Standing in the Field @ Valley Forge

Standing in the Field

Notes from SJS Application Server Field Engineering

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Tuesday June 22, 2004
Why I'm Blogging

This whole blogs.sun.com thing has been amazing to me. We've gone from a implicit policy discouraging public communication to dozens of posts a day on a public website in just a few short weeks. But it's just representative of a larger transition going on at Sun, at least in my opinion.

Five years ago, it seems like the prevailing attitude at Sun was that information must be tightly controlled. Sun was trying to present itself as a mature, well disciplined datacenter company rather than an upstart, edgy workstation company. Maybe this image was the direct result of Ed Zander's personality. Maybe it was just the market conditions. But, as a result, information was guarded and controlled carefully. Information about roadmaps, new products, and known issues was hidden, even from own Sun's field engineers. This was a disaster in my opinion. Look at all the bad press that resulted from trying to keep a lid on the ecache failures in the old product line.

But now, we are seeing the exact opposite trend. Sun is trying to present itself as a upstart, edgy software/systems company rather than a stodgy, old school datacenter company. Maybe this is as a result of Jonathan Schwartz's personality. Maybe it is just because of market conditions. But, as a result, Sun is being much more open to its employees and customers. Examples:

This is obviously a good thing. When making datacenter decisions customers are usually more interested in what your product line will be 3-5 years from now than what products you have available today. Choosing SPARC or Solaris or Sun Java Application Server or N1 Grid Service Provisioning Server is more than just a purchasing transaction. All of these products are about long term vendor partnerships. Recognizing this need for partnership by better communicating with our customers Sun can differentiate itself from the competition.

So, I'm going to do my part. Maybe the thoughts of a field engineer aren't as interesting as those of a DTrace engineer, X11 guru, industry visionary or even a marketing person . But I'll do my part in keeping the lines of communication open.

(2004-06-22 21:50:56.0) Permalink Comments [1]