Robert Scoble, the next Katie Couric

I sat down with Robert Scoble recently to talk about explaining network infrastructure to children, the blog demon that sits on my shoulder, and the future of our marketplace serving network businesses. Please check out his new gig... (you can also click here to start watching our discussion immediately (requires quicktime, and good bandwidth)).

Posted on 09:09AM Sep 26, 2006 | Comments[25]

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Just Ask a Teenager

I was on a panel at a telecom tradeshow a few years ago. I was surrounded by top executives from the largest handset companies, a few global carriers, and a couple technologists. The host asked a basic question: "What's the killer app for the mobile marketplace going to be?"

My peers on the panel had a range of fanciful responses, from the future of mobile payments, to downloadable music, to interactive video services, to presence and location. Just to be a contrarian (and because it represented my reality), I said... "I think it'll be making a phone call."

After a lot of gnashing by the panelists, the audience ended up saying, "yup, that sounds right. A mobile phone that can't place a call isn't worth owning." After all, a need to make voice calls is why most (not all) people buy a phone. And I'd argue the most successful wireless carriers are the ones that have focused on voice service and coverage. At least where I live.

But I was in a European airport a few weeks ago, waiting in a lounge with about 100 other people - when I had to revise my world view. Most people had mobile handsets - we all would've predicted that. But no one was talking on their phone. They were all looking at them, and either browsing or text'ing or playing a game - but no one was making a voice call.

Now draw a chart of your own personal usage over the past few years, and I would imagine the line representing "number of minutes per day I use my phone like a computer" is approaching or surpassing the line representing the "number of minutes per day I'm on a phone call." Whether it's playing a game, grooming your address book, checking a stock price or sending/reading email, the lines are crossing over globally. Not for everyone, but certainly most users (and definitely most younger users, or those living in Hong Kong, where mobile handset penetration exceeds 100%).

With that as a backdrop, I was asked a simple question by an investor last week, "what's the one thing you think the market doesn't understand about Sun's opportunity?"

My response: that the majority of the world will use the internet through their phones, not through a PC.

I'm not sure he believed me. And within the US, I'm not sure many folks agree that most people in the world will use the internet on their phone. Yet. But considering the volumes - nearly 5x the number of people buy a phone each year, than buy a PC, the conclusion seems obvious. And I don't know about you, but when I sample my nieces and nephews, even those in the USA, with "which would you rather have, a new iPod, a Motorola RAZR, Danger's HipTop, Microsoft's XBox or Windows Vista?", I get a pretty consistent answer. (Hint: it ain't Vista.)

Which only strengthens my belief that most people in the world will first experience the internet on their handset. Which means most businesses in the world trying to reach those consumers or leverage the internet should broaden their horizons.

We certainly are.

Posted on 10:50AM Sep 22, 2006 | Comments[39]

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The Opacity in Transparency

I just got back from a week out talking to investors and customers, and hosting a few customer events in New York City. New York is a cultural center for a number of communities - notably for Sun, those who see technology as a source of value, as a competitive weapon, not just a cost center. Home turf for us. You can watch one of the videos here, and another interview at BusinessWeek, here - sentiment toward Sun is definitely improving.

We had overflow attendance throughout our customer events, thanks both to rising interest in our products, and to Dell cancelling their analyst conference - timing is everything. Speaking of perfect timing, the Wall Street Journal awarded two of our core technologies, dTrace in Solaris 10, and our new ultra-efficient Niagara systems, their highest honors, just in time for me to announce the award on stage. Just in time.

Now, as interest from investors and customers continues to grow, one question I consistently run into is "how much of your revenue comes from software? Or product x, y, z, etc." As I've said repeatedly (and it's at least one reason I write this blog), I'm committed to providing more transparency about our business - as much as I can, within realistic (and fiduciary) limits.

But this is a harder problem than it might first appear. Here's an example.

As you might be aware, we recently introduced a new product, code named "Thumper" - you can read about it here (and enter this contest for free kit). It's a 2-way, general purpose server, with 24 terabytes (yes, Tb) of storage, running Solaris and ZFS. It has very interesting performance (2 Gigabytes per second sustained i/o, for the geeks in the crowd), and pricing (well under $50,000 - less than $2 per Gig). Its service profile is what makes it most interesting, however: because it runs Solaris/ZFS, as the drives fail (and all disk drives eventually do), the system requires no maintenance. Instead, it either slows down, or shrinks (customers can choose) - but the integrity of customer data is never at risk. It's a reliable system built from inherently unreliable parts, a fundamental design principle of the internet.

The other rather remarkable benefit of running Solaris on a storage device is that customers can actually run applications (like Oracle, SAS, or any analytical/trading algorithms) directly on their storage. Performance and efficiency are tremendous, in part because there's no network latency - because there's no network. (Just ask Joyent about their experiences.)

Now here's the challenging part.

As I mentioned, Thumper (sorry, the x4500) is built atop a 2 socket Galaxy server, it leverages Solaris/ZFS (but doesn't require it - Thumper runs Microsoft SQL Server quite well, too), and has 24 terabytes of serial ATA disk inside. So it's part server, part application platform, and part storage product. Customers pay only one price, but in the pursuit of transparency, how should we categorize the revenue? - as server, storage or software product? It obviously contains all three. For now, we're calling it storage - which underrepresents our server and software business.

Going forward, if you believe, as I, that the era of custom hardware and software is coming to an end, this challenge - of characterizing a specialized system in terms of its ingredient components, is only the beginning of such a challenge for Sun - and the rest of the industry. The more we open up, the more you'll see we're built from common components and infrastructure - which complicates answering the question, "how much revenue do you generate from x, y, z."

As interest continues to grow in Sun, we want to respond with more information about who we are as well as what we are - financially, technically, and culturally. Transparency's a competitive advantage, after all.

Which is also why, as of this posting, this blog is now being translated into 11 languages - extending our reach, and invitation to participate, beyond only those who speak English.

So hello, world (again).

Posted on 08:50AM Sep 18, 2006 | Comments[17]

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Who Cares About Bridging the Divide?

If you watch television broadcast media in America, like nearly everywhere in the world, you'll find an amazing diversity of content.

In the early morning, you'll see children's programming. Then it's on to morning news, and maybe a talk show or two. Into the afternoon, you'll see soap operas and daytime drama. Toward dinner time, you'll get the evening news. Afterwards you'll see drama or reality TV. Closer to bedtime, you might see something racier.

The point is, the networks know their audiences. There's not one message or product for everyone, there's content specific to each demographic. Knowing that parents need to get ready for school or a day at work, networks put kids programming on in the early morning hours. Knowing stay at home parents want a sense of community, the big talk shows start after the workday has begun. Again, there's no one show for all audiences.

Just as at Sun, there's no one message for all audiences.

Developers care about bleeding edge innovation, but have little buying power; IT executives have all the buying power, but generally avoid the bleeding edge (unless they're supercomputer specialists). Developing nations and development authorities care about intellectual property freedom, and the impact of technology on society. Most IT buyers are more worried about shared services, SOX compliance and financial return. Same technologies, perhaps at differing stages of evolution, but wildly differing audiences.

So with that in mind, I'll tell you about a very uncomfortable customer presentation I attended not too long ago. It was with a highly technical government customer, one focused on their nation's security. They wanted to know about our open source strategy.

What made it uncomfortable was the image on the title page of the presentation - presented by a new employee, the title page was unmodified from when the presentation was delivered to a conference examining the impact of technology on developing nations. It featured this image:

In its original form, the presentation made a simple point - the digital divide is the development divide. Those without access can't participate in the opportunity, whether economic, social, political or academic. And free and open source software was lowering the barriers to access and adoption.

But this particular customer wasn't interested in the network as a social utility - they wanted to know about open source access to LDOMs and NFS over RDMA (that is, not the plight of those without network access).

Now, from inside Sun, as well as outside, I get a lot of feedback about eco-responsibility, or the Participation Age, or bridging the digital divide - some love that we talk about the issues, some think it's a total distraction. "Why don't you just focus on revenue?" Here's why.

Just like the broadcast networks I mentioned above, Sun must serve a diversity of audiences. There is no one message for CIO's that works for development authorities and the open source community. CIO's care about utilization and shared services. Developers want to know where we stand on the environment, and on the next technology leap. Performance wonks want to know about memory bandwidth and RDMA. Shareholders want to know about revenue growth and margin expansion.

If we go after one audience at the expense of the others, we lose in the long run.

Our (growing) challenge has been to shape our message for a technically and culturally diverse audience. As the network becomes a ubiquitous utility, not just for banks, but for teenagers, developing nations and creative artists, there's no one message that will span all audiences and nationalities. One person's eco-responsible server is another startup's lowered utility bill, is another datacenter's real estate consolidation - is another country's ability to redirect development dollars to healthcare, that would've gone to powerplants.

Every audience, like every nation, has a different objective. But every audience, like every nation, represents opportunity to Sun.

And even at the risk of a colliding message from a new employee, we're not interested in letting any of it pass us by. It's far too valuable an opportunity.

Posted on 04:12PM Sep 04, 2006 | Comments[16]

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