We've all heard the statistics - with more than 6 million software developers worldwide, Java technology powers more than 5.5 billion devices including mobile phones, smart cards, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, PCs, car navigations systems and more.

This week the Java ecosystem got even bigger.

Yesterday, Apple announced Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1 adds support for Java SE 6

And today, Sun, Canonical and Red Hat announced the inclusion of OpenJDK-based implementations in Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Server and Desktop editions.

Barton & Rich both offer some commentary on what this milestone means for Linux developers and users.

You can also check out this Java Posse podcast Barton & Rich did, along with Bruno Souza from Brazil.

Look Out World - Open Storage is Under Way... and it's not just me saying it.

Well, the world changed a little this week... did you feel it? The Open Storage movement continues to roll on, or as Jason Williams  of Digitar put it in his blog (http://blogs.digitar.com/jjww/index.php?blogid=3), the democratization of storage, is upon us.

It's about time...it's also about money.

Williams is tired of paying for stuff he doesn't need - he says that the support of a community of likeminded folks also suits him fine.

Partners like Nexenta and others are also participating, create new storage appliances based on open source software that further build momentum. Read more here: http://neotactics.com/blog/technology/storage-storage-storage

But, momentum doesn't happen in a bubble... it happens across the industry. Just ask Dell in their Inside IT blog:

(and I quote): "Is Sun giving up or changing the game?Tue. Apr. 29, 2008Sun, the perennial also ran in the storage business is making a very bold move. If they succeed, it could change the storage industry forever." Out of fairness,  lot more to it, but that's the part I thought was interesting

Or ask Marc Farley in Dell's future of storage blog:

(still quoting) "Today, Sun announced that they were going to make a collection of storage software available as open source product. This could be a game changer or a last-gasp effort (or something in-between) for Sun and storage. This will get Sun a lotta love from the open source community and cast a nice glow over the company for awhile."

Yes, it's true - Neil Young will join Sun on stage during the JavaOne opening keynote session on May 6, at Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Come hear and see what Java technology means to Neil Young as he does a special demo of a new music project.

Day/Time: Tuesday, May 6; 8:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.

Who: Rich Green (EVP, Software, Sun Microsystems) will be joined by several special guests, including Neil Young and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz

Can't make it to JavaOne this year?

The keynote session with Neil Young will also be available via webcast & we'll post some photos in the JavaOne press kit.

You can also view all JavaOne blogs at JavaOne BlogCentral

In case you missed this little gem from AnandTech, the facts don't lie -- the Sun Fire X4450, based on the Intel Xeon processor, delivers the best performance per watt -- besting even IBM's new JS22 blade with dual-core Power6 chips. And today Sun is doing one better and disclosing actual power consumption of the Sun Fire X4450 on VMmark, a free tool from VMware for comparing virtualized systems.

The Sun Fire X4450 server, running VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 software, posted one of the best scores among all 16 core results – 12.23 @ 8 tiles, with an average power consumption of only 830W measured during the steady state of the benchmark. The Sun server is up to 60% more power efficient than comparably equipped Dell PowerEdge R900 and HP ProLiant  DL580 G5 systems.(1)  And did I mention, the Sun X4450 server did it in half the space of those systems?

 More information on the VMmark result is available here.

(1) Calculations are based on the specifications referenced in the VMmark disclosure and were done with Dell's Datacenter Capacity Planner and HP's power calculator

The Uptime Institute recognized Sun with a Green Enterprise IT Award for the our work on our energy-sipping Santa Clara datacenter, as outlined in the whitepaper - "Aligning Business Organizations: Sun's approach for building energy-efficient datacenters."

Dean Nelson, Sun senior director of global lab and datacenter design services, accepted the award
tonight and provided an overview of Sun's eco responsibility efforts to Ken Brill, Executive Director of the Uptime Institute, in a podcast you can find here.

The official award name is a bit of a tongue-twister - Best-in-Class Implementation Winner for the 2008 Uptime Institute Green Enterprise IT Awards in the category of Energy Efficient IT Hardware Deployment. Click here for full details on the awards.

In case you missed it, this week's eWeek Magazine features Sun on the cover.  A pic of Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green. Inside is a Q&A with those two execs talking about Sun's emphasis on open source and how it is helping to revitalize the company.  Here's a portion:

"Open source is a means to an end. It's a mechanism to grow the broadest market, build the largest ecosystem, reach the maximum set of opportunities ... but just because you've reached the market doesn't mean you've effectively built the business. It's the difference between being popular and being successful."

--Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president and CEO 

To read the entire article click here.

Sun has released the latest version of the free and open Solaris 10 OS.  Solaris 10 5/08 features a number of key performance enhancements and supports a host of new platforms.  It's available immediately (for free of course) and becomes the preferred version for systems running the Solaris 10 OS.  Larry Wake, group manager, Solaris Software marketing, breaks down what's new with Solaris 10 5/08 and you can dig into all the details of this latest update - including what Solaris 10 customers are saying - right here.

Chief among the new enhancements to Solaris 10 5/08 are platform-tuned power management and optimized support for Intel processors and graphics technology.  New power management features leverage Intel SpeedStep to improve power usage based on a system's performance needs.  This all comes as a result of a special collaboration between the Intel and Sun engineering teams announced a little more than a year ago. 

Also new to Solaris 10 5/08 is the ability for Solaris Containers to support virtualized environments based on earlier versions the OS - Solaris 8 and 9.  This is particularly notable for those who are running a physical instance of Solaris 8 or 9, allowing them to move it to a Solaris 8 or 9 Container running on a Solaris 10 system.  Improvements here also bring a new feature called CPU Capping, which enables an absolute limit to be set on CPU usage for better management of system resources.

All in all, these new updates set a new standard for Solaris 10 which now runs on more than 1,000 x84/x64 and SPARC platforms.  To date, Solaris 10 has set 196 different performance records - with 40 of those records coming on x86 based systems.

As an important final note, all the work being put into Solaris 10 5/08 is happening in tandem with the efforts of the global OpenSolaris community on the OpenSolaris project. Stay tuned to this space and the upcoming CommunityOne conference, being held May 5 in San Francisco, for more details on this front.

Today Sun was honored by InfoWorld as one of the Green 15: companies and organizations that have undertaken the best green-tech-oriented projects in the past year.  Sun was selected for our datacenter consolidation project, focused on Santa Clara, Calif, Bangalore, India and Blackwater, UK.  The Santa Clara datacenter alone reduced power capacity demand by 75 percent.  And the project saved Sun $1.1M per year in energy costs.  Check out the article here.

This morning I got an email from our vice president of eco responsibilty Dave Douglas that was an inspiring start to Earth Day.  Dave says that he's approached weekly by employees at Sun wondering if the eco team is hiring.  And he tells them, "you already have an eco job!"  If we each bring our personal passion for eco responsibilty to work, we can look at all of our projects and responsibilities in a new green light.  Dave wrote about this idea in Environmental Leader a couple weeks ago.  Read his column here.

As Earth Day rolls around, I've been giving some thought to how I can reduce my carbon footprint and how that can - and should - extend to the companies with whom I choose to do business. Over the coming years I imagine we'll all be much more aware of how "eco" the makers of our consumer goods are and by extension how willing we are to buy from them. 

At Sun, we're starting to see this trend in the enterprise space too.  Not only are customers asking what type of company Sun is  and what we are doing to reduce our impact on the environment, but they are also interested in learning how Sun can help them meet their goals in becoming more sustainable.  Companies are recognizing that everything they do from reducing overall consumption (paper, utilities, office supplies) to building energy efficient datacenters and greening their supply chain can help them achieve these goals.

Consider this ...

In August the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that U.S. corporations and public agencies spent $4.5 billion to power their data centers in 2006, a figure that is expected to grow to a whopping $7.4 billion by 2011.  We've heard this before and yes, the projected growth is stunning.  But, here is something brand spanking new to share ...

A new survey by CIO2CIO shows that ONLY 20% of companies describe their energy usage as very efficient or efficient and 26% rate the importance of monitoring the cost of energy as a 4 or 5 (out of a possible 5)!  This tells us that a lot of companies are still in the very early stages of assessing their energy consumption and its impact on the environment and their bottom line.  

If you're interested in hearing more about the tools, solutions and methodologies Sun has developed to assess efficiency in your datacenter visit http://sun.com/ecoinnovation

Joe Hartley, VP of Global Government, Education and Healthcare, traveled to Shanghai last week to present at the Sun China ERC. Joe talked about the power of communities and what they mean for education, now and in the future.

More than 500 representatives from the China Ministry of Education, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, CERNET, and other Chinese universities participated in the event.

Here's something new for the 2008 JavaOne Conference. If you are a student, you can be our guest and attend both the CommunityOne and JavaOne Conferences in San Francisco, May 5 – 9, 2008 for Free.

Join us for 5 days of technical content, meetings with experts and networking with companies such as Sun Microsystems, AMD, Intel, Motorola, Oracle, BEA, Blackberry, BluAge, IBM, InterSystems, JBoss, Microsoft, NAVTEQ, Parasoft, SAP, Terracotta and more than 100 other corporations, organizations and start up companies.

Registration is free but space is limited. Sign up today and get the following benefits:

• Admittance to all general sessions, technology sessions and BOFs at both CommunityOne and JavaOne conferences
• Specially developed Java University classes - just for students
  
• Lunch each day, t-shirts, backpack, coupon for free Java Certification Class
• Access to technology experts and the JavaOne Conference Pavilion
• Entrance to JavaOne AfterDark party

At the Sun Tech Days event this month in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sun's Jim Hughes found a unique way to... um... hammer home a point about the capabilities of Solaris ZFS. Wielding a sledgehammer and standing in front of approximately 2,000 audience members... actually, the video tells the story better than words ever could.  Check out ZFS "Hammer Time" and see for yourself.

Hughes (with hammer) Kirill Nikonchuk and Jim Walker before the hammer swinging began.

A little extreme? Maybe. But the man knows how to make a point about ZFS.  And while a hammer-wielding Sun Fellow may not have been the culprit in your experiences with data corruption or file system failure, perhaps you've got your own war story to tell?  If so, please share.

Sun Microsystems among Leading Tech Partners at Web Mission 2008

Sun Startup Essentials is a tech partner at Web Mission 2008 this weekend where 20 UK Web 2.0 companies will travel to San Francisco to explore new opportunities for growth with key people in Silicon Valley. The event will showcase innovative UK web talent and provide a platform for those involved to gain valuable media and business exposure.

"Sun Startup Essentials is proud to be a technology partner of Web Mission 2008 and of our role assisting UK companies seeking increased awareness in the US community," said Juan Carlos Soto, Vice President, Global Market Development and Engineering for Sun. "It is exciting to see the breadth of innovations from UK startup companies and imagine their role shaping the future of the Web around the world."

Sun's been busy at NAB in Las Vegas this week. Not only have we made two announcements here -- one about expanding the Sun Streaming System and the other announcing the Sun Media Advisory Board (MAB) -- but Sun's John Gage also headed up an NAB "super session" on social networking. See highlights from the session here.

For more information on Sun's activities at the show, check out the NAB 2008 press kit. You can also click here to listen to an audio clip of Sandeep Agrawal, Sun's Group Marketing Manager of IPTV, discussing the show and the significance of the expanded Sun Streaming System.

How hard would it be when you're only given 60 seconds to deliver your message? That was the time given to attendees at the Open Repositories conference in Southampton at the poster sessions called "Minute Madness". Each presenter had 60 seconds to introduce his/her poster.

Sun had a poster stand to showcase the popular Honeycomb product for the education community. Gail Truman (photo far right), our Honeycomb product manager, gave an excellent 60 second overview on Honeycomb's benefits for digital data repositories.

You will hear more about digital repositories as we prepare for our next PASIG (Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group) meeting in May. Hundreds of education institutions from around the world will gather in San Francisco to discuss how we can preserve history for the next generation.   You can register to attend here.