Wednesday Nov 08, 2006

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 blogs.sun.com/images/smileys/smile.gif" class="smiley" alt=":)" title=":)" />
  • How the world of computing is changing
  • How these changes affect companies' approach to the marketplace
  • Commoditization of computing, versus the commoditization of computers
  • Why Moore's law may be under-serving or over-serving customers – depending on who you are
  • Re-thinking the unit of work involved in doing computing
  • Examining the costs of e-waste and its effects on your business as well as that of customers
  • The different flavors of “digital divide”

    • 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:





    Posted at 11:53AM Nov 08, 2006 by Laura Ventura in Sun   [permalink]    

    Like this post? Then how about sharing it? Or what about subscribing with your feed reader? Subscribe