HR Geek: (Product) Strategy for the Rest of Us

In addition to focusing the product portfolio, you can also think about the resulting changes as representative of the way we approach customers (and the types of customers we approach).

Solaris and xVM are largely products that add value to Sun hardware.  (Sure, you can run them on non-Sun hardware, but we should be able to add more value through the combination of our hardware and software).  These are fairly traditional enterprise sales through a direct (and partner) sales force, with hardware-driven sales.

The application platforms software organization holds a number of point products, e.g. our Identity suite, mySQL.  Here we're monetizing the software through licensing or service contracts in a fairly traditional software sale.  It's a software-driven sale.  Yes, we'd like to pull hardware, but it is a pull. 

The cloud computing and developer group is focused on services for developers and startups.  The contact with customers should be entirely web-driven.  These typically aren't folks who want to talk to a sales guy.  In some ways, this is the group at Sun most likely to interact on a consumer-type model, where the end user is interacting with the company directly.

It's not a perfect fit, but it's a helpful addition to the product focus discussions.

The Economist has an interesting column today on literacy in the age of digital media. They do the usual bemoaning of how graphical user interfaces and digital media are to blame for the dumbing down of our culture and reading abilities, but do offer some interesting counterpoints. For example:

Cultural observers bemoan the way electronic media—with their demand for spectacle and brevity—have shortened our attention spans. But as a blogger on Eastgate.com noted recently, that equates brevity with debased taste, and sees patience for long stories as a mark of high culture. But if brevity is to be deplored, what should we make of haiku, sonnets, and ink-brush calligraphy?

On the other side of the coin, lengthy sagas are not the sole prerogative of the literary elite. Pop culture has its share of huge tales—witness the Harry Potter canon. Indeed, for every pared-down presentation pumped out by the electronic media, an engaging narrative can be found.

But I particularly like the following:

[T]he quest for truth has given way to the quest for making sense of the world as experienced. For anyone under the age of 20, the world being experienced is one where the internet has always existed, and where everyone who matters is only a click, speed dial or text message away. “Tomorrow’s adults,” says Mr Federman, “live in a world of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity.” Their direct experience of the world is wholly different from yours or mine.
...
[T]eenagers of today ... are skilled in making sense not of a body of known content, but of contexts that are continually changing.

Teachers must recognise that our pedagogical tools are inconsistent with the skills needed to survive in a world where people are always connected to everyone and everything. In such a world, learning to think for oneself could well be more important than simply learning to read and write.

I couldn't agree more with the assessment of how people's experience of the world is changing. I also place an extremely high value on being able to think for oneself. But I'm not quite ready to give up the ability to read and write; I still view the ability to articulately communicate as a pre-requisite for success. After all, someone has to craft the concise soundbites.

Heard the "big news" about the opening keynote to JavaOne?

At this year's JavaOne, music legend and pioneer Neil Young will join Sun Microsystems' executives during the Opening Keynote session on May 6 at Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Come hear and see what Java means to Neil Young. Neil's appearance will include a special demo of a new music project.

What better way to make Java (and Sun) out to be a "legend" with little relevance to developers than to trot out an aging rocker with no relevance to the very developers we're trying to attract.

I'm sure Neil's a great guy, he's made some interesting music, and I'm sure his new music project is interesting, but let's face it - he's not going to do a damn thing to make Java seem hip or cool.

Who is my equivalent "Marketing Geek" and how did he/she let this happen?

---

P.S. Anyone keeping track of average age of attendee at JavaOne?

Whit Diffie, Sun's Chief Security Officer, organizes a weekly "intellectual dessert", essentially a tech talk immediately following lunch in which sweets of some kind are provided.  The speakers are almost entirely external (frequently from Stanford or Berkeley - for obvious proximity reasons).  Recent talks have included things like "High Tech Labor Issues From A Labor Perspective" (in honor of international labor day), "Wireless Sensing Systems in Environmental Applications", and more technical talks such as "Self Imposed Temporal Redundancy".  

What makes the series interesting to me is that the talks frequently give a different, outside perspective of technology which I miss as a longtime employee.  How does innovation happen in battleship design (it's in the archive - seriously)?  How are (or could) the technologies we build be used in the real world (e.g. SPOTs as environmental sensors)?  What are the issues facing the industry? 

Unfortunately, the series is internal only, but if you're a Sun employee, you can find the details of the upcoming sessions and recordings of previous sessions here.