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.