Sunday March 26, 2006

Six Stages of Separation from Sun

For my last sun blog, I apologize in advance for its length.

After 19 years, I've been lured away from Sun and will land at Adobe shortly. After endless requests for free copies of Photoshop, all the trite statements began...

Well it's the end of an era. A crossroads. The final chapter. A changing of the guard. The culmination of—ok, insert the sound of a record album being scratched by a needle. Rather than babble on about personal memories that most of you would yawn through, I've chosen to close my Sun blog career with a slightly different message.

What have I learned in the process of deciding to leave?

Choosing to depart Sun after nearly 20 years was like moving out of the house you grew up in. It doesn't mean that your new home isn't better for you; it just means that you have a lot of experiences, friendships, accomplishments—memories—that are hard to walk away from.

I think there are basically Six Stages of Separation (not to be confused with the book, “The Six Degrees of Separation”). Mine go like this:

1. Actually deciding you can leave after 19 years

2. Actually saying yes to your new employer (proving you really did pass Stage 1)

3. Telling your boss

4. Telling your staff, then others

5. The dead time in between telling the world and actually leaving, and finally

6. Handing over your badge and walking out the familiar doors for the last time (at least without an escort).

Stages 1-2 were difficult. But stage 3 was really a challenge. I've known Scott for all 19 years. I travelled with him, wrote his speeches a hundred years ago, know his mom, wife and kids. And with Jonathan, well, he rolled the dice and put me in charge of a business unit after being CMO—a big risk on his part. Later, he asked me to fill his huge shoes and run all of software when he was appointed Sun president and COO. These were very tough conversations. They were both surprised, but they were also cordial, professional and each a total class act.

The biggest surprise of Stage 4 was that no one knew prior to the moment I told my staff. At Sun, if there is any dirt to be known, "the network" finds it and disseminates it. At light speed. To all ends of the earth. Usually with 80 percent accuracy. Often on CNET, eWEEK or The Register before the the company itself has been notified. But not this time. The hard part was admitting that I would not be there to finish establishing Sun's software business—something I've been a part of for the past 5 years. I get paid to be optimistic about my business, to be a cheerleader. And right when the team is starting to hit its stride, I got lured away. That was a tough message to deliver.

Stage 5 is the dead time between announcing you're leaving and actually walking out the door. In my view, the shorter time in this mode, the better—for the company and for you.

What I dreaded most of all the stages was the finality of stage 6. Game. Set. Match. Like when you hand the keys to your home to the new buyer, you finally realize that this is no longer your house. I hated that last walk out the door.

But why did I go?

I was working in my home office a few days ago when a call came in at 8 a.m. "Hi, I'm Joe Mumblefritz at Bank of America." I don't bank there so I wondered why a soliciter was calling so early. "Why did you leave Sun?" Whoa. It took me a second, but I quickly figured out that a financial industry analyst had obtained my home phone number and found me early in the morning in shorts and a T-shirt after a brief jog. What I told him is what I told McNealy, Jonathan, my staff and everyone else.

Someday I'll do a start-up. Just not yet. My kids are still young and when you jump into a start-up, you jump in head first. I'm not ready to take the arrows, travel and sacrifices of being a new venture CEO at the expense of potentially missing my kids' baseball game or piano recital. But if I want to get there eventually, I asked myself which would be more compelling: landing at a start-up when I had 25 years of Sun experience or landing with 19 years of Sun experience and 6, 7 or 10 years of experience at a place like Adobe. I chose the latter because it was right for me. That may not be right for everyone, but it made sense for me.

I very much look forward to my start at Adobe. I leave Sun with an incredible set of memories. I grew up here. I got married while here. Had kids here. My hair went gray here. (Don't let my wife know; I tell her it was all her.) It's been a thrill. Fun. Challenging. And worth every late night, road trip and commute mile. If I could do it all over again, I'd only do one thing differently (other than sell every share I had when the stock hit $130). I'd have come here three years sooner out of college.

I don't know if the culture is a product of me or I'm a product of the culture. Either way, I am proud to have been part of Sun's incredible, industry-altering ride. As I have said before, Sun is about Crazy Ivan moves. I have full confidence Sun has a few more Crazy Ivan moves up its sleeve. If you look closely, you will see the Sun rising, not setting.

Tuesday February 28, 2006

I'm Not Dead Yet...

About four or five years ago, I sat with a number of CIOs and got grilled in meeting after meeting. I had just taken over running the Solaris business unit for Sun and wanted to hear first-hand what customers wanted from the next release of Solaris-still some three years away at that point. Most of the input was simple. “Kill it.” At least they were direct. “Solaris doesn't matter. Just do Linux.” That one hurt. In most customers' eyes, Solaris was yesterday's technology. It was “tired.”

Fast forward four years and Solaris is the talk of the town. Unparalleled features, scale and security. Open sourced. Free. Not just alive, but relevant as an option offered to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Remember Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “I'm not dead yet...”

Two years ago, I had similar conversations with developers about Netbeans which came to same conclusion, “It's dead.” Most were just conceding all Java development to Eclipse. But lately, NetBeans is beginning to turn heads-Java developers' heads. I am not ready to claim full success. I am ready to say that, although it was once left for dead, today, NetBeans is gaining considerable traction (more than 1 million users in the world today!) and has become a solid option to Eclipse. Options mean you have choice. Choice means competition. That's good for developers, good for customer and, yes, good for us.

Here's some support. Last week in Chennai, India, we had the biggest turn-out ever for a "Netbeans Day" event -nearly 1,000 people. It was standing room only with people out the door. It was geeks talking to geeks. Not a suit to be found for miles. The great thing about the Indian development community, they are fanatics. They like to work with the latest technology and are digital sponges when it comes to soaking up all they can about what's new and what's coming. At some point, I'd like to get Don King to promote a WWF wrestling match with developers from India and Brazil in a “no-holds-barred, develop-to-the-death” coding bake-off. We could call it WWWF. I digress.

If you're going to develop Java services, you'd be foolish not to at least take a look at the latest tools from Sun: the NetBeans IDE, Java Studio Creator, and Java Studio Enterprise . If you haven't seen them lately, then you haven't seen them at all. Entry-to-enterprise tools that are far more intuitive, easier to use and free. Not free like free beer but actually free. The reviews are now starting to roll in. Again, I won't claim success. Not yet.

Until then, “in this corner, at five feet, eight inches and 156 pounds, a man from Bangalore who once hacked into the hospital records system in an attempt to change his name to Jamir Gosling.... ...and in this corner, from Sao Paolo, in the yellow and green shorts, a welterweight who once stayed up for three consecutive days with nothing but caffeine drinks and 27 pistachios to meet a product deadline...”

Tuesday February 21, 2006

A Perfect Storm Brewing

I'm not a developer. (Nor do I play one on TV.) I'm the Software Business Guy. That said, I'm always looking for the most technical and leading edge Alpha Geeks. My offer: free preview access to our next generation of tools and application services software. All I'm looking for is your critical feedback. Take it for a spin, kick the tires, see what it can do...or can't. Then tell us.

Today, we are releasing the beta versions of our next generation app. server, the Java EE 5 SDK and the developer preview of the NetBeans Enterprise pack 5.5. For the first time we are releasing a preview of both the platform and tools simultaneously. And for the first time, both have been developed with contributions from open source.

I'm confident you'll like what you see. We're shooting for increased ease-of-development and functionality. But this is a preview; I certainly won't presume we're perfect or done. So, no need to be shy with your comments (like you would anyway). Tell us.—Tell the community—the good, the bad and the ugly.

We know people have been talking about Java EE 5 for quite a while. We have it in beta. Now. Which means you have it. Now.

Tuesday February 14, 2006

Extreme Makeover: Silicon Valley Style

Remember the Rolling Stone ads from the '80s about “perception and reality?” On the left was a hippied-out Volkswagen van. On the right was a sleek, then-contemporary sedan - a Honda Accord, I think. Above the van it said “Perception” and above the sedan, “Reality.” Rolling Stone was trying to get advertisers to update their thinking about who was reading the magazine.

These days, we have our own perception/reality problem, only we're working in Internet time now and I can't wait 10 years for people to wake up to how radically Sun has changed. (Note to ad and PR agencies: Please don't call or write; we're on it.)

Some customers, press, analysts and partners are up on many of our recent (past 18 months) developments. But I still encounter the tilted puppy head when I make statements like, “All of our software stack (operating system, middleware, tools and system/service management) is FREE." .Not like free puppy free, but like zero dollar, zero restriction free. Reply: “How come I didn't know that?”

Or when I say, “If you want support, indemnification, patches, upgrades, etc., to an operating system, Solaris is actually less expensive than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You may choose Linux for other reasons, but price should not be one of them.” Response: “How can that be? Linux is free.” Unfortunately, perception is reality and you're not going to see us in Super Bowl ads any day soon letting people know otherwise. (That will certainly keep the ad agencies from calling.) But we're trying.

Having Mark Andreesen (Chairman of Opsware and founder of internet start-up Ning) stand up at last week's Sun Analysts Conference and boldly state that Solaris on a Sun x64 system was less than ½ the price of a Lintel solutions was a good first step. (See the video here.) It was breathtaking for those of us fighting the perception war every day. Until next year's Super Bowl, we'll just keep making progress via hand-to-hand combat techniques.

In the past 12 months alone, our software progress has been steady and substantial:

• Early last year we came out with Solaris 10, the new generation OS that rivals ANY operating system.
• Then we open sourced it.
• Then we integrated it with middleware, development tools, system/service management, a free open source database and the ability to run RHEL applications unmodified.
• Then we open sourced our app server, key SOA technologies and single sign-on software.
• Then we made the rest of our software stack free and committed to open sourcing whatever we hadn't open sourced already.
• We announced/shipped a complete new set of tools and a new open development process for the next generation of Java (Mustang).
• We shipped hot, new x64 servers that run Solaris, OpenSolaris, two kinds of Linux and Windows–with full support from Sun. Now Sun has zoomed up the charts in terms of x86 server rankings.
• Then we announced a breakthrough new multi-threading SPARC architecture.
• Then we shipped the systems based on it six months ahead of schedule.
• Meanwhile, we acquired StorageTek to expand our data management offering.
• And we acquired SeeBeyond which put us aggressively in the middle of the SOA space.
• Then we integrated SeeBeyond into our middleware and priced it, well, dirt cheap.
• And just for kicks, we launched a new utility computing service called SunGrid, prototyping IT as a service.
• Oh yeah, and we created Sun Connection, an “On-Star for your computing environment” where customers can access sophisticated remote servicing and predictive diagnostic services, availability status, software updates, etc.

This is a complete overhaul of the product line in one year and a significant shift in our business model. I'd call it a Silicon Valley Extreme Makeover. (I actually do like the TV program.) I'm just waiting for the moment when I can have the big bus virtually pull away from the front of the new software offering and have everyone cry out in joy. Maybe if I had used Sears tools to rebuild the portfolio (and reaped an endorsement check), I'd have enough money left to afford a spot on the Super Bowl to let everyone know what we're up to. Maybe next year when my Vikings make the trek back to prominence. Right.

Wednesday February 01, 2006

No More “Ready-Fire-Aim” User Experiences

I'm sure there must be a big rule written somewhere, that I can't seem to locate, that states that all enterprise software must have a less-than-optimal user experience, especially the interface.

There are, of course, examples of where this is not true. Although my point may be a bit exaggerated, too many agree with my view, especially customers, whom I care about most.

In the consumer world, there is more of a tendency to find out just how a consumer will use a product, then focus engineering efforts to build and improve on that process. In the enterprise development world, we tend to build a service or application that serves a need, or more often, meets a spec. (I say we and I readily include Sun in this, though it's a widespread issue in the enterprise software industry.) Only after we build the foundation and frame the house do we ask the "interface" folks to slap on a GUI and maybe (maybe) look at how to improve the usability.

I can't tell you how many times I see prototype product demos from my team who warn me, "Don't look at the interface or usability, we'll fix that later. But isn't this incredible functionality?" Ooops. Too late; we've missed it. I am now asking that every product I see must be accompanied by a story board that shows me the user experience "flow" by audience type. In our case that means a developer, an admin or an end user.

And for you CLI fans, there are even those who have made that a better experience, as well. Our friends at Apple have shown us that even a CLI experience can be improved.

Usability is not just an interface. It's the total cycle, from awareness to obtaining to evaluating to developing to deploying to production and maintenance. The interface, although very important, is only one aspect of this chain. And of course, the best user interface is no user interface at all. Self configuration, self diagnosis, automatic assembly are all better than interfaces that require human interaction. But short of no interface, there is no reason why we can't improve user experience for the folks who use our products and services.

Features and functions don't have to be ugly.

Wednesday January 18, 2006

What I did on my Winter Vacation...

I know things go thump in the night... Someday I'll tell you the story of the raccoons who set up housekeeping in my crawl space late one night. But a few mornings ago, something went THUMP at about 9am. And I do mean THUMP! When I went outside to see what that loud noise was, I found myself staring at a forty-foot section of a eucalyptus tree that had just smashed into my house.

Now what is the reaction of any normal, tool loving guy whose idea of nirvana is to spend weekends happily wandering the aisles of the local Home Depot? CHAINSAW! You've got to admit, there aren't a lot of great opportunities to use one of these unless you're making a really bad B horror movie.

But just as I'm firing up the saw, my wife informs me that there's no water pressure. Tree falls, no water. Hmmm. 30 minutes later, it hits me...actually, I stepped in it. Two inches of water filling up my sunken front yard.

On a freak chance, a branch of the tree, two inches in diameter, got jammed into the ground and severed my water main some three feet underground. So I had a tree sticking in the front of my house and no running water.

Of course I tried to shut off the water main at the street. But the valve broke off in my hand. Murphy's Law in action, folks. There was nothing else to do but wait two hours for the water company to come and turn it off.

So, I got the water turned off, returned from the hardware store with the $1.39 piece of piping I needed to repair the broken pipe and quickly (four hours) fixed the submerged pipe. The bummer was the tree was still where I found it that morning. The day was gone. And I still hadn't gotten to use my chainsaw. All my fingers and appendages are still attached, but in the end, a very disappointing end to the New Year's break.

Thursday December 08, 2005

Go Right. Go Left. Score.

Sitting in a room with 10 or 12 of your top customers telling you what you do well - and where you need to improve -- can be enlightening and humbling. For me, our customer advisory council is some of the most valuable feedback I receive. I just got back from a meeting with a dozen CIOs and CTOs from around the world.

My favorite comment from that meeting came from a CTO for one of the largest global telcos. After sharing strategy and roadmaps for technologies like Solaris, our Opteron servers and the upcoming T1-based Niagara, horizontally-scaled systems, this CTO said, "Two years ago I asked you guys why you were even bothering with SPARC. Why not just move to industry-standard chips? Well, now I get it."

It wasn't long ago that Sun's reputation was only for Solaris-on-SPARC. In basketball--a sport I played about a hundred years ago--if you can only dribble and shoot with your right hand, you are a one-dimensional player. Opponents can exploit your inability to "go left." Competitors did the same to us when we could only play the SPARC/Solaris game.

Now, we've committed to broadening Solaris to run on more than SPARC and expanding SPARC to run on more than Solaris. Of course, talk is cheap. Doing is hard and--when it involves such major changes--agonizingly slow. But we've made tremendous progress.

Today, Solaris runs everywhere. My everyday laptop is a Sony VAIO X505 with a Pentium M that runs at a whopping 1 Ghz, has a massive 20 GB hard disk and 512 MB of memory - and it's running Solaris 10. If Solaris can run on the smallest (1.5-pound) PC that I could find, it can easily run on any two-CPU server you throw at us. In fact, Solaris runs on nearly 450 Solaris HCL non-Sun, Opteron and Xeon systems today.

And now, SPARC is not just for 72-processor, mainframe-class servers. It's also for inexpensive, horizontal-scale systems announced today that are priced just like PC servers. Now we can "go left." Many today are still only playing the GHz game, which is like stocking your team with only 7-foot centers who can dunk. We've decided to to focus on the ability to increase scoring throughput by mixing in players who can hit a three-pointer, a skill that has revolutionized the sport.

And further, SPARC (like Solaris) is now open OpenSPARC, meaning it should likely run OS's like Linux and BSD soon.

Solaris that runs on SPARC, Xeon and AMD. SPARC that runs Solaris, Linux and BSD. Both open source. Hmmm. We can we go right, left, and most importantly, we can score too.

Monday December 05, 2005

This Makes Me Feel All Warm and FOSSy

How will you make money with free and open sourced software?

I get that question every day.

If you really want to know who we are targeting with our new software strategy, Solaris Enterprise System, look to what's happening in emerging countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC).

One of my people based at our engineering facility in India just sent me an email about the Free and Open Source Software conference in India, FOSS.IN. It used to be a Linux event, but the organizers realized Linux isn't the only open source game in town and renamed the event and expanded its focus. Smart move that's paying off with nearly 3,000 attendees!

Sun is giving numerous talks there and showing several demos on the tradeshow floor. Most of the attendees are young, technically savvy developers and students. The perfect crowd for free and open sourced software like , NetBeans, and Glassfish. Remember, this isn't the crowd that can afford to buy things. They join things. They download things. They form and participate in communities. These are the very same people who graduate, start companies (or go to work for companies) and then "recommend" the best way to build that next application or service to their managers and clients.

Our perfect target audience.

We want them educated and trained on Sun technology, just like they were educated and trained on free and open sourced Linux, MySQL, JBoss, Mozilla and Google over the past four years.

Our booth at FOSS.IN has been packed--even when some of our competitors' booths are empty! We're giving demos of DTrace, the Solaris Management Facility(SMF), the new ZFS filesystem, Belenix(Solaris Live CD), Solaris Zones and, of course, Glassfish and Netbeans(our open source application server and tools).

My email from India said, "In the first two days we have had at least 600 people walk through our stalls and talk to our engineers. We started with a single demo station for DTrace and we have had to expand it to four stations! Belenix CDs are going like hotcakes. One engineer (from a company we won't name) saw the ZFS demo and is still looking for his jaw!"

Some press and analysts may still be skeptical of Sun's aggressive software strategy. That's to be expected. But it's nice for me to see such strong interest so fast with the people we are aiming our strategy at in the first place.

Very cool. Oh, and apparently there was not much talk about Windows, AIX or HP-UX there. Not long ago they weren't talking about Sun either... what a difference an innovative, disruptive change in approach makes!

Wednesday November 30, 2005

This Is No Girly-Man Software

For those of you who read yesterday's blog, you know why my wife has started calling me Crazy Ivan... but that's a whole other story! Now back to my day job.

This morning we announced our entire server-side software portfolio will be free of charge and open source. Not pieces, all of it.

In one sense, we have made acquiring software simple. Crazy simple.

But more importantly, with the Solaris Enterprise System announced today, we are giving developers unencumbered access to all the key infrastructure and development software they need. Open, standards-based, complete, multiplatform and free.

We strongly believe this is the only open, enterprise-class multiplatform alternative to Windows on the x86/x64 platform (remember that HP-UX and AIX only don't run on x86 and/or x64).

This new operating environment includes not only an OS kernel, file system services, networking services, etc, but also, application services, web services, communication/messaging services, identity services, naming services, directory services, database services, management services, and the commensurate development tools. You can use a specific Java Suite, such as Identity Management or Business Integration, or you may choose only the pieces you'd like and combine with other standards-based components.

Our motivation is simple. Volume wins. Every time. The more people are using an open, standards-based solution, the more choices you have. The more you are not locked in to a single vendor. The greater an ecosystem will be built. The better you can leverage a community versus only those within your four walls. It allows us to participate in, and grow communities for you, address your biggest pain points and deliver the world's best infrastructure technology.

Are we crazy? Maybe. But so was Java, and NFS, and low cost SMP servers, and not adopting Itanium (oops, I guess that was never really crazy), and, and...

So far, every customer I have disclosed this to says it will make them entirely rethink how they are planning their next generation of applications and services. Freely available software is not coming. It's here. And we will be a leader in bringing it to you.

If you think that's crazy, just wait 'til December 6. In the meantime, check out my podcast on today's announcement at podcast
Posted by johnnyl ( Nov 30 2005, 09:00:00 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [3]

Tuesday November 29, 2005

Is Crazy Ivan Really Crazy???

Finding a great code-name for a product at Sun is akin to naming your first child. Lots of opinions. Lots of controversy. EVERYONE has an opinion. Sometimes the names are arbitrary, sometimes they have subliminal significance to what the product is or represents. In the late '80s Sun's first SPARC microprocessor-based desktop was named "Campus" which represented it's first target market: education.

Our latest code name is "Project Red October" which applies to Wednesday morning's announcement of our software strategy. Why Red October? Maybe because one of my kids is into anything military and we've seen the movie "Hunt For Red October" 312 times... But there was a scene in the book (and movie) that not only represents what we're doing in software, but also how Sun has been able to continually pioneer its own trail.

If you recall the scene, the U.S. commander is about to fire on the Russian Red October submarine, but is persuaded by Alec Baldwin's character that the Russian vessel is about to do a "Crazy Ivan" -- a one-out-of-the-ordinary evasive maneuver. When expected to go right, it goes left. Unexpected. Completely disruptive. Very Sun!

It's our history. Just when the industry thinks they've figured us out, Sun pulls a Crazy Ivan. When the entire industry adopted Windows NT, Sun doubled down its investment in Solaris and everyone said we were crazy.

When Sun applied its volume, standards-based systems design approach to commercial-grade servers, again, we were crazy.

When Sun made the code for Java available...crazy.

When Sun moved its entire software stack to a simple subscription pricing model...crazy.

Open sourcing Solaris. Crazy? In all cases, the Crazy Ivan moves had a positive, often wildly positive, result for Sun.

So what is the latest Crazy Ivan move for Sun? You're hours away from finding out!

Monday July 18, 2005

Update after JavaOne Conference We closed our fiscal year with a bang at JavaOne Conference the last week in June. It was fantastic to see the amount of buzz and activity surrounding the show - from announcements, to quality of sessions, to business conducted during the week. Many noted that they sensed an increase in show mojo compared to last year.

Only one thing irked me. Following a session with press and analysts I hosted, an article appeared (that was then repeated numerous times) stating Sun was decommiting from our support of the Java Desktop System (JDS), specifically on Linux.

Nope.

We remain fully committed to JDS. The point I made that caused the stir is that you will see us begin to emphasize JDS on Solaris and SunRay "even more". JDS on Linux has been pretty much the only conversation we've had to date. But with the renewed interest in Solaris, Solaris on x86 and x64 and Open Solaris, there is a commensurate increase in interest in JDS on those platforms.

Further, with the closing of our Tarantella acquisition last week, we have also dramatically improved our ability to deliver a full function JDS thin client solution -- running Windows, Linux, Solaris, mainframe, AS/400...you name it.

JDS is alive and well. On Linux, Solaris and SunRay thin clients. And the proof is in the pudding. Witness the third release of JDS, which should appear in the calendar Q3 time frame. With improved functionality, performance and usability. And did I mention it will run on Linux and Solaris and SunRay? It's enough to get your mojo rising.


Posted by johnnyl ( Jul 18 2005, 05:00:00 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Wednesday July 13, 2005

OpenSSO Announcement I'm finding the identity management industry pretty fascinating to watch... and a lot of fun to participate in. One major vendor announced the 5 axioms of identity. Those axioms lead to the 6 consequences of identity. Another big player has for some time talked about the 7 laws of identity. Lots of numbers. Lots of words and slides to explain the theories. I thought about putting together yet another slide on the "11 principles of identity" (have to outdo the competition... and 10 is too obvious). But here at Sun we have a bias for action. And what we've been talking about internally is the need to change the conversation away from "plumbing" and more about innovation and solutions themselves.

So today Sun is changing the identity market landscape by offering a very valuable identity service aimed primarily at the developer community -- the people who have to actually develop, test and deploy new services. We're open sourcing one of the IT industry’s top revenue-producing technologies: web single sign-on. That’s right! we're making another key component of our Sun Java Enterprise System, Sun's web single sign-on (OpenSSO) technology, freely and openly available.

We're moving the conversation forward to things like federation and identity services. We’re looking at how identity becomes inherent in the infrastructure services we’re building. We’re ready to quit talking about web single sign-on and which one is the right product, what standard is the right standard. It’s time to take these issues off the table. It’s not about web SSO, it’s about giving developers easy and open access to the fundamental underlying technology they need to quickly and securely build new services. They need to know that these base identity services are always there, consistently, pervasively and re-usable. That's how we'll get identity built into every application or service.

Today I presented to the identity management industry’s leading innovators and architects at Burton Group’s Catalyst event in San Diego. I discussed how identity management accelerates the Participation Age ITconversations and specifically, how Sun is fueling the acceleration of this new era.

The new world of participation requires our customers to address both opportunities and security threats at the same time. They’re being asked to drive new applications and services that will generate new lines of revenue—open their doors online to more and more participants each day. At the same time, they are still trying to address the latest compliance demands while fending off identity theft attacks. The key thing to note about participation is that businesses can no longer choose between opportunity and security—we have reached the age of no compromise. You can’t let growth take a backseat to security & privacy…at the same time, you have to find a way to limit your exposure and risk as you open yourself up to more access, more participation. That's the challenge Sun is focusing on.

And the good news is, with identity management driving business models to accommodate both revenue and growth, you don’t have to make that choice.

Web single sign-on is the most basic capability to opening up access securely and now it’s going to be widely and freely available to become “built-in” to applications being developed around the world. OpenSSO will provide open source code that will help members of the Java developer community build critical security capabilities such as authentication and web single sign-on into every application they build and deploy.

And we're not just throwing this code over the wall. We're building a community. See OpenSSO First code distribution will be available in Q4 of this calendar year.

It is generally believed that open source technologies are for commodity software products. However, this announcement proves that theory wrong. I argue that open source technologies can also be for software that needs to be commoditized in order for progress to be made. For years people have looked to Sun to innovate, to do things a little differently than the rest of our industry - kind of like a Crazy Ivan "let's zig when everyone expects us to zag" maneuver.. Watch this space for more zigs, zags.


Posted by johnnyl ( Jul 13 2005, 03:50:04 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Tuesday June 28, 2005

JavaOne News - Sun's Next Move in Software History has a cadence. At one point, web servers were not just a product, but an industry. But they quickly became commonplace, and the industry found value in “upstack” technology around application servers. They spawned an entire industry, including the emergence of companies like JBoss and BEA. Many application servers have become readily available, and, like their web server predecessors, free and open source.

So our announcement yesterday to open source our implementation of our next generation application server (Java System Application Server 9) was the obvious next step. Why? Because giving access to technology, and the ability to shape that technology's direction is an opportunity for the Java community to participate, vs. just witness the future. I firmly believe that open sourcing our application server will encourage developers across the Java ecosystem to contribute their insight, creativity and expertise. And here's your invitation. The water's warm, feel free to jump in. The url is: Glassfish. I can't wait to see the results.

But wait, there's more. Just as web servers gave way to application servers, app servers are now giving ground to the next level in the stack: service oriented architectures (SOAs), integration, composite applications, etc. That's why some two years ago we initiated an effort to develop an open specification to provide a standard way to deliver business integration of Java (and non-Java) services. That spec is now published. Further, Sun has open sourced it's implementation of this specification and made it freely available, also as open source. The goal: We want to do for integration what J2EE did for application development.

So by the end of the first day at JavaOne, most of the folks I spoke with understood the motivation for our app server and business integration open source moves. But the question remained: how will you fill the gap in what happens above the app server and monetize this opportunity? Good question. Answer: this morning, we announced that we intend to acquire SeeBeyond, one of the leading providers of business integration software solutions seebeyond.

Today's acquisition is critical to our Solaris and Java Enterprise System strategy. With SeeBeyond suite of 9 well-integrated products, we have an offering that positions us to monetize our investments in Java and Sun's Java Enterprise System and propel us into a leadership position in the next big wave of IT spend. SeeBeyond fits architecturally and they share our vision for adhering to open standards. Their suite is already based on open specifications, including J2EE, JMS, SOAP, WSDL, XML and NetBeans.

Will history repeat itself? I think so. Just as the acquisition of Waveset catapulted Sun into a position as one of the leaders in the Identity Management market identity, I believe the acquisition of SeeBeyond will catapult us into the lead in Enterprise Platform Suites, SOA and composite application delivery. We intend to aggressively tackle this $5 Billion market with both guns-a-blazing.

It's a beautiful day in the Java neighborhood.

Safe-Harbor

John Loiacano's blog contains projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future products and services, opportunities, results or financial performance of Sun Microsystems, Inc., including statements regarding Sun's intention to acquire SeeBeyond, that today's acquisition is critical to our Solaris and Java Enterprise System strategy, that with SeeBeyond's suite of 9 well-integrated products, we have an offering that positions us to monetize our investments in Java and Sun's Java Enterprise System and propel us into a leadership position in the next big wave of IT spend; that SeeBeyond fits architecturally and they share our vision for adhering to open standards, Sun's belief that the acquisition of SeeBeyond will catapult us into the lead in Enterprise Platform suites, SOA and composite application delivery and that we intend to aggressively tackle this $5 Billion market with guns-a-blazing. Such statements are just predictions and involve risks and uncertainties such that actual results and performance may differ materially. Factors that might cause such a difference include the risks associated with the failure to consummate the acquisition of SeeBeyond, the failure to successfully integrate SeeBeyond and its products into Sun and achieve expected results, failure to compete successfully in this highly competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, and the failure to retain key employees. These and other risks are detailed from time to time in Sun's periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Sun's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2004 and its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarters ended September 26, 2004, December 26, 2004 and March 27, 2005.

Additional Information and Where to Find It

SeeBeyond has agreed to file a proxy statement in connection with the proposed acquisition. The proxy statement will be mailed to the stockholders of SeeBeyond. SeeBeyond's stockholders are urged to read the proxy statement and other relevant materials when they become available because they will contain important information about the acquisition and SeeBeyond. Investors and security holders may obtain free copies of these documents (when they are available) and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") at the SEC's web site at SEC. In addition, investors and security holders may obtain free copies of the documents filed with the SEC by SeeBeyond by going to SeeBeyond's Investor Relations page on its corporate website at seebeyond.

In addition, SeeBeyond and its officers and directors may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from SeeBeyond's stockholders with respect to the acquisition. A description of any interests that SeeBeyond's officers and directors have in the acquisition will be available in the proxy statement. In addition, Sun may be deemed to be participating in the solicitation of proxies from SeeBeyond's stockholders in favor of the approval of the acquisition. Information concerning Sun's directors and executive officers is set forth in Sun's proxy statement for its 2004 annual meeting of stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on September 22, 2004, and annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on September 13, 2004. These documents are available free of charge at the SEC's web site at SECor by going to Sun's Investor Relations page on its corporate website at Sun Corporate.


Posted by johnnyl ( Jun 28 2005, 03:48:02 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Tuesday June 14, 2005

Blog Kick Off and OpenSolaris Change happens and communication happens, and all in real time. No more waiting for a magazine or a regularly scheduled email newsletter to arrive to find out what is happening in the industry or, in my case, what's happening with software at Sun.

The simple truth is that the fastest and easiest way to communicate a viewpoint directly to a customer, potential customer, partner or press, is through a blog. And so, here is my debut. As Executive Vice President of software at Sun, I'm involved in setting the agenda for what Sun is doing in software in this quickly evolving industry. Expect to see my opinions on the changes and opportunities I see on a regular basis.

And what better a day to kick off a blog than the official unveiling of OpenSolaris, a worldwide event initiated by all those with a common interest of using and improving one of the world's most advanced operating environments. The primary medium, blogs of course.

Prior to running all of software at Sun, my role was running the operating platforms group, home of the Solaris Operating System. I often get the question "when did we decide to open source Solaris," seen by many as the crown jewels of Sun's systems software? What was the tipping point to the decision? In fact, it was a steady evolution. There was talk as far back as the mid- to late nineties about open sourcing Solaris. About three years ago we committed to deliver Solaris 10 on the SPARC, Xeon and Opteron 64-bit platforms on the same day, with the same feature set, and, committed to open source it via an OSI-approved license. The majority of heavy lifting occurred more recently as we continued work at eliminating technical and legal encumbrances and preparing the code for broad availability  (including free availability of the corresponding optimized compilers and debuggers).  Sifting through literally millions of lines of Solaris code was extremely challenging, and time consuming. One of our key criteria all along was to offer a full, buildable source base, not just offer a few components. It took us longer than we wanted, but we're finally here with Phase I.

Developers and enterprises often want the open source code so they know they are not locked into a single proprietary technology. We think that for them, the primary "good" from open source comes from the freedom it gives them. "Free" is nice. "Freedom" from being locked in is even better. So we may not even see a lot of contribution to the code back from the large enterprises. That's OK. Developers, on the other hand, really are seeking a community of smart, committed people - with common interests and capabilities - with whom to interact. And they want free, unencumbered access to the best technology. OpenSolaris provides the opportunity to leverage a stunningly compelling technology, and make it even better. We expect an extraordinary group of developers to add value back to the common code, and build new businesses on top of it.

So there was no tipping point moment. Just an awareness of the trend line and the realization that open source is the methodology of this massively connected era. That, combined with Sun's genetic predisposition to open sourcing (everything from NFS to NetBeans to OpenOffice.org, etc.)  made this the obvious next step for Sun. And for those of you who thought there were only a couple of alternative operating systems for your "industry standard" x86 hardware, we give you another choice. Open. Free. So use it, enjoy it, tell me what you think of it - and what you think of our decision to open source it. Let's begin that conversation. As for Phase I: Mission accomplished. Now on to Phase II! Stay tuned.
Posted by johnnyl ( Jun 14 2005, 01:13:41 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [8]