It will be exciting to watch how the Sun/Oracle acquisition changes the world of IT. To some extent, it already has when you consider what other companies did before the merger was approved.  I will take some time off now before deciding my next move, and I wish all at Sun and all of our customers the best in the future.  After 18 years Sun was a second home and family.  And there's no more interesting a customer than education. Education is strategic -- everything good or bad in a society starts with education.  However, the financial costs of education often overshadow that strategic imperative.  Technology has a role in bridging that divide, but it still has a long way to go and that's an exciting challenge for all to pursue.

Working with educational institutions for most of my career, I have seen quite a shift in how technology has helped and hindered those of you making amazing breakthrough through research.  

Not everyone has the ability to do research but we should all revere those who do as today’s breakthroughs are addressing some of the biggest challenges we face as a human race.

With that, we have seen a huge shift in focus as life science researchers are thinking less about samples and experiments and more about data analysis and sharing.  Preserving the output of data in manageable and sharing formats is the foundation of new industry phrases such as ‘Science 2.0’ or ‘Open Science’.  With either phrase, the concept is the same.  Data is the true productive output of research where value from billions invested in research must be realized.

The inherit value of data will likely last beyond its initial intended use.  So finding a way to store, share and reuse this data is critical to the success of this research.  Sun and its partners have solutions where the storage preservation aspects of the storage platform are decoupled so that you can customize an archive solution that best meets your specific requirements.  Research teams can now fully utilize their digital information while reducing cost and complexity.

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I can't comment on the merger but I like this article from CNET & Gartner.  The article points out that the EU decision may have more to do with European tech industry protectionism than database competition.

I also like the ad Oracle is running.

When my Grandma was alive she'd get mad at my loud criticism of the president in office at the time.  She was as apolitical as they come but she'd always say, "Joe, you need to respect the office of the president, even if you disagree with him."

I thought the controversy surrounding a speech by the President of the United States (POTUS) was just that - a tempest in a teapot by a lunatic fringe fearing socialistic brainwashing by Obama.  Then I received a notice by our school district that reads,  "A few parents have expressed concern about their child viewing the President's address.  Parents/guardians who do not wish their child to view the broadcast should send in a note with their student on Tuesday.  Alternate activities and assignments will be provided for those students. " Like what? Watching Fox "News"?

It is a sad commentary on the state of public discourse if parents preclude their children from listening to the POTUS.  We need our children to become more engaged in their community and understand the real controversies of our day.  They need to learn how to constructively influence the political process where they can.  The first step in that process is learning how to listen and learning how to think.  Perhaps even learning the difference between the office and the officeholder and a real versus a contrived controversy.  Our children need to learn about the "Big Lie" rhetorical tool that is used often through the internet and political commentators across the political spectrum  to frighten people.  The email from our schools states, "Students will not be asked to sign any sort of "pledge"related to Mr. Obama's speech." So apparently, the "Big Lie" is working.

Our schools do not teach civic responsibility for fear of this kind of backlash.  I guess my grandma was right and she'd be very unhappy observing this sad state of affairs.

I was thinking about the changing tides in software buying trends and how these changes can be such a huge win for education.  Education professionals have always known the value of collaboration and sharing of ideas.  It just took the technology industry a bit of time to catch up.  The good news is it is happening. The days of expensive, proprietary software packages are ending.  The new way of collaborative, standards-based open source technology is here.  And with it comes, more development, more innovation yet for less money and much easier.

All IT professionals, especially those in education are being asked to do a lot:
• Do more with less
• Lower risk and achieving greater interoperability
• Ability to access more advanced, better quality technology
• And meeting compliance requirements

Sun and its open source partners offer a number of solutions designed specifically for the needs of educational institutions. Sun Open Network Systems offer open data storage, which leverages standard technology that enables IT departments to mix and match components from different providers. Sun also offers its Open Solaris operating system as well as Open Archive, a cost-effective, scalable, sustainable infrastructure for storing one of an educational institution’s most valuable assets—its data.

Additionally, there are some excellent ISVs offering open source applications to help education IT professionals achieve these lofty goals.
•    Kuali/rSmart offers a platform solution for financials and administrative needs
•    Moodle provides a learning management platform
•    Sage provides a math platform solution for both SPARC and Intel
•    MySQL and PostgreSQL offer open source database solutions

These technology solutions are real and working today.

I previously wrote about Bradford schools in southern England who are using open source software from Sun and others like Moodlerooms.

The Mission Heights New Zealand school has deployed SunRays and only open source software for the classrooms.

Another example is, the Roman Catholic diocese of Boise, Idaho who were looking for a cost effective software/storage solution to preserve their historical records, student information, employee data, and their financials.  The organization needed to increase their capacity, minimize their costs and simplify the management and administration while increasing their server utilization.

They ultimately chose a Sun Open Storage solution built on OpenSolaris and two Sun Fire X4500 servers.  The diocese IT group installed one Sun Fire X4500 server and used Solaris ZFS in OpenSolaris to configure each drive as an iSCSI target in a virtual storage pool. The whole process took about 15 – 20 minutes.

Today, not only does the diocese now have the power and 24 terabyte of storage to enable new projects, but it is also saving money.

These are just a few of the examples of how open computing is a game-changer for education and how we can change how education is designed, delivered and supported...together.

There was a great interview in the Spring 2009 Converge Magazine with Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson. Some key quotes are: 

- What is scientific literacy? "When you hear information, you have to understand: What is the context in which that information is being delivered?"

- "Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees, but then thinking a new thought that has never been thought before and expressing it somehow."

- With science, creativity means "Since everyone has nature to answer to, you’re creativity is simply discovering something about the natural world that somebody else would have eventually discovered exactly the same way. They might have come through a different path, but they would have landed in the same place."

- "The best educators are the ones that inspire their students."

- The problem with schools is "There remains a culture that equates high grades with success in school and correlates success in school with success in life."

- Most talented people did not get straight 'A's. "The education system is deeply flawed because it’s only trying to get straight A’s out of people. There’s got to be some other way to measure who’s going to succeed and who isn’t."

Just before traveling to India a few months ago, my iPhone was stolen from the dinner table at a winemaker dinner at Merryvale Winery in St. Helena.  (Probably the wait staff conspired with my stupidity when I left it on the table for a last dance.)  It was a Saturday night and I was leaving for India and Malaysia on Monday morning and didn't have time to replace it before going.

So, I had a two week holiday from the cell phone.  I highly recommend it.

What you quickly realize when you don't have a cell phone is how much and how frequently other people use the cell phone.  It seems when people are not talking on it they are texting, reading emails or browsing the web.  Especially in developing economies where the cell phone is the computer.  You also realize how many people quickly jump on their cell phone as soon as the flight attendant says its ok to do so.  Everyone eagerly powers up and immediately checks what's happened in flight.  As if to communicate to all those around their self importance.  What it probably commununicates more is our addiction to immediacy and the tyranny of the urgent.

I've sinced replaced my iPhone with a Nokia E71 - so I'm back in to the self-important addictive behaviors as well - but highly recommend a cell phone holiday.  Try it for a week or day.  You'll be amazed as I was as to how much of the world and the people around you are missed while engaged with your device. 

I just suffered through my first American Airlines flight.  Its amazing how they make United look like a friendly airline.  I don't know why these old line airlines take their frustration out on their customers.  My favorite domestic airlines are JetBlue and Southwest.  They get you where you're going on time and they actually don't resent their customers.

This started me thinking that I'd like to get some direct feedback from our customers about your views on Sun.  Surveys are one thing.  We get feedback from surveys - but those always seem too general.

I'm not sure this blog is the best way to document best practices and if I don't get sufficient input, I'll seek other avenues as well.  I'd like to ask for your feedback though, simply respond with a comment to this post or email me directly.

Normally, this is the time of year that we plan for next fiscal year, with our year beginning in July.  This, of course, is not a normal year with the announcement last week of Oracle acquiring Sun. 

Regardless, I'd like to hear from customers about what we do well and what you'd like to see change in the future.  For those of you who don't know, Sun has had a dedicated sales organization for Education since 2000.  Over the years, our charter has grown to include Healthcare and Government around the world. (It varies from country to country.)  

Comments can included everything from the salesforce you enage with, our partners, our solutions, our communities, our events, our processes.  What do we do well? What do we not do well?  Even with the Oracle acquisition, the feedback can help improve our interaction. Thank you and I look forward to reading your commentary.

It was a déjà vu moment in the Hartley household this morning as I learned about the acquisition of Sun by Oracle.

My wife worked at Peoplesoft when Oracle acquired it. That acquisition, as you may recall, was very acrimonious and lasted for a ridiculously extended period. Despite all of that acrimony, Oracle treated the Peoplesoft employees incredibly well. As I recall, everyone at Peoplesoft had an offer for their new job or a severance package within the first week the acquisition closed.

Oracle acquiring Sun is not going to be acrimonious. It's done and agreed to with shareholder and regulatory review being the remaining barriers to completion. I expect, based on my personal experience and the fact that Oracle has had even more experience with acquisitions since, that the integration of Sun into Oracle will go even more smoothly than Peoplesoft.

The other thing I observed that came from the Peoplesoft acquisition was an unleashing of innovation and a spawning of new companies. Some companies, like Workday, were spawned to compete with Oracle. Others like Knowledge Infusion were created to provide professional services to Peoplesoft customers. Other companies in similar fields benefited as former "Peoplesofties" were hired into their ranks.

Sun's acquisition was not acrimonious, but there have been rumors of our acquisition for weeks now that have created uncertainty and doubt among our customers. Now that uncertainty can be laid to rest. The press announcements, analyst calls and other press stories make it clear that Oracle is buying Sun and plans to retain and grow in key product areas. It also makes clear that there will be fewer job losses with Oracle buying Sun than another hardware company that may have overlapping product lines. This is not only good news for our employees but also the economy as a whole.

It's terrific news for our customers and our partners too, who we all feel strong loyalty to as well. Many of the Sun employees have been selling to Educational institutional for years. We love that we help our customers run their organizations more effectively but equally we feel that we're helping do important things for society as a whole, with the improvements in education and research that technology brings. Recently we've also been expanding into healthcare as well. Healthcare, like education, is an important business opportunity - but you can't help to feel you are contributing in a significant way to the improvement of the quality of life or lifespan of society. Government typically addresses the challenges that the private sector cannot solve or at which they can make a profit. By definition, government challenges are then the greatest to solve. The people on my team love the customers and challenges they face and feel pride in helping solve these problems.

The Hartley household had a déjà vu moment this morning. The good news for my kids is that they know that these things don't necessarily have a bad ending. I think our employees, customers and partners will see that too.

Prior to visiting India, I happened to "StumbleUpon" Bill Gate's speech at TED regarding Malaria. In the speech, he lays out the economic challenge of solving health problems such as Malaria. The problem with a disease like Malaria is that it has been eradicated from rich countries - but not in poor countries. It's a problem because the economies that still have the disease don't provide sufficient economic incentive for the pharmaceutical companies to invest in a cure.

When I was in India, I "stumbled upon" a potentially innovative solution to this problem. India has a problem with Tuberculosis. Unlike Malaria, TB needs medicine not just bed nets, as is the case with Malaria. But the cost of TB drug development is high and the economic return low.

A solution? Apply open source techniques and technologies that are used in open source software development to the drug discovery process. The "Open Source Drug Discovery" initiative was launched and funded by the Indian government to the tune of $35 Million. Sun is a sponsor of this initiative and I'm proud to see our employees engaged in work that not only improves the lives of people through the use of technology, but helps expand the lifespan of people as well.

Check out www.osdd.net. Join. Figure out how open source approaches can solve other big problems facing us.

This arrived at my home last night and saw one of those little notice cards that our local governments send out every so often.  Normally, I throw them away without reading them - but not yesterday.  

I live near Livermore California which bills itself as the California's first wine area.  (obviously feeling overshadowed by the more famous Napa Valley).  Livermore is also the location of the famous (or infamous depending on your political views) Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Labs.  So, you'd think that a city with all that brain power could answer the "Topic of Discussion" question without spending two hours on the topic.

The answer is:  "A place that makes wine."

I visited India last month and learned a great deal about what happens when a country embraces open source as a matter of government and economic development policy.  From drug discovery to open innovation to healthcare and education, open source is being used and applied in innovative ways in India.

On my last day there, I visited a government hospital in Chennai (or Madras as it was formerly known).  It was a Saturday and the queue for services was long but not nearly as long as it used to be.   The best way I can describe the method of care was McDonald's (and I don't meant that as derogatory).  Patients stand in line and when they get to the doctor, they describe theur ailments and the doctor prescribes medications.  The patient then goes to the pharmacy at the hospital and picks up their medication.  Very efficient because it has to be; they see thousands of paients every day.  Of course, they have hospital beds and separate care faciilities for more serious problems.  The government hospitals are the primary care providers for a high percentage of the Indian population. 

What's new is the application of information technology to the patient record management process.  It was literally 'all paper' until just a few months ago.  You can see in the pictures I took the computer terminals being used by the doctors.  The benefits to the patients are that their average wait in line has decreased significantly.  I heard that a full day could be required in the past to see the doctor.  Now it's down to few hours at most.  Another benefit is better inventory control of the medications and less shrinkage of that inventory.  Finally, there are better healthcare productivity metrics possible, not to mention improvements in quality of service by having better information on hand at the point of diagnosis.

Myself, I had to get a physical this week as well as a stress test.  I had to go on two separate days because of insurance policy.  All of the records are kept in paper files that the doctors scan through.  Granted, I only waited a few minutes and the visit lasted for 30 minutes each time but I couldn't help to wonder if the patients in these Indian hospitals might not be receiving better care because their doctors have access to better information than my own.

This is the motivation for improved information management of health records in the U.S.  It's part of the new economic stimulus package.  With these systems we can lower costs, improve quality of care and lessen the amount of time we spend as patients in filling out forms and negotiating payment processing.

Next up, I'll talk about a cool thing I discovered one our employees in India is helping to drive: The Open Source Model as applied to the drug discovery process.

If you are thinking about buying a Kindle, don't and here's why.

I'm a gadget geek and I bought the Kindle 1 as soon as it came out.  I liked the idea of a wireless device using Linux and Java.  I liked the search feature so I could search for words across all my content.  I liked that I could have a bunch of books when I travel without the weight.

What I didn't figure out in advance was the economics (or lack thereof) and the technology lock-in.  

My Kindle 1 broke yesterday 1 month after the 1 year warranty expired.  Amazon has no repair service like Nintendo DS does.   If it doesn't work after a hard reset you are out of luck.  I was given the option to buy a Kindle 2 at full price or a Kindle 1 for $180.

This is when I figured out that the economics didn't add up (or added up too much to justify.)  I purchased $210 worth of Kindle books in the 1 year and 1 month I had it.  I thought I had saved a bunch on the book purchases (more on that deception in a minute).  I calculated that if I had purchased real books instead it would have cost a $237.  Wait a minute, I only saved $27?  How could that be when every time you buy a Kindle book it shows you the savings and it always seems to be about 50% off?  Now the deception: they are comparing the savings to the list price of the real book not the  Amazon discounted price of the books. So, instead of comparing it to the Amazon price they are comparing to list.  Thus the savings of only $27.  The other thing I noticed was Kindle doesn't charge sales tax or shipping.  (Why no sales tax seems odd when the physical book has sales tax -- seems the State of California is missing some revenue here.)  But assuming I paid sales tax and shipping on all the real books instead, which are not charged on the Kindle, that would raise my real book purchases to $340.  (Assuming I only purchased one book at a time and didn't earn free shipping by combining orders.)

So I "saved" $130 but the device itself cost me $399 plus tax - so where's the savings?  

Here's the final straw.  The content is closed and locked to the device.  With the physical books I'd still have the book and I could have shared the books with my wife or friends.  I could have sold them on Craigslist or eBay.  Not with Kindle books. In order to keep reading the books I paid $210 for - I have to buy the device.  (The fact that I can now read them on an iPhone makes it somewhat better but why do I have to buy a iPhone?)

I thought the content was in a .pdf format so that I could read it on my computer.  I thought this because you can download .pdf documents to your Kindle so I assumed the format of all the docs were .pdf.  I also thought this because there's an option when you purchase Kindle content via the web rather than using the Kindle's wireless connection to download to your computer.  So I thought that meant you could read it on your computer.  No, this PC download feature is there so that you can download it to your Kindle in the event you are out of wireless range.

So learn from my mistake.  Unless Amazon (or Sony or any of the readers) opens up their formats so that you can read them on any device you want to, don't buy it.  Unless they get the economics right, don't buy it.  There's no .MP3 format standard for digital books like there is for music so it looks like it's lock-in wherever you turn.

The publishers are the ones who have given us the anti-competitive copyright laws we have in the U.S. today. So it's no wonder as they attempt to move into the digital world they continue to create these kinds of uneconomic offers.  (Watch  Larry Lessig's latest speech on this topic.)

Shame on Amazon for taking open source Linux and Java and creating a closed source lock-in.  If they do this with the Kindle, I can only imagine what they will do with their (your)  cloud.

At the Business Higher Education Foundation (BHEF) meeting, I had the pleasure (terror) of facilitating a discussion about whether the U.S. should increase investment in education innovation. The terror comes from facilitating a discussion of university presidents and corporate executives. It was kind of like that nightmare in college of being called on by the professor for an answer that you just don’t have.

The U.S. Education system could not be designed any less efficiently if we tried. But, I don’t see our voters giver more power to Washington to control schools so we will have to deal with the inefficiencies of fifty State’s education departments and thousands of school districts from the foreseeable future.

Education standards are a perfect example. Why not have national standards that are research-based and validated as relevant to career and college success?

Such a system may exist from ACT. Apparently they test millions of students every year and it’s not just for college admissions. In order for a student to be successful - (success being defined as a ‘C’ level grade in a course; a low standard as far as I’m concerned) - ACT has also apparently profiled the tasks of over 15,000 jobs in the U.S. and have tests that measure competency for these skills. 41 states already use these tests for schools. They tie their academic standards for schools to these tests.

It seems that now it’s the employers turn to exert influence. Perhaps we can’t get to a national standard for fear of too much control from D. C. But what if the employer community adopted these standards?

In much the same way, someone can become “certified”. Java, Microsoft, or Cisco programmer…perhaps the same concept could apply to all job roles.

Colleges and universities could also openly publish their admission criteria as well. I’m certain that if we organize our talent selection around commonly understood criteria of skills that schools will organize their curriculum to deliver to that standard.

By the way, back to that panel I was facilitating…the surprising thing to me is that we do not know how much money is spent on R&D for education in this country.  We may be able to quantify what the U.S. Department of Education spends on R&D but that is a small amount and one piece of the overall R&D expenditure. If you Google this subject, you’ll find that there’s all kinds of information about how much governments and corporations spend on R&D. For example, Sun spends roughly $2B on R&D annually.

The U.S. spends over $1 Trillion on education. How much do we spend on education R&D? Is that too much or too little?

Step 1 is to quantify this investment and then determine as a nation whether that amount is too little. When one considers that we are in a knowledge economy, clearly education is the foundation of the economy because it builds knowledge capacity. When you consider that higher education costs have risen at a higher rate than any industry, including healthcare, you realize we need education R&D to figure out how to more effectively and efficiently education our citizens. According to ACT, only 4 out of 10 8^th graders are prepared for college (defined as able to a ‘C’ grade in college) and that number drops to 2 out of 10 by 12^th grade.  We need for education R&D to figure out how to change these trends. The high school dropout rate is 9.3%. The productivity cost to the economy is staggering.

Step 2 is to then decide what the percentage of R&D expenditure that our economies can provide.

Step 3 is raising the money to conduct the research through government, business and foundations.

Step 4 is to engage in the research and apply findings as soon as possible. Using Christensen, Johnson and Horn’s guidance from Disrupting Class, we need to ultimately answer “not simply what’s implementable and what works, but what is implementable and what works for whom, where and why”.

One of the great things about my job is that I occasionally get to meet with heads of state or other government officials. As a leading R&D investing company in an industry that creates a lot of jobs around the world, Sun has a lot to offer. Consider our open source strategy. You can access our software assets anywhere in the world and create a business using that technology or supporting local companies and organizations that use it as well.

My experience so far has been that this message has been best received by government leaders outside the U.S. For example, I was fortunate to meet the Prime Minister of Macedonia a few months ago named Nikola Gruevski. He’s a young leader selling the geographic and infrastructure advantages of his country for companies looking to emerging economies in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Today was the first time I was asked to meet with the head of a U.S. state, Massachusetts, Deval Patrick. Typically I’ve found that head of U.S. States can be rather presumptive about a company’s interest in their state. Especially a state like Massachusetts, who has their own incredible intellectual and academic assets to offer to a company like Sun.

So, it was refreshing that the governor requested the meeting with our CEO, Jonathan Schwartz. Sun employs a number in the state. We are a major supplier of technology to the universities in the state. A number of the state’s alumni work in high positions throughout Sun regardless of whether they live in the state or not. At the heart of economics lies innovation - and innovation is Sun's specialty....and apparently Massachusetts as well.