Earlier this week, I visited our Taiwan office in Taipei.  We have a very strong group of Systems Engineers which is part of GC(Greater China) GEM(Geographically Established Markets).  It has been over 10 years since I last visited Taiwan and first time in this job - I definitely need to visit more often to aid the growth - there is a great potential here.

After Taiwan's parliamentary elections last weekend and a presidential election to be held in March, there is a great hope for recovery of a sagging economy.  The result of parliamentary election was a landslide victory for opposition party which signaled desire for change and economy improvement.  I was amazed at the similarity betwwen Taiwan and Korea's political/election situation.  Korea's new president was elected last month from an opposition party by a landslide victory also and parliamentary elections to be held in April.  Korea's result also reflected people's desire for globalization and economy improvement.  I believe recovery of economy and unbounded growth await both countries.

Yesterday, Sun made a history by announcing agreement to acquire MySQL -  an open source icon and developer of the world's most popular and one of the fastest growing open source databases.  This without a doubt will become a significant milestone in Sun's history.

Whenever I give a "Why Sun - Sun's History & Vision" speech to new hires(coincidentially, I gave presentation to Sun Korea's new hires yesterday), I recognize key innovations which drove Sun during past 26 years - Solaris, SPARC, and Java.  I personally believe working with MySQL/open source will be another key innovation/event going forward which we can look back in the future to be at equal level.

The significance of the announcement is described by both Jonathan and Greg ...