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!