The Longest Tail

Yesterday, I had a chance to meet with the United States Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. He's a very impressive individual, very up to speed on the issues facing not only the American business community (which one would expect), but also the specific challenges we face in the technology community (like the negative impact of our increasingly isolationist immigration policies).

My main motivation in attending the breakfast (which Intel kindly hosted, thanks Paul), was to discuss a topic I obviously care a lot about: the economic and social advances available to the American/global economy through an open, toll-free internet.

I referenced what happened with Katrina - that the network is a profoundly crucial tool for business and government services alike. Despite FEMA's accidental prioritization of relief to victims that use Microsoft products.

I briefly touched on what was going on in Massachusetts, which to me is simply the other side of the same coin. Nicholas Carr and David Berlind make the point more eloquently than I. (Needless to say, I don't always agree with Nick - to me, asking Does IT Matter? at the onset of the Participation Age is like asking if Electricity Mattered in the days following its introduction. But his points here are far better grounded.)

To mix a few metaphors, Bridging the Digital Divide is all about serving the longest tail - by driving down price, and driving up access and interoperability. What is happening in Massachusetts is the beginning of a global realization that governments have a productive obligation to serve the longest tail - their citizenry. By deploying open, accessible standards - not the technology of a single company.

Google clearly reaches a far broader audience than Windows Media Player. OpenOffice can reach a far broader audience than Microsoft Office.

But a well adopted open standard could, and should, trump us both.

From where I sit, that's exactly the opportunity, and the obligation.

Posted on 09:55AM Sep 22, 2005 |

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What a Proud Team Looks Like

If you want to know what a team fresh off a couple years of eating spinach, ready to take on the world looks like, it's this::

That's a photo taken at our launch event last week, with folks from across Sun (see if you can pick out a few faces) who joined in to launch our new Galaxy systems with a bang - imitating Popeye (those are supposed to be muscles on our arms). Where's Bluto?

We also had an opportunity to stop by the NASDAQ to ring the closing bell (a hilarious concept, given that NASDAQ has no trading floor - it's a trading network).

Once we were outside, the photographers asked if the team assembled would like to split into two, given that one team in attendance was from the financial services sales team, and the other a west coast team that put on our NC launch event.

The team responded, "Nope, we're one team."

Exactly. One unstoppable global team.

Posted on 11:10PM Sep 18, 2005 |

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A Simple Request to Sun's Employees

To All Sun Employees,

The good news is the market is totally excited about our new lineup of products - Galaxy, Amazon+, Solaris 10, our new storage lineup. Customers and journalists are pumped up, interested, and dying to get new information. Which means they're going to be pressing you for data about early customer experiences, performance, shipdates, delivery plans, etc. It is, after all, their role in the world.

For the sake of your colleagues around Sun, please do not share Sun's confidential information. There have been a few instances in recent weeks where crucial data and photos were leaked from Sun. It probably sounds counterintuitive, but this actually harms Sun's business.

The way news or media cycles work, if any information is 'leaked' to the marketplace, it radically reduces our ability to garner broad top shelf coverage - most media outlets won't cover what's already been leaked. So leaks actually have the opposite effect of what you might think - they dampen coverage, lessen interest, and complicate helping the field drive business. They also prompt customers to put decisions on hold, and put at risk the credibility of our salesforce to be 'trusted advisors' to our most important partners and customers.

As you know, I'm a huge believer in 'opening' Sun to the world - that's what this blogs.sun.com infrastructure is all about - transparency is one our best competitive weapons. But the unauthorized sharing of Sun confidential information is illegal, and against company policy.

So I would like your support and participation in talking to your staffs to ensure that employees understand the harm that can arise from intentional leaks. I'm not asking anyone to be silent about our news, or to contain their enthusiasm (I certainly can't), just sensible when sharing unannounced company information. Let's introduce ourselves to the world on our terms, not someone else's.

Thank you,
Jonathan

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Posted on 09:54AM Sep 16, 2005 | Comments[2]

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"Slow, Hot and Huge"

Monday was another momentous day for Sun - we were in New York City's Hudson Theater to roll out some much anticipated innovation. We gave an update on our Wall Street business, gave some insights into our (phenomenal) progress with Solaris 10, and rolled out our newest industry standard servers (known as "Galaxy" systems) running Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Linux and Solaris.

Here's the video (Real Player format) - it's worth the watch, I promise. You can watch John Fowler and Andy Bechtolsheim (Sun's first employee) disassemble the industry, and do a point by point comparison of our Galaxy products against the major competition (Dell, HP and IBM). They both talk through the design motivations behind our entire lineup of Opteron based systems. The difference between our Galaxy platforms and the leading competitive products is astounding. Here's a snapshot.

Against Dell's flagship enterprise server product, known as the 6850, Sun's x4100 offers:

50% more performance* - you'll need 1/3rd fewer servers
63% less electricity consumption
1/4 the physical size,
at 1/3 the price.

Allow me to repeat.

50% more performance
63% less electricity consumption
1/4 the physical size,
at 1/3 the price.

John was going to save Kevin and Michael the administrative hassle, and just announce the End of Life (EOL) of Dell's 6850 for them, but he lost his nerve on stage. Slow, Hot and Huge. Not the attributes you want for your server line (although the initials, SHH, are fitting if you want to hide your flaws).

But as I mentioned in a prior note, the price of oil, of space, of administration and of money - suggests we're going to have a blockbuster set of products against Dell, HP and IBM. Space and power matter, and we now lead the planet in responsible computing. Now the challenge is driving awareness, getting the marketplace accustomed to acquiring industry standard servers from Sun. We're the #6 x86 vendor in the world - it's time to get to number 4, then 3, then...

To build awareness, we started in Texas by flying a plane and a banner over Dell's headquarters. I believe every citizen of Texas, given the media coverage, is now aware we're in the game. And let me clip the rumor, no, Scott was not piloting the plane. He was in China delivering our 10th anniversary Java One. (Stay tuned for the video.)

Minute 51 of the above mentioned video is my favorite segment - it's where you can see us challenge Steve Jobs to a "pod duel." And you can also see John Fowler and me, both otherwise reserved executives, dance. A privilege we grant to few. I would like to point out it takes a real man to dance on a stage in front of a webcast. And a wayback machine.

Toward the end of the overall video, you can also see me host a panel with MySQL, Oracle, Red Hat and AMD, discussing where industry standards go next. And no, I'm not joking. Stay tuned for how Sun's Solaris and Red Hat might work together to further the progress of open source.

All in all, this was one of the most enjoyable quarterly events we've done in a long while. It's good to dance in keynotes.

____________

UPDATE: No matter how excited you are, never write a blog on 2 hrs. sleep., or at least one involving fractions.

Posted on 11:07PM Sep 13, 2005 |

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Emergency Services, Web Services and Industry Standards

Did you know that any cell phone in the US, whether it's been "activated" or not with a calling plan, can make a 911 call. Know why? Because there is an overriding public interest in the provisioning of emergency services - that supercedes the interest of any individual corporation. Personally, I appreciate the availability of the service. I've never used it, but I'm glad it's there.

Now, there's been a ton of discussion recently around how that's going to be done in the world of internet telephony - if your phone is a Voice over IP phone, how do you connect to 911 with the same service level guarantee as in the traditional telephony world (the FCC conveniently provides you with a Microsoft Word document detailing their thoughts on the matter)?

But what's been happening around Hurricane Katrina makes it obvious there are far more profound issues lurking within that concept. The internet (and some if its shining assets), played an integral role in connecting people - to one another, and to some of the government's emergency services (tragically, you'll need Microsoft Internet Explorer). The internet is continuing to play a role in rescue operations. And there is no question the internet has firmly established itself as a social utility. That's not an academic statement, it's a personal one - for those of us with friends and family in or near the disaster area.

But this raises an interesting issue. Surely we're at a point where if the network is a social utility, then we should collapse our views on emergency services and web services? And that similar to the imperative of making a 911 call from any cell phone, authorized or not, we must evolve our thinking to consider the nature of internet based emergency services. Will all services rely on a phone call? Surely that's not the most scalable communication mechanism - a criticism no one can levy against the internet.

So at what point do we realize that critical information will come in all media types - telephonic, static (text message), or other time based content types (an IP phone call, or streaming audio or video segment)? If you saw what happened with FEMA's preferential service to Microsoft customers, you know what I'm referring to - if the internet is a social utility, surely we should guarantee access to emergency services of all forms, and not simply lowest common denominator text messages. And surely the idea that one must have paid Microsoft - or Sun, Adobe or any other company - for the privilege of accessing emergency services - runs counter to the objective of bridging the digital divide (David Kirkpatrick has some interesting thoughts on the matter, too)?

If you've been watching what's happening in Massachusetts, you begin to see the same issue playing out - as it has in Europe already. Should the creation, publication or distribution of public service information require one company's technology? In my view, ABSOLUTELY NOT. Should we mandate that only open source products be relied upon? No - to me, it's orthogonal to the discussion. Most folks have no clue how to build source code into something useful (a point Steve Lohr of the New York Times made clear).

What should we mandate? That all public information, that is, all data and services provided by governments, from 'who to call' lists to video broadcasts of critical information, leverage open, royalty free, freely sublicensable standards. The government should be silent, in my view, on the selection of technologies - that's not their core competence or role. But they have a productive role to play in the standardization and provisioning of emergency services, and the guarantees around service levels and availability. In my view, they have to date underleveraged that role in driving the productive evolution of the network as a social utility.

In my view, Massachusetts is more than a little tussle - and FEMA's screw up is more than an indiscretion - they represent the beginnings of radical change around the world, toward a truly comprehensive definition of Industry Standards. The types of standards that yield participation, and true competition, on a global scale.

And speaking of the redefinition of industry standards, please tune in to Sun's network computing launch event on Monday morning - you can find details here. I'll be joined by several leaders in the "industry standard" arena, and you'll definitely get a sense for why Gartner just raised their ratings on Sun. More than ratings, we plan on raising a few eyebrows come Monday, too.

Posted on 11:21PM Sep 10, 2005 | Comments[2]

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