Dinner Conversation about xVM, Virtualization and Management

In another one of these odd instances in which someone in this little town in the middle of North Dakota has heard about Sun, I had an interesting conversation at dinner this weekend. We went to dinner with some local folks here that we're only just getting to know. During the course of conversation, Mark (local person extraordinaire) mentioned that he had heard Jonathan's speech at Oracle World. Mark asked "So, what is Sun doing with virtualization and management? Is it really anything new?" I replied, "Interesting that you should ask, since I work on xVM." And, off we were to the races.

I won't recreate the entire conversation in detail, but will mention just a few high points in summary. I talked about the fact that Sun has had solutions in both the virutalization and management spaces for many years. What we are doing now is bringing together a lot of disparate pieces into a unified whole, with a unified user experience. Mark was intrigued. From his perspective, this is an area where a unified solution would be useful. I mentioned to him that an early access version of the product should be available within a few months, and I think he might want to take a look.

At some point in the conversation, Mark also asked about Sun working in the open. He seemed to think this was a very new behavior for Sun. I gently straightened him out on that issue, mentioning that Sun has been working in the open for many years (for example, Grid Engine) but we hadn't made a big deal out of telling everyone until more recently.

Now, maybe at this point, I should mention to you that Mark mainly handles products from that "little place" up in Washington state. He has really never considered moving his work (or his clients' work) to a Unix-based environment. However, I begin to think he might be changing his mind.

Afterward, my husband said "All of a sudden, you were like Jan from Sun marketing." I don't know if that's a good thing; I certainly would not be a good marketing person in the general sense. But, maybe I can educate just a few people during casual, dinner conversations.

Posted at 08:17AM Nov 19, 2007 by jcinfoblog in General  |  Comments[0]