Leaving Austin
I'm so happy to be leaving Austin. Don't get me wrong, I love Austin and it has been a fantastic week, meeting with customers and partners what seems like 20 hours a day. The excitement and response to Sun's new HPC products has been amazing. Everyone here gets it that open storage will change the world of over-priced, complicated, proprietary storage just like x86 clusters changed the supercomputing landscape a decade ago. But 8 days on the road is a lot. And to top off a great week, I have a cup of Austin Java's organic blend, a table by the window, a power plug, and great AT&T 3G connection for my laptop as I wait for my 7 am call to begin.
Best T-Shirt giveaway of the show goes to Sun's partner AMD with their "Keep Austin Weird" shirts. Favorite comment of the week was Intel's general manager for HPC telling me what percentage of their next-generation Nehalem CPUs have been pre-sold by Sun (I can't mention the number, but trust me, you would be very surprised to hear, why don't you ask Intel for yourself).
Go goodbye Austin, and hello to the year ahead. I anticipate looking back next year at SC09 in Portland on a year of great Sun achievements with our customers and partners in the world of supercomputing.