Wow !!  if you want to see something really cool, go look at the new documentation for Communications Suite 6. 

http://wikis.sun.com/display/CommSuite/Sun+Java+Communications+Suite+Information

 

I am not normally a big fan of Wikis, but the neat part of this is our docs team, engineers and our customers

have all contributed to build this! No more paper docs, no more CD/DVDs for docs!! I guess this is a "green"

software product. No trees killed to produce documentation for Comms Suite 6!!

 

Also Joe Sciallo's blog will give you more detail. Joe has done a great job leading this effort!!

 

Very Cool, go take a look!
 

 Everyone hopefully has been noticing the great strides that the OpenOffice.org community has made of late and the fantastic set of features that are now available for everyone in the latest release 2.3. If you haven't tried it yet, download a copy and give it a try. I guarantee you will be just as impressed as I have been.  http://www.openoffice.org/)                 

The Sun team is  extremely excited with the progress made to date.We are aggressively working  to move in the right direction, to ensure that the community continues to thrive. What many of you might not be aware of  is that we (Sun) have increased our focus and dedication around OpenOffice.org.  Nine months ago Rich Green asked me to take over the responsibility for Sun's commitment and support to OpenOffice.org.  We are looking at the history of OpenOffice.org, issues that might effect the community and how best to evolve, for everyone's benefit.  Based on my observations and discussions with the community members, three areas of  focus are;

1. Community governance
2. Contribution agreement
3. New tools and more open selection of tools

In the area of Governance, we have asked a number of folks to join a new Community Advisory Group. These are  companies interested in investing more resources in OO.org  and from the community at large.

To better describe the role the text from the invitation is below.

There have been significant and ground-breaking announcements around OpenOffice.org and there is great momentum around the project and community. We should all feel very proud of being part of such an amazing Open Source project. We can't just stop here we need to continue to evolve and ensure we are doing the right things for the community and the product's long-term future. I can ensure you that this common goal is something that I am committed to. With this goal in mind I would personally like to take this opportunity to invite you, and the company you represent, to join the OpenOffice.org Advisory Board.

The goal of the Advisory Board is to ensure we continue to move OpenOffice.org in such a direction that guarantees its long-term success and a successful future. The Board will provide strategic representation of the project's key stakeholders and community representatives. It will mediate between the desires and interests of the stakeholder companies and the community, and balance the inputs against with the strategic goal.

There are no preconceived notions on the actual structure and boundaries of the Board and suggest we cover that collectively at our first meeting. The Board will not manage the project's daily affairs, nor will it replace the OpenOffice.org's existing governing body, and the Community Council. The council will continue to do what it has done so well: resolve community issues and conflicts, set community goals, manage community funds, and most important, give a voice to the hundreds of thousands who make up the OpenOffice.org community.

I will report out after the first meeting, which is Nov. 1, 2007.

In order to address some of the concerns I have heard from the community, we are planning for  OO.org to use the new Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA) http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/contributor_agreement.jsp. I have carefully reviewed this document and have had council from a variety of our community members. This SCA goes a long way in addressing a variety of concerns with the current agreement. The most community friendly aspect of moving to the SCA is the inclusion of language stating that any contribution licensed out by Sun will also be licensed under an OSI or FSF approved license.  Please take a look at it and give comments.  We plan to use this agreement as soon as possible. This is a positive step forward for the community and more evidence that we are listening.  We continue to listen to feedback regarding the license under which OO.org is available.

In the tools area, I have asked Michael Bemmer and the Engineering Steering committee to come back with  recommendations on the tools the community agrees are best.  Then we will start the process to implement as soon as possible. We are counting on the community to help in that effort.  We are committed to a bug,build and source code management environment that speeds contribution and adoption by all.

Having read many blogs in the last few days, I need to clear up a few things:
 
-- StarOffice and OpenOffice are almost identical binaries
-- The big difference is that Sun can indemnify any user of StarOffice
-- StarOffice comes with enterprise level support and hence we charge for that. OpenOffice is free
-- The copyright assignment is not new
-- Sun contributes all of its development to OO.o under LGPL


Clearly we have work ahead, please be assured that Sun is steadfastly behind a strong, transparent and fair community process. We value the users and developers in the community! We welcome your input and your contribution. We invite developers, users and corporations to join the OpenOffice community effort !

 

 

I came across the announcement a while ago that Singapore Airlines was going to embed StarOffice in their seat back entertainment systems on many of their refurbished 777-300ER planes, but I didn't know when/where we would start seeing this .
Well...

Chuk-Munn Lee (one of our evangelists) was flying back to Singapore from JavaOne and was on one of the planes. He snapped a couple of images to show StarOffice available on the entertainment system. Below is one of the images - he launched Star Impress to see if he could work on some of his slides (you can plug in your own USB key to edit/save files) - he said the system worked well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big news from JavaOne on Friday - we are announcing the availability of the Sun Grid Module for the Netbeans IDE!

This is a great new plugin that lets developers do a number of cool things:



- Use the new Sun Grid Application project type to develop a java application directly in Netbeans.  This is a Java application project configured for one click packaging, deployment,  and execution on the Sun Grid Compute Utility.

- For all project types (Java and otherwise ), you can manage resources, jobs, and "runs" on Sun Grid - all without leaving Netbeans!

The new plugin also includes wizards to greatly simplify many of the typical uses of Sun Grid:


- "Create Sun Grid Resource" wizard:
Lets you select multiple files on your desktop, create a ZIP file and then upload  as a resource to Sun Grid, all in a single step.


- "Download Sun Grid Output" wizard:  Download your job output, unpack it, view it  - or -  open it using an application of your choosing.



With this  plugin, you never have to leave the Netbeans environment to develop, deploy, and view the results of your jobs on Sun Grid.  Because it simplifies the standard processes,  you can focus on the more complex aspects of developing applications for grids - such as parallelizing applications to take maximum advantage of Sun Grid.

Find out more -
- Register and use Sun Grid @ http://www.network.com

- Get Netbeans @ http://www.netbeans.org

- Get the Sun Grid Plugin from the Netbeans Beta Update Center which comes preconfigured as part of the standard Netbeans IDE installation .

- Get Sun grid plugin details @ http://sungridplugin.dev.java.net.

- Join the Sun Grid community @ http://developers.sun.com/sungrid

 And, in hockey news, the Western Conference Finals start on Friday with the Anaheim Ducks vs the Detroit Red Wings  - Go Wings!

 

                                                                                                             

There are exciting activities happening this week in Network.com: we are releasing new features to enhance the availability and flexibility of Sun Grid.

A bit of background - the Sun Grid Compute Utility, at the heart of Network.com, is a true utility computing model that's all about simplicity and flexibility. You come and you go as you please. You use what you need, and you only pay for what you use. Sun Grid essentially gives "infrastructure on demand" to users who can't or won't make large investments in IT infrastructure. You don't sign long term contracts and you only use the grid when you need it. With Sun Grid, IT becomes an operational expense, not a capital expense. Available for just $1/CPU-hour

This March, we launched the Network.com Application Catalog. The Application Catalog gives developers the ability to create, publish and share applications online through Network.com.  With this catalog, you can get instant access to ISV and open source applications on a pay-per-use basis. The catalog also includes the ability to use digital tokens to manage and protect shared applications. Create, Publish &  Share!

What's new -

Internet (Bi Directional) Data Access  enables applications running on the Sun Grid computing environment to access external data and services over the Internet. This opens the possibility for Network.com to offer mashups of data and services from multiple sources.  It eliminates the need to download large data files to work with your apps and makes it much easier to take advantage of the high performance computing environment offered by Network.com

Job Submission API, in limited beta release and delivered to users as a Java Client Side API.  This allows developers to programmatically interface with Sun Grid for most common operations.  We also offer interfaces that use the API to provide additional access mechanisms, such as a command line interface. The API will be distributed as a Java Jar file with the associated documentation and sample applications.

Network.com goes international, providing expanded, international access to the Sun Grid Compute Utility and bringing the flexibility, scalability, economy and convenience of Network.com to 24 countries in Europe, Asia, Asia-Pacific, the U.K. and North America.  Developers, ISVs and end-users from these countries will  have access to the Sun Grid on-demand, as well as to the open source and ISV applications published in the Network.com application catalog.

Listen to the podcast that I did with Hal Stern a few weeks ago to hear more   .

If you would like to know how to develop for the grid, Sun's Developer Network (SDN) offers a ton of resources to help you get started: Sun Grid Compute Utility Developer Resources 
                                                                                                     

I am very pleased to announce that Sun has joined the OpenOffice Mac Porting Project!   This is great news for Mac users who seek open source alternatives to MS Office.

You can read all about it at http://blog.sun.com/gullfoss/ :  the blog of OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun.

OpenOffice.org is a very attractive alternative for many people because it allows users to use the same applications and the same open standard file format across all key platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.

Apple has a significant market share in the desktop space and more and more people out there are using Apple notebooks. Since Sun's software strategy is a multi-platform strategy, it was a natural decision to join the Mac porting efforts in order to accelerate the development. Eric Bachard, who is leading the Mac porting effort on OpenOffice.org, described Sun's involvement as a “win” for the Mac porting project. The OpenOffice Mac Port is very popular: on average the Mac porting web pages get about 15-20K page hits per week. Per Eric, this number can go up to 30,000 or 50,000 clicks per day when he puts interesting Aqua screenshots on his blog.

We should be able to show the first working version of Aqua at the OpenOffice.org Conference in Barcelona in September. However, it probably will take a few extra months before it will be on par with the other platforms. I strongly encourage users to join the community and help test developer builds. There can also never be enough developers. If you can write code or know how to design user interfaces, join the effort. The more people the faster the job will get done. Everybody who has a Mac can help, because it's always important to have people who can do QA and testing. For the core development, C++, OpenOffice.org API and Mac API skills would be perfect, but probably the eagerness to help is is the most important thing!

What about StarOffice, NeoOffice and Sun's support strategies? StarOffice is Sun's professional distribution of Openoffice.org, so it's quite possible that a Mac version of Staroffice will be released. Stay tuned. With regard to NeoOffice, Sun has chose to support projects under the umbrella of OpenOffice.org, i.e. projects that use the same hosting and communication infrastructure as well as the same open source license. From our point it's important to have one coherent code base maintained by one single community. With regards to support, it's also quite likely that Sun will officially offer support and services for the Mac version of OpenOffice in addition to our other supported platforms.
 
With regard to features, native support for the Open XML format in OpenOffice for Mac is an ongoing development effort led by Sun engineers. It will be available in future OpenOffice.org releases on all supported platforms, including Mac OS X. Integration with Spotlight is already listed on the current roadmap.

Go here for more details: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/timeline.html. Have a look and get involved.

Last Friday (Apr 20) I was very excited to give the keynote address at the International Technology Expo sponsored by V3.  Held in the virtual world of Second Life, this presentation was in a class by itself.

I've given hundreds of presentations over my career, but where else can you find an audience of avatars with Jack in the Box heads, dressed as giant bunnies, vampires,  or in bondage gear? Ever given a talk where one of the audience members was hanging in mid-air over the audience? Now I have! It was a lot of fun and, needless to say, this kind of crowd makes things very interesting for the speaker!

Before the talk, I was a  bit concerned about connecting with such an audience, but no worries,   this was a great crowd! Lots of feedback both during the talk and afterward. Great questions and conversations about Sun's role in Second Life, open source, the role of the developer etc.  My message: Sun has Solaris and open products - including our developer tools - which anyone can download to create new applications and innovations for use in SL and RL (Real Life).  

For those of you that missed the keynote and conference, here is the video replay.  As well as the slides, and me talking, it includes wide shots on the audience so you can get the "feel" of what it was like to attend the virtual keynote.

I spent some time after the keynote in our booth and talked to a lot of visitors - some quite colorful. I also met with a reporter from Wired and conducted an interview in SL. You can read it here: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/04/slexpo 

It's very clear that a lot of smart people like to hang out in the virtual world of SL and create amazingly creative and cool things
Bill Joy once said: " innovation happens, just not always where you work". I think we can now add;  "innovation will happen, and it may not happen in the real world"

Sun will continue to work with Second Life to connect with developers and the innovation that is happening there. SL is a great place to experience global co-operation & conversation, participate in the open exchange of ideas and get involved a new developing culture that is open to learning and sharing.

ITE was a great opportunity to meet and interact with the inspirational and creative people that inhabit SL.   A Big Thank You to Liam Kanno, Kelly Emms and the V3 group for organizing and sponsoring this event.

                                                                                                      

Just wanted to let you know about a great guy we have in tech pubs -  Joe Sciallo. Since March of last year he's been writing a Comms blog that's just great - lots of interesting, relevant and timely topics.  Like the recent one on "Using Communications Suite for Emergency Notifications".

Bookmark this or add  to your blogroll:  http://blogs.sun.com/factotum/

It's never as good as you want it to be, but it's never quite as bad as you think either ! Not sure who said that but I have found it to be really true.

This applies really well to the Comms product suite. Part of my job at Sun is working with Comms team to re-invest in the product
and make sure that it is a strong Microsoft Exchange alternative.

I have seen many blog entries and emails from customers and employees (including our CEO) which express frustration with bug fixing, feature addition, etc.

I hear you and we are going to do something about it !

Priorities going forward

1. Bring "Wow" back into the Web Client. Actively under construction is aWeb 2.0 client for mail, calendar, IM and contacts that will raise more than a few eyebrows.
2. Complete rebuild of the install environment (so SIMPLE my mom could install it).
   
3. Deliver a calendar server based on the latest CalDAV standard.
4. Open Source Comms components
5. Increase search and management  capability of the message store
6. Enable large message store capability
7. Bring carrier grade, push e-mail to the market.  Based on IETF/Lemonade standards.
8. Granular and light-weight web services to all Comms backend data.
9. Deliver SyncML support
10. Improve and expand Outlook Connector
11. Offer support for better /cheaper storage & mail-store integration.
    
12. A connection back to Sun for to better support users
13. Add a blogging engine to the Comms Suite
    

Just a partial list of what we are planning, and over the coming months we will be sharing more and more info with you as we get things released. So how are we going to deliver on this?  By making significant new  investment in sustaining and QA.  This will allow us to have developers spend most of their time doing what they are best at - innovating and developing cool new products.  Of course this won't all happen at once, but we have a strong server technology base to build on that makes this possible.

To learn more about Sun's Java Communications Suite and how it can help your business, you can  take a look at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/comms/overview/index.jsp

Send your comments and feedback, we believe in our products and we know that Comms on Solaris can be a competitive advantage for you in your business.

 Coming soon.....

A screen shot of our next generation web client 

I am excited (and maybe a little nervous)  to be speaking at the 2007 Silicon Island Technical Expo held in Second Life this Friday (April 20) .

If you have never been to Second Life, you have to check it out. It's a 3D, virtual digital online world that's imagined, created and owned by its residents. Full of incredibly creative people who have created amazing things; art, design,  buildings, environments and communities.  You can create your own custom avatar and explore the virtual world, interact, play games, shop, create art, music, environments and even dance! 

The 2007 Silicon Island Tech Expo  -  organized by Liam Kanno and Kelly Emms - is intended to bring together the top innovators of business products in one place in SL and let Real Life business know what Second Life product developers are creating make their operations easier in SL.

The Expo will run from April 20 to 22 and will feature businesses which are focused in their efforts to make Second Life a viable medium for conducting real world business.

Sun Microsystems is a headlining vendor and I plan to give an overview of what Sun is doing for SL communities, developers, talk a bit about the Sun Island and its build-out plans,  and also let folks know how to get 20 free hours of computing time on Network.com.

There is still time to sign up Second Life, create that avatar (blue hair optional) and participate in the Silicon Island Expo and get a free hat for your avatar. Keep an eye out for my avatar - Jim Parkinson - I 'll be in a Sun t-shirt. 

 Go http://www.thev3group.com/ite.html  to find out more .

 

 

 

 

 

I saw a blog,  schools-should-use-openofficeorg , the other day that got me thinking: "how much money are we spending on Microsoft licenses for all the students in this country?"  Per the US 2005 census results for education , there are 75 million students in this country (a pretty amazing number on its own as it represents over 25% of the population over 3) . That covers everyone, from elementary kids, through Jr. High, High School and College. Includes all those folks who have gone back to school as well for a career change, etc.

School districts pay somewhere between $50 and $100 for MS Office licenses for each and every computer in the school.  Add to this the home computers running MS Office for Students and the numbers can get big.   Let's assume that every student using the MS Office Suite is paying Microsoft $75 each. From the 2005 Census, there are  33 million k-8 students,  17 million 9-12 kids in high school and 17 million college students (of all ages).

To be fair, let's assume that 1/2 of K-8 students are covered by a MS Office license either through their schools, their parents computers or both.  That comes out to ~ 16.5 million k-8 students. If we multiply each student  by $75 we get ~ 1.24 billion spent on licenses.  That's just elementary school.

Now let's assume that 2/3 of the high school and college students use MS Office and also pay on average $75 each.  Do that math and we arrive at: 22,440,000 students x $75 each or ~$1.68  billion. Combine with the other number for a grand total of almost $3 billion.

While clearly not a annual expense (typically, people only buy MS Office licenses when they get a new computer, or upgrade to a new version) and perhaps the math is a bit off,  it's still a big number and a significant % of many school & student budgets. Why, with so much good open source software available at no cost,  are we spending this kind of money? 

For example, take a look at Open Office (openoffice.org)  - includes word processing, spreadsheets, drawing, presentations and a blogging tool - and it's FREE.    You don't have to be a computer guru to set it up and use it. Thing is, a lot of people simply don't realize that there are options out there.

I realize that compared to the overall cost of a college education these days  you might be thinking "yeah you have a point, but what's another $75 bucks". True, but think about what we could do if everyone who could afford money didn't buy the MS Office license and instead donated  to their local schools, PTAs, teachers or needy students.

Next time you are considering buying a Student and Teacher edition of MS Office  - STOP! Go to openoffice.org and download OpenOffice for FREE! Try it out and then send the money you would have sent to MS to help someone who really needs the help.   It's not right that schools have to cut arts funding, after school programs, athletics and still pay for MS Office licenses!

Become an open source activist - ask questions at your schools, your colleges, your bookstores
 

---

And in other news:

The Detroit Red Wings clinched their sixth straight Central Division Title and their third consecutive Western Conference title.  Playoffs start tomorrow!

Go Red Wings!

 

Most people have had the experience of moving into a home or apartment that was previously occupied and wondering, as one gets familiar with the new digs, "Why did they paint it that color"? or "Whoever thought that this linoleum/tile/carpet was a good idea...what were they thinking!?"....

Something similar happens when you move into a new organization, with the difference being that if you keep your mouth shut long enough (not easy for me!) you will find that not only are there very good reasons for doing things a certain way, but also that there are a lot of very good things going on that you need to appreciate and encourage.

So, some of the great things I have found recently in my new organization:

StarOffice 8 supports ODF - Open Document Format. Important because ODF is a true open standard, and has been adopted and implemented by IBM, Sun, Google, Red Hat and even Microsoft. It matters because ODF allows you to create documents whose formatting is independent of the application used to actually do the creation. Guarantees availability of the content well into the future.  StarOffice 8 also works with the Sun Weblog Publisher, a terrific blogging tool!

  Really smart people who understand open source really well. 
 The engineers on Sun's Java Communications Suite and StarOffice have joined the Mozilla Calendaring Project which develops Lightning, a calendaring extension for Mozilla Thunderbird.

They have two goals: provide a calendaring solution for StarOffice & OpenOffice.org users and integrate support for Sun's Java System Calendar Server into Lightning. The current release of Lightning, downloadable from the Mozilla site, contains the WCAP code that allows for connecting to Sun's Calendar Servers.

Communications Products - A great team of people and what amazing IP. Turns out that one of the inventors of MIME, Ned Freed, works for Sun. He's currently doing some really cool stuff with MTA (Mail Transport Agent).

network.com "The data center on demand". Also known as the Sun Grid Compute Utility, network.com's release 1.1 is out with lots of new features and new ISVs. We have already committed 20 new user applications to open source with hundreds more to go. Go to network.com/application to see the on line applications available and to sign up. In a few months they will be releasing the ability to access network.com with an API and also to allow you to open network connection to other sites to read, collect, write and store data.

All this, still for only $1/CPU/hour. Great for developers looking for a cost-effective way of testing their code across a large number of machines.

Read More:
The Register talks about Grid as a "Developer thang"
Internet News  article on  the Grid as an "Application JukeBox"
Sys-Con Media with an article on the features in  Network.com


ISV-Engineering This worldwide engineering team has a simple mission: MAKE APPLICATIONS RUN best on Solaris!  Recent successes include integration of Cisco's Secure Access Control Server with Sun's Identity Manager.  The integration of network access control and identity management gives the enterprise the ability for a truly centralized secure system. 

Sun's ISV-Engineering team recently concluded a tuning effort on Symantec's Brightmail. Running on Solaris 10 and Sun's T1000 we achieved an increase in message throughput of 6X to 10X!

The result;  per Symantec, Sun's T1000 "Niagara" platform is now the preferred platform for deploying Brightmail.  Price to performance and power utilization can't be beat!  A rack of T1000's can process over one billion messages per week and can support a million mailboxes.  When Brightmail is used with Sun's Java Messaging Server and Storage, it is a complete email solution!

And check out the latest on the Detroit Red Wings - my favorite hockey team. The latest news is in the right nav bar over here....