themselves through the program.

Check out the latest edition of Innovating@Sun with Vice President of Global Systems Engineering, Hal Stern, and Distinguished Marketing Director, Christine Beury, who discuss features of the program and how it works. In part 2, Hal speaks with DigiTar CEO, Dale Williams. Williams explains how Sun met his company's multithreaded computing needs to such an extent that his company went from being a non-Sun house to a place where “there are Sun blue logos all down the front of our rack”.

Details include:

Sun and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have just finished Phase 2 of a major research and development project resulting in the creation of several technologies covering everything from the physics of chips to extending Solaris to very high scales. Rather than producing a one-off technology, the fruits of this research have accelerated other efforts within Sun's R&D thereby bringing these technologies into the mainstream of Sun's product line.

Listen in to this special edition of “Innovating@Sun” where host Hal Stern is joined by Dr. Jim Mitchell, Sun Fellow and leader, and David Douglas, Associate Director of the HPCS program at Sun to discuss the significance of applying these new technologies to Sun's enterprise customers.

Links:

Fortress Programming Lauguage
Leading the charge to create a peta-scale computer
DARPA officials evaluate Sun’s Fortress programming language for next-generation supercomputer systems. Read full story.
Sun Research Manager Jim Mitchell says the company will continue to invest in its Proximity technology for high-performance computing. Read full story.

With over 4 billion Java technology enabled devices, Java technology is more pervasive than any other software.

On November 13, 2006, Sun Microsystems announced it is releasing its implementations of Java technology as free software under the GNU General Public License version two (GPLv2). The first pieces of source code for Sun's implementation of Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) and a buildable implementation of Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) are already available. In addition, Sun is adding the GPLv2 license to Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), which has been available for over a year under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) through Project GlassFish at glassfish.dev.java.net.

This announcement represents one of the largest source code contributions under the GPL license.

Tune in for Innovating@Sun to hear show host, Hal Stern, interview Sun's Laurie Tolson, and Alan Brenner on the implications of this historical event, including:

Where you can get the source code

Links:

Open Source Java Website
java.net
Press Release
Jonathan's Blog
Rich Green's Blog

In a world where some see IT as a commodity, the important question is not “What is the cheapest computer you can build?” Rather it is, “What is the cheapest computing you can deliver?” The difference between the two is vast, and innovation lies at the heart of it.

Hal Stern, Vice President of Global Systems Engineering at Sun, welcomes CTO Greg Papadopoulos and CEO Jonathan Schwartz to a special video edition of Innovating@Sun. The trio discuss how companies in so-called commodity-based businesses successfully use R&D to differentiate their performance and win new business. Other details include:

Why Greg gets a $2 billion dollar allowance

With an R&D budget of $2 billion per year, Schwartz says one thing is certain. You can't predict what will come of that. Who could have predicted that a shipping container would be the ideal infrastructure for building large scale datacenters? Or that the power efficiency of Niagara would be one of its key differentiators and grow to a $100 milllion/quarter business. The investment in innovation is what allows that to happen.

Links:

Imagine a world where your access to digital content is based on your identity rather than the device you're using. Because in fact, your identity is not tied to any particular point or consumption device. Such is Sun's vision behind digital rights management (DRM) where the focus is on network identity as the place where your rights live and are accessible.

This edition of Innovating@Sun with host Hal Stern welcomes Tom Jacobs, director of research at Sun Labs (a.k.a. voodoo computer scientist) to discuss Project DReaM, Sun's acronym for Digital Rights Management Everywhere Accessible.

Hear how Sun Labs is working to commoditize technologies in such a way that companies compete based on the quality of their implementations, services and pricing. Highlights of the podcast include:

Links:

Tom Jacobs's Blog
Open Media Commons Website
Project DReaM Collaboration Website
JSR 300: DRM API for Java ME
Liberty Alliance Project
What Identity Management Can Learn from the Entertainment Business