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.