The big secret is out - Sun Canada was awarded the 2010 Winter Games as the server and storage supplier. At a 'National' meeting today in Markham, Ontario this was announced.


Sun Canada's president, Andy Canham,(right) welcomed hundreds of Sun employees physically present, and many more over the internet. At a high level Andy laid out what this meant... a lot of work, the right people to do the job, the best servers and storage capabilities in the world, and another opportunity for Sun to shine its capabilities to a globe that would be tuned in. As an employee - this was interesting, but the message hadn't hit home for me, yet.

Andy introduced John Furlong, the CEO of the 2010 Winter Games who flew in from Vancouver for this event. John (left) spoke passionately about the importance of not just record keeping but all data for the fans, the athletes, the teams, the transportation, the food... he provided a much bigger picture of what the supplier of servers was all about, and frankly it sounded daunting to me. He also spoke about the fact that Sun was partially chosen because of its clear environmental leadership in server and storage space. That no other computer vendor had achieved what we had, and that leadership was something they were looking for. I was reminded later today in our press release we had done the same for the NHL and the CFL, as well as the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake.

Lastly, Nathalie Lambert, Chef de Mission for the Canadian Team (right), spoke and here's where the light went on for me: She spoke about how as an athlete (with a gold and two silver medals in the Olympics herself), the flow if information is all-important. Not just what your time was in a race - that's taken for granted. What about how many minutes until your race since those final mental preparations are all-important, or how about who will be competing in the race, and what lane they might be in, or what the track conditions are on turn one vs turn five (think luge, or downhill skiing), or how long the bus ride is to your venue. All of these things are driven by information - all driven by computers, and at the 2010 Winter games - they will be Sun's computers.

OK - Now I get it. But Nathalie had more about the flow of information from the athletes' perspective.

Nathalie related the story of waiting with the rest of the team to get their bronze medals after placing third in a speed skating relay at the Lillehammer Winter Olympics in 1994. One of the Canadians had fallen during the race (a fall in speed skating can be pretty spectacular - not in a good way) and yet we still ended up third. They waited 20 minutes to go to the podium, and clearly something was wrong, but the Canadian team had no information as what the issue might be. As it turned out one of the other teams had protested actions of another team, and the second place team was disqualified. This meant the Canadian Team ended up with Silver - and they still didn't know why until they found out on the way to the podium. The lack of information had kept them in the dark and in this case it turned out well for them (not so well for another country's team). There was no network to them in 1994. While that wouldn't happen today, we are taking on a massive responsibility to ensure immediate data flow... and we're up for it.


After Nathalie spoke, John was presented with an autographed, mounted and framed Sun SAPRC processor from Andy. Why might that be important? The processor was a Niagara processor, the backbone of Sun's eco-friendly server line, and it was autographed by Marc Trembly - the chief designer of the Niagara CPU line - and a Canadian.

The 2010 Olympic and Paralympic mascots were there at the end of the event for photos, so here's one of Nathalie and Andy with two of the mascots, Miga (left) and Quatchi.