The Secret Diary of Scott G. McNealy

Monty says...

2010-01-05T09:49:00.000-08:00

...WHO CARES WHAT MONTY SAYS...?

Well, we certainly hope the European Union is not one of them (ask Jonathon and his golden parachute... ;-) ).

It is funny to see how a guy that sold his company by one billion now is trying to prevent the selling of his old toy to Oracle.
Monty, here you have the bad news: you _did_sell_ the company and it was you who took the decision! (I remember how (fake) Jonathon asked (fake) you to bully poor (fake) Marten Mickos to make him accept the selling of the company to us, and how you gladly accepted and even overworked the task...).
It is not that your opinion counts as much as any citizen of the EU, yours count less, as you decided to get rid of the company and now are even a competitor, so it is more probable that you are only trying to undermine a rival using politics instead of fighting in the market. Or maybe you now decide that you made a mistake by selling the company: if you knew Oracle was interested you could have earned a lot more of money...

You wonder why Oracle wants to buy MySQL. I wonder why you care after selling the company, which are your real reasons, Monty? Problems selling your new baby, MariaDB, based on MySQL perhaps? Need free advertising, stopping a competitor, what?

Probably it should be taken into account the opinion of the Sun workers that are loosing their jobs while the EU takes a decision. But it is much more easier to talk about liberties and rights and open-source once you have done the deal of your live and your future is perfectly safe (as mine is, by the way).

And just to discharge Oracle, the latest layoffs at Sun have not been approved or supervised by Oracle, we used our best preferred method, illustrated here:

Some people at Oracle are yelling at us about this method, but until they own the company they cannot change it.

Monty, as you say in your own blog: "...a shareholder agreement is that it is terminated when the company is sold". Give it up, let us move on with our lives.

P.S.: An additional note, just in case Monty doesn't know it. Most of the people working in the 'community' developing open-source software are paid by companies like Sun, IBM, HP... huge companies that take profit from the code developed. There are also a lot of people developing new software in the hope that someday their software will pay the bills or they will be bought by a huge company (as MySQL did: first you could live by selling support and _licenses_ as it was a wide spread software and many companies paid for it -as they thought it was worthy to pay for it as they made money by using it: it's what uses to happen in a capitalist world-; then you sold it to Sun for a lot of money).
Sorry Monty, bu only a few programmers do it to keep 'Internet free'. If open-source depended on those lovers of freedom, open-source wouldn't exist as it does today (yeah, even Van Gogh tried to sell his paintings during all his live; he was an artist, but artists also have debts...).

Letters from Ashok-Jima

2009-07-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

Well, this months are being a total rush: the Oracle deal, the DOJ sneaking in detail into the deal, the JavaOne with my stellar performance with Larry (Jonathon was just there as he insisted so much to be...), the many travels to see the Lakers winning the NBA, sailing with Larry, flying in the fighter jet with Larry, dinner with Larry, golf with Larry...

So, I decided I'd leave Ashok the time to talk a little by himself, as he also insisted so much saying that he has an important message to say. So, Ashok, go ahead.

Namaste.

Thank you so much mista Ballm... (sorry, I have to do a lot of extra jobs to pay the mortgage), I mean, thanks so much mista Scooter.

Along the live of a fake blogger there is always a question made by his audience all the time: who are you really? You can see Fake Ballmer treating the thing very often just saying he is not Steve Ballmer pretending not to be Steve Ballmer...

I am not Scott McNealy pretending not to be me. I always said that, so I won't repeat that story but I'll just write a little about me.

I got my M.S. in Computer Science at the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, in my motherland in India, in a moment where the Valley was the promised land, so following advice from some of my best friends already stablished in the Valley I followed the same route.

I had the fortune to join a then young company called Sun Microsystems, and although I was not a friend of him, I worked quite closely with mista Scooter.

I left Sun quite a few years ago, but still worked with them in many projects, and with Oracle too, although I never became a full employee of any of them again. I can't say I met Mr. Ellison, but I once had the fortune to visit his yatch (his HUGE yatch).

Those were the good years, when you could made a fortune working in the business you love.

I started this blog mainly for fun, and for a little romantic feeling that I could change a little the things in the company I once loved and where many of my friends still work.

Well, I also had less spiritual objective: I still have a lot of shares I bought in the Dot Com era, and I'd have liked to recover some of my money, and not just $9,50 per share...

Today, everything is over. I have no more projects so I have accepted a job in the technology area in Bengaluru (well, what you call Bangalore), the kind of Silicon Valley we have in India, and less than 4oo miles from my hometown!

I tried staying around, but Mr. Scooter never wanted to take profit from this blog, although I tried to add Google Ads-Sense or some other kind of advertising to generate revenues, Mr. (fake) McNealy always seemed to be motivated by an ever more romantic sense than me, so he never allowed to take any benefit from the blog. So, here I am, about to say good bye to the Valley just when Sun is about to die.

Just to satisfy the curiosity of some of our readers. I learned about the break-up with IBM just by chance. I have some friends working for "Big Blue", and when you find them on a Sunday afternoon having a few beers in one of the best mexican restaurants in Mountain View, well, it is not difficult for you to understand how I got the information.

Unfortunately for us, Oracle was much more silent and cautious while they were negotiating their deal. I didn't see it coming. Indeed it seems that it was just a conversation between McNealy (the real) with Ellison. But this is a story that will be reported by someone else.

So, is this the end? For Sun, absolutely. For me, I hope this is a new beginning. For the blog, well, probably Mr. (fake) Scooter will be around for a while, to clean his desk at Sun and so on, but I cannot say if he will be posting anymore. I will be very busy in my new job, and far from the Valley, but if I find something interesting to write about or if some Sun (now Oracle) employee wants to write about his/her experience in the transition, I'll send it to Mr. (fake) Scooter so he can post it.

It has been a real pleasure for me. Thank so much to my beloved readers, I never thought you could be so many and so loyal.

In memoriam: Sun Microsystems, 1982-2009.

Well, I don't know if thank Ashok or kick him in the ass (hmm, If I didn't do it with Jonathon...).

If you think that I'll have more time from now on, as my job as (fake) Chairman is somehow terminated, you are wrong: Jonathan and me are so busy (Jonathon is searching for a new home as a retired person in Miami; he doesn't want to retire near California as he is afraid of angry ex-Sun employees...) thinking where to spend the money of our severance package that we couldn't even attend to the burial of the company!

I think I'll hop by Ellison's joint and ask him (again) for a place in the Oracle's board of directors. After all, I deserve it, as I made possible this great merger!

Suggestions from our readers

2009-05-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

As I told you, I receive daily thousands of wonderful emails from our beloved readers.
I cannot answer all of them, nor follow all their suggestions and pieces of advice (for instance, I don't remember having played and much less won a multi-billion prize from the Micro$oft Lottery, Ballmer swears they don't have one either!; not to mention the lovely letters from the daughter of the former ruler of an African country that has asked my help to recover the money stolen by her father...).

Well, never mind, I wanted to thank our beloved reader Jim (I won't use his surname, it is enough with the SunId he so gently enclosed in his email), who sent this suggestion:

You need to convince Ellison to spend more time on his yacht so that you can take over the combined company. If done right, there is the opportunity to take a big bite out of the Big Blue Whale and the Toad of the North. A single source for iron, o/s, database, apps, and service is an idea whose time has come again.

Thanks for all the good years,

Well, that is right now what I'm trying to do, so I asked him to sail to the Caiman Islands, as I claimed I never was there before and he seems to have sailed the seven seas.
Jim, I really like how you say thank you. Come to my office when I arrive next Monday, we'll talk about your new position at Oracle.

The only problem of this trick is that while we are away, Jonathan is in charge of the company... Well, what could go wrong?

Sailing Away!

2009-05-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm sailing away, at least for the weekend. I had an appointment with Larry to adjust some details of the merger, so he said "pal, why don't we discuss it off-shore?" I couldn't say no, he is going to be in charge from now on, so I was going to propose him a cancellation with any kind of excuse because of the bad weather in the Bay Area (if it is only 58 here in the coast, imagine off-shore!, not to talk about the wind and the rain...), when I suddenly remembered the yacht that Larry has...

Nothing wrong can happen in a ship called "Rising Sun".
We are supposed to be back on Monday for usual business, but with Larry you never know...
Anyway, with the satellite phone installed in the ship I can instruct Ashok to post my thoughts as usual. Larry is also planning to install a Datacenter in a Box with some Sun Rays, matching the name of the ship, so communication is not a problem there.

All is calm on the front.

2009-05-01T08:35:00.000-07:00

After posting our marvelous results from Q3, many of you were expecting the usual financial perspective email from our friend Lehman. So, as it was not coming, I stepped by his office to ask him if there was any hidden reason why he hadn't posted it yet. Fear not my friends, there is no hidden reason nor it is a silence imposed by Oracle as one of the points in our agreement. The reality is that after what happened to Sun, and being called Lehman, the guy is quite worried about his future and as he told me a few minutes ago: "Boss -he still calls me that, I really like it-, I'm terrified about my future, so I'm brushing up my resume and calling all the headhunters in the Valley. I'd better start right now, and maybe in a year or so I'll be earning enough to pay the mortgage".

So, there is no conspiracy of silence. It is just business as usual.

Now excuse me, I have to deal with the transition team. They are claiming the space next to my office, where I used to store the golf clubs. I need them to play with Larry.

Playing in the Titanic Orchestra.

2009-04-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought how should have been a member of the Titanic Orchestra? They played all along while the ship was sinking, until the end, the didn't stop doing it despite they knew their fate.
Well, if you want to know what it feels like, I'd suggest you to join Sun, but Oracle has stopped all hiring of new employees (also firings, although it is too late for so many good people...).
We know our days are numbered, but here we are, today we'll post the quarterly results (analysts are debating between those who think we'll post loses, and those who say we'll post huge loses).

I wonder how would MLP look with one of those hats. With Larry you should not play those kinds of jokes. But with Jonathan...

Well, here we are, waiting to our fate to come, relying in Oracle's mercy, as from our leaders at Sun only silence can be expected.
Oh, I really liked the SORE proposed new ticked for Sun. Soracle, what an occurrence... Larry is still laughing (then he added something like 'we'll make nobody will ever remember the Sun Microsystems name' or something like that; this is what happens when he spends too much time at the Gym).

Well, at least it will be funny to see those guys at Sony-Ericsson, LG, Sony, etc., that are using Java for some peanuts when the Oracle sales reps. will tell them about the new license conditions... this will be a quite funny moment.

Another funny moment will be that related to the open-source community, MySQL and free software in general.
Over all with everything related to opensourcing Java. Dear friends of IBM, as you are one of the most interested people about this subject, not quoting exactly what Larry told me the other day, but trying to transmit his idea, he commented something like this: "Opensource? My ass!!" Well, I'm not sure if this was the case, a golf ball hitted me in the head this Sunday and since then I cannot hear pretty well, but you can see Oracle's huge and clear history of opensourcing software....

Jonathan, you missed you last Five Minute Friday (crap) Session, so I'm suggesting a new leaflet to announce the next one. This piece of advice, just for free, my friend:

And now, the end is near, and so I face the final courtain; My friend, I'll say it clear, I'll state my case, of which I'm certain. I've lived, a life that't full, I've travelled each and every highway, and more, much more thant this, I did it... (rehearsing for my performance with the Titanic Orchestra).

What will you do in the shareholders meeting?

2009-04-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems that my sessions with Dr. Jack Daniels are going to the same place where most of the jobs of the people working at Sun by now, so I decided to change therapist.

Meanwhile, as I try to defeat my growing depression, I'll leave you a new poll. As you know, the shareholders have to approve (or not...) the merger of the company with Oracle (yes, I know, they are buying us out of the market, but if I say merger is less painful). After the gentleman (I am making a terrible effort not to calling them crappy bastards, as I'm a gentleman too, I won't) of Southeastern Asset Management sold its 22% of the company, we don't know to whom, there is a little bit of uncertainty about the result of the voting, so, I'm asking you, fellow shareholders of Sun shares: Will you vote for or _AGAINST_ the selling of the company to Oracle?
I won't tell you my vote to not bias your decision, although I guess you already know what I'll be doing...

Have a nice weekend.

The Rats Abandon the Ship

2009-04-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Well, what can I say, I just read the comments you, fellow workers, left on my previous article. I'm humbled, I'm thankful for coming and reading me, I'm amazed, what more can I say... Thank you.
(fake) Anil, I count on you too, I hope to see you around, and maybe one day we'll have a few beers too.

Yesterday I was so depressed I thought of abandoning the blog and not coming again, but after some therapy with Mr. Daniels, Jack Daniels, I've realized that only the rats abandon the ship when they think it is sinking. I'm not a rat (perhaps a little mouse, but not a rat), so I'll keep on coming around here -when I take a rest from brushing up my resume and sending it to all the headhunters I know- to say what I think and to hear what you say. Thank you again folks. If (real) Scooter had the guts, what an army he could lead!

Well, talking about RATS (Real Asset managemenT traderS -no, I'm not calling them rats, I'd never insult anybody, no matter how mad I feel, I'd never call those people scum, pundits, bandits, traitors, nor any other offensive word you could imagine- ): Southeastern Asset Management (I won't call them SAM 'cause I have a friend called Sam and I appreciate him too much to compare him with those "gentleman") has sold ALL the shares they had from Sun, at prices between 9.04 and 9.09 dollars.

Well, maybe I'm not quite good at maths, but this means that if they had waited until the closure of the Oracle deal they'd earned about $80 million more... not to mention that they bought the cheapest Sun's shares at about $12 (that makes about $500 million...).
Well, I can earn a new living as financial advisor: dear customers, don't trust in O. Mason Hawkins (the man that leads that band of smugglers, I mean, investors), at least leaving the money to Mr. Madoff you had the hope to get your money back. With Southeastern you know you'll loose it.
I hope they don't have any position in Jack Daniels, as we all have seen what they meant when they said they were a long-term investor in Sun...

So, after the maths lesson, now we have to call a detective to find out what is happening here... Why have Southeaster sold all the shares so soon, loosing so many money? Aren't they afraid of the legal actions their stakeholders may take against them, as we were threatened after the (speculated) rejection of the IBM offer.

Maybe we are just told a part of the story, what they want us to swallow. Maybe it wasn't Southeaster who were selling the company to each and every company in the World and have just taken the money as soon as they had an opportunity, as they are not sure at last if the deal will be completed at last (which, to certain extend would be a relieve for me in the personal side, but would be the final lost of credibility for the company).
Maybe it was just a couple of old friends, a powerful CEO and an ex-powerful ex-CEO, spending a weekend sailing in the gorgeous yatch of the CEO, talking about the glory days, and how they could merge their companies to become the next Borg. In the meantime, they'd only had to allow the hardware maker to decline little by little, assimilating competitors of the software maker to avoid suspicions from the antitrust authorities. They'd choose a dumb or better, a dumber CEO to be the puppet in the hands of the ex-CEO, so the deciline of the hardware maker would be, apparently, irreversible, and so nobody would be opposite to the merger. The final dramatic act would be to deceive the Borg, or even the Original Borg, so it would be neccesary the appearance of a white knight (well, or a red and white one) to save the struggling hardware maker, and thus putting a happy ending to the story.
I guess after this job as a blogger they'll offer me to write the new Harry Potter book, at least.

Well, this is just a story, a speculation, and as you know, Sun donesn't comment on speculations. Now that the biggest part of the shares was sold, and we don't know who, it would be fun to see the acquisiton rejected in the shareholders meeting... This would mean that we would see our marketing team doing something we never saw them doing in the past 10 years: working.

Now that we are talking about ships, I'll add some comments about the Titanic and the pathetic music band playing while the ship is sinking, as if nothing was happening at all.
By the way, as I was in therapy with mr. Daniels I lost the town-hall with Oracle at the Menlo Park Campus (yes, I know it was at 8 AM, but Mr. Daniels wakes up early for his sessions...), so if you attended I guess it will be fun if you leave your comments and impressions on what they said they are gonna do with Sun.

May the force be with you (never the schwartz).

Sun is Dead. Long Live the New Borg!!

2009-04-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

So, this is the end (or quite so, sometimes miracles happen). After the Borg and the Original Borg, Sun has died to create the New Borg with Oracle.

You don't know how sad I feel at this very moment. I, like most of you, had really believed that Sun's management was working hard because the company was viable. Why so much suffering, so many people fired, so many restructuring, to give all away at last?

Indeed this is a process that has been planned from a long, long, long time ago: the MySQL acquisition was only an excuse to eliminate a long-term threat (as if Sun had eliminated Linux before it became a real threat to Solaris; Oracle learnt from our mistakes). The BEA acquisition was another way to pave the road (Sun couldn't buy BEA without loosing credibility, so they had to do it at that time to now consolidate that mddleware with Sun's portfolio). The IBIS implantation at Sun, a complete Oracle ERP/CRM (Jonathan told you that we betted on a full Oracle solution for our CRM, so, don't say he didn't warned you...).

Well, at last, there are some positive sides: most of our hardware and Solaris employees are safe, because this is what Oracle is after: they want to become the next IBM, so they need such people.

Who are the winners?

-Oracle: With just the cash Larry had in his pocket, he has bought Java and Solaris and all the iron around Sun. And in the software area they have eliminated a formidable competitor that was eroding their efforts in middleware and Identity Management.
-Sun's board: as you already know, the members of the board are going to receive a huge amount of money for treasoning all the 35,000 employees and the uncountable number of Sun's customers.

Who are those that don't win and don't loose?

-Apparently Southeastern is loosing money, as they bought most of their share for more than $12, but they seem happy to have sold their shares by $9.50. I don't understand it...
-Hardware employees from Sun. I mentioned that before. I don't know if this acquisition is good or bad for them, so we'll let it neutral.
-IBM: A new big enemy (ORA), but an old one less (Sun), and an opportunity to increase its market share with angry Sun-Oracle customers. Business as usual.

Who are the loosers?

-Sun's software employees (IdM, Glassfish, MySQL...): Well, you should start searching for a new job... This is that 'Lando Calrissian' moment in the "The Empire Strikes Back" when he warns everybody in the Cloud City (hah, get the point?) that the Empire is there and they have to run for their lives...
-Sun's RIFed employees: Sorry pals, there are no plans to hire you back... some of you weren't saved just by 5 minutes... this is saddest part of this whole thing. The damned board don't realize they are dealing with people, this is not a fucking Monopoly Board Game...!!!
-HP: Guys, you are in a middle of an IBM-Oracle sandwich now... I think you are screwed, with no middleware, HP-UX, a kind of zombie, and just x86 hardware (and printers) to sell. Yes, you have EDS... and you'll end up as just a huge EDS, with a shorter name.
-Dell: Well, the Borg is your only hope now, if HP is not faster than you... You are more than screwed.
-Customers: Choice is over. Oracle is here to squeeze you until your last drop of blood.
-OpenSource: Well, I don't know if this is good or bad, but I don't think Oracle knows what is to give software for free or opensourcing a code... It is as easy as removing all the "community developers" that in fact are Sun's employees, and all those 'open-projects' will just die little by little.

-And me: I won't say this blog is over, but I don't think I'll be coming around so often. I have the same agreement that (real) Scott has, but I'm getting fake dollars instead of real ones, so I stay the same way: poor. This is the main problem of being a fake person. I even had prepared the eventuallity of being acquired by IBM by reserving the 'Fake Palmisano' blog... the fake Larry Ellison was already taken (and abandoned a long, long time ago, as far as I know). I don't know, maybe I'll come back to tell you how is the life of an ex-CEO in Oracle, or how Ashok does in the new company (if he is not fired). Or maybe I'll be here commenting on other marvellous happenings and news.
Well, I'll spend some days sailing, thinking, and, drinking enourmous quantities of bourbon.

God bless you. Good luck!

Homage to my loved readers

2009-04-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

This weeks have been so intense that I needed some rest.
I just wanted to leave a post here to thank all my readers and workers, indeed co-workers, their efforts, their passion and the number of hits given to this humble blog. There was such a huge number of users accessing the blog, that I spent all the past week refusing Gaagle's offer to add advertising to my pages.
Well, I never intended to do such a thing, I'm not doing this for money, just to express myself without the restrictions imposed by the safe harbor regulations and the SEC and all that crap, and I'll keep this blog in this way (unless I really need someday the money to buy back Sun again, but I count on you, dear readers, to help me so).

Well, I think that the best thing I can do is to write some excerpts from the opinions left by you, my readers (special thanks to Mr. Anonymous, who has left most of the comments so far...).

For instance:

"...Just ignore those idiots who say contradictory statements each and every minute, and continue with the tasks which has to be done to take the company back to its glory days..."

"...that IBM are not in OUR best interest. It [is] time for a Marketing Campaign....How about
"We're BACK and here to KICK SOME IBM ASS!"..."

"...JS..."Its time for you to go!" I think Bill Clinton also said this about the first Bush...and we all thought that about the second Bush...."

".....I agree we need to announce that we are not for sale....and then act like the market leader that we are!..."

"...Keep smiling scooter....and btw when are we going to announce that we are not for sale...our customers are dying to hear it...."

"....but this is the best article I have read on this bloody mess in a while......why don;t you figure out how to blast this to the masses left within SUN.....Also cc the Board..... "

"...Hope Scooter or Ponytail will have a look at these "Basic Fundamentals of Management..."

"...what's it going to take to for our Board to realize that we have almost of all of the tools necessary for success....except you as our leader...."

"...Lets take Sun back to the market [...] all the engineers want to keep working for Sun, not for any other company, specially NOT IBM..."

"...Have you talked to Gerstner lately....he knows how to right a sinking ship.....maybe he is up for a short term contract...or maybe Martha Stewart....

SAY NO TO IBM!..."

"...Scooter....Please tell us that those Lawyers have left MPK 10 and that the Board is going to put Pony Boy out to pasture!!!..."

"...WE SAY NO TO IBM !!! [...] COME ON SCOTT , KILL THEM [...] Come back..."

"...that our top brass should read Lou Gerstners book "who says elephants can's dance!"...sure if an elephant can dance...a Pony can learn to do the right thing....SAY NO TO IBM!..."

"....then I say Go for it Scooter...you will have every SUN employee behind you to make it work!..."

Even our partners are with us:

"...Now.. go off and fight ! Godspeed with those who dare..."

Well, thanks you all again. As I said, this is not the end, it might just be the end of the beginning.

A couple of thoughts about the IBM affaire

2009-04-10T16:31:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a rest from the Augusta's Master (I'm not allowed to play there as they say I earned enough as CEO, so I have fun watching the competitions and assessing Tiger on his return), so just wanted to write a couple of statements written by my great friend Paul Murphy (we never met, but because of the things he writes, I really appreciate, more than this, I love him!).
For instance:

What’s motivating IBM is precisely the opposite: they know they can’t compete with Sun in the marketplace and are using the opportunities created by the moral meltdown in Washington to shut Sun down via the legal and financial systems.

Or this one:

It’s easy to see what might drive IBM to this decision: they’ve got the money, anti-trust in the Obama era is just a dollar issue, Sun’s Unix licenses predate Novell’s and have more validity, and right now IBM can’t begin to compete with SPARC/Solaris on price, performance, reliability, or innovation.

The greatest thing of all is that what he writes is true.

Dear Rahul: Go and tell your people at SEMA that Sun is perfectly viable. We can easily make much more than those 9.50 per share you were about to take from the Real Borg. To achieve that we only need some peace of mind so we can focus in selling our stuff and set pace ahead of our competition in a blink. And you and your friends could help: stating that Sun is NOT for sale. Make a public statement, saying that all the IBM affaire was just a rumor (or don't say a word about it if you rather so) and say that you are confident with the future of the company. And put your money where your mouth is.
You won't regret it.

Have to get back to Augusta, seems Tiger is in trouble with his putt.

Hall of Fame and Shame and Stupid Analysts Opinions

2009-04-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

Analysts and false journalists are funnier than ever.
Just have a look at this article by Jane Bads, very Bads indeed (I also know how to play with words, this is how I earned my reputation as a CEO, 30 years ago).
He, you call your blog Funny Business, how funny, if it wasn't because you work for CNBC I might be worry, but now I see this is a practical joke from my old friend (?) Ballmer.
Ballma, if you keep on the "stupid" article, you are not coming to my yacht this weekend. You are warned.

Jane, Ms. Bads, do you know what is stupid? To spend $4 billion buying StorageTek, another $1 billion buying MySQL, and many more acquisitions I'm not mentioning now (check the Wikipedia for a list), and then sell the company for $7 billion to a shark that is going to end with the dream of your life. Can you picture this? Here is a sample of the situation:Much love, Alburquerque.

Well, at least some of our politicians are not illiterate as some of our journalists, a fine good sample is Mr. Ritter, Governor of Colorado, that payed us a visit today. Of course he didn't meet with MLP, we don't want public servants to meet with ex-CEOs. (Ashok, don't write that this way, I cannot disclose such a kind of information in my blog. I know, I know I'm not Scott McNealy pretending not to be Scott McNealy and all that stuff, but just don't do it. And don't publish the notes I give you about what to publish or not).
What I won't tell you is that I met with Mr. Ritter, as we don't want to rise any rumor about the future of Schwartz at the company (although I did, in secret, and he encouraged me not to surrender against IBM as we are one of the major employers in Colorado).

[Unrelated note: Jonathan, Tuesday is not the day to issue the Five Minute Friday video, it is Friday. To say what you said in the video, you could have waited until Friday, even more, to the last Friday of December...]

I won't comment either the departure of Marc Tremblay to Microsoft. This could make people believe that Ballmer has any kind of interest to enter into the computer maker market (computer and real operating systems and software) and hiring Marc would be a way to hire a negotiator to integrate both businesses properly. Mista Ballma, you are such a nasty boy...

Say NO to IBM.
Say NO to Schwartz.

Where to put the dot-com dot

2009-04-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

Dear John (uninformed) Whatever (sorry, your name is impossible to pronounce),

Yesterday I wrote about those "analysts" that don't know what a computer or a datacenter is because they never saw anyone, so imagine analyzing something as complex as the economy, even more, the economy related to the computer business. Today you tried to be sooo funny with your blog that you started pla ying w ith th e words of our dot in the dot-com motto. Ha, ha, ha, I'm still laughing, over all after watching how our stocks raised today more than 6% after reading your article. Maybe this is what the investors want to tell us: to put the dot in the dot com again, or better, in the 2.0 era, as an independent and healthy company.
As I think you have a serous problem with numbers, I'll remind you that before all the IBM affaire our shares were about $4.50, and now, even after IBM dropped the deal, we are still at $6.66 (interesting number to close the session today... What does Scientology has to say about it, MLP?).

John, you are not right in your article: the worst of the options is to by acquired by IBM as this means the death of Sun and the firing of hundreds of workers. What do you think did Mr. Ritter told us in his visit? He asked, pleaded, demanded not to be bought by IBM, as this would mean that his re-election would be endangered by the number of unemployed people rising!!
What kind of a blogger are you? I'm sure you can't tell Vista from OS-X, so imagine if you dare teaching me about a business I invented more than 25 years ago. Why don't you learn from a real professional like Paul Murphy? He is well balanced, not biased, he writes the truth in his articles, and he produces a great beer too.
Paul, I love you. When I take the reigns back I count on you for the PR deparment.

John, whenever you drop by Menlo Park let me know. I'll show you where I put the the hockey stick on those who dare telling me where to put the dot. Ask MLP, he has a clear picture.
And I won't comment on the Gartner analyst that suggest that if we cannot sell the whole company we should sell it by pieces. This analyst is the one that says that "the company is too complex" and suggests that many line of products don't make sense and nobody wants them. Is that the same Gartner analyst that rated Sun and all Sun products as Positive and Strong Positive? Was he drunk when he did the first anlysis, is drunk now, has suddenly seen the light? Or is it only that they say what they think will be accepted by most of the other analysts?
Maybe the question is just money.

By the way, instead of commenting about the rumor of today, I'll advance the rumors of tomorrow: Today we, the board, are meeting to discuss the future after the no deal with IBM, as it was a rumor, and we don't comment on rumors. So the rumors about today's meeting will be spread tomorrow, no doubt about it.

Say NO to IBM.
Say NO to Schwartz.

This is not the end.

2009-04-07T04:28:00.000-07:00

It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Oh, I love this kind of phrases, I have to include it in a speech soon (I always loved Groucho, or it was a politician who said that? In any case, a very clever man in a difficult situation).

So, first round is over, it seems that IBM quited their offer, so, now what?

First things first: the board met, and we decided not to comment on rumors, and to stand and support our CEO. Well, you know what it means when a basket of football team publicly expresses support for the coach of the team: they are asking all other coaches to send their resumes in... In this case is my resume the only one they are reviewing, of course.

Some people think that the best option for Sun is to be sold, and that this is just a game to force IBM to offer a higher offer, or an IBM move to offer a cheaper one, and that in any case Jonathan should plea the Original Borg to come back to negotiate again (a sample of suggested Jonathan's pose is in the picture: this was taken from one of his ceremonies in the Scientology church, when he pleads his God saying "you approved the IBM deal, God, why have you abandoned me? Is this a test of my faith?").

Those that say so, that we should take the money and run away, are many so-called "analysts", people that may have a MBA or something similar, and that only think about money, and usually in the wrong way. Even more, they only think as if they owned a stack of shares of Sun, and just think of minimizing damages, not knowing the real status of the company, if it is viable or not, and don't think at all about the people that have worked so hard to build Sun. Those analysts think of people as numbers, so they believe that selling Sun by $10 a share is great business as it was valued at 4.50 before this story begun (at this very moment it is 6.25, so we have even earned some value in the meantime). They don't realize, or don't want to realize, that selling Sun by $10 a share would only report a few profits to a few investors, that most investors are going to loose more than halve what they invested, and more than this, Sun would disappear forever (once bought, a company like Sun cannot live in IBM, this is stupid: is like saying that little fishes live a longer life once inside the shark that ate them), and what is worse: no less than 10,000 workers would be fired. Do you think this is a boost for the global economy? I don't think so, I'll tell my new friend Obama what against open-source this is.

In summary, if Schwartz thinks that he cannot turn Sun to profitability, and that the solution is selling the company, and he is not even able to do a decent sale (for God's sake, not IBM, you could have searched for a company with synergies!!!), we must let him go, by saying him "may the Schwartz be with you". We are in the middle of a RIF process, so saving the $11 million you used to earn will save many valuable engineers we need to gain profitability again.
While I love Spaceballs, I like most "The McNealy Strikes Back" or "Return of The Jedi-McNealy". I'll only be paid one dollar per year, and my real pay will come in the way of stock-options only if I manage to turn the company to profitability.

Second thing to do: Removing that ugly "Tech Company For Sale. Nice Prices. Ask the Board" banner placed at the entrance of our Menlo Park facilities. We must state crystal clear that Sun is not for sale, or our customers will have serious concerns about where are they spending their money on. We must give them confidence on what we do, on what we sell. We can do it, just stop playing in the boards meetings, and keep focused in profitability.

Third thing to do: Just go out and sell Sun stuff to our beloved customers. We have a lot of cash we should spend just in advertising. We are running right now a deep restructuring process to simplify the company, save money, rationalize resources and be more effective reaching our customers. Just keep focused on that.
We have the right products at the right moment, only that customers do not know it.

As soon as we give a couple of quarters of constant growth and revenues, you'll see all those analysts that today say we have to accept any offer to sell Sun, saying that they had foreseen the recovery of the most innovative company of the Valley. That happened back in the 90's when they all said we should embrace Window$ NT, and a few months later they said that they had foreseen the growth of Solaris as the key for the success of Sun.

Fourth thing to do: Read my blog. In the related entry of my blog I already suggested a few measures that have been implemented in this latest reorganization of the company. There are a few others pending (like stopping the layoffs), but I know they are the key to turn the company and to save the Sun we all love.

Hmmm, feels so good to be back on business!!

Say NO to IBM.
Say NO to Schwartz.

We Don't Comment On Rumors

2009-04-05T16:13:00.001-07:00

It seems that tomorrow was going to be the big day, or the last day, as you wanted to see it. Even the s cientology emperor of our dear MLP approved the deal (I have to talk seriously to Tom Cruise after this is over). Now, there is another rumor saying that we broke conversations with IBM, and that they are leaving the negotiations because we invited other partners to make offers for Sun. Well, maybe it is not true completely: it was me who broke some vases, but it was because I was wearing my hockey suit, and the IBM guys run away as if I was trying to hit them in the head. I won't say if MLP was fast enough. It's only a rumor.Oh, this is the 'board meeting' suit I'm going to wear from now on... It seems effective to explain my ideas...
Well, maybe tomorrow we'll know the truth. I tried to talk to that guy, Source, as he seems to know everything, but is a hard to find person.

Say NO to IBM.

Resting before the fight.

2009-04-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I must recognize that this matter about IBM is making my blood run wild again, like the old times.
But I've decided to spend the weekend at home, watching some movies and not thinking about rumors (you know, we don't comment on rumors). For instance, the movie today is "The Secret of My Succes$", about a boy that begins working in a firm and makes a plot to avoid a merger from a rival company and buys the company himself with the aid of some investment bankers and part of the board against the CEO of the company.
Does this plot sound familiar to anyone?

The Fight Has Begun!!! Answer My Poll, Sun Shareholders!!

2009-04-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

I'm weighting the support I'd have if I decide to fight against the IBM merger, so I just added a poll in this page.
It is intended for Sun shareholders, so if you have some shares, let me know if you'd support me with yours to avoid this Devil's son, I mean, this mistake of a merger. And do it soon, rumor has it that next week could everything be over. And they are offering halve what they spend on peanuts...

Of course, once I take the control of the company back I'd fire My Little Pony first thing in the morning. No hard feelings. I chose you, I fire you.

If you feel like, you can add comments saying how many shares you'd retain with you or would be willing to sell me (in that case say your price). It would be better to send me and e-mail, but we don't want to fill (real) Scott's account with spam, so I'm sure he'll read this blog and make the calculations.
Again: I'm not Scott McNealy pretending not to be me. Namaste...

On an unrelated note, just wanted to add that the organization we are just deploying at Sun is quite similar to what we had in the mid 90s, yes, that very same organization where the sales people preferred selling Bea Weblogic rather than iPlanet products because they were rewarded the same way, but had no headaches with unsatisfied customers. Live to tell...
Say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO to IBM.

Stepping out as Chairman

2009-04-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

Our dear friend (fake) Jonathan says in his Twitter that I'm stepping out as chairman of Sun to fight the IBM acquisition.

My comment to this kind of rumor is: At Sun, we do not comment on market rumors. And much less in (fake) Jonathan's rumors.
I know you didn't expect such an original comment, it was suggested by my friend (fake) Ballmer, in line with his own "I'm not Steve Ballmer pretending not to be Steve Ballmer, pretending not to..."

So, as I'm not Scott McNealy pretending not to be Scott McNealy, I will not comment on rumors (at least until it is official, of course).

Jonathan, in any case you won't get rid of me so easily. I have a new hockey sticks set... and I will use them...

Dear One Angry Partner

2009-04-02T14:31:00.000-07:00

I do not use to comment on user's comments in the blog page, just inside the comments zone, but I'll do an exception with you.
You asked for some action, for promoting software sales and I guess that taking care of partners more often, so we could detect when you are angry and find a remedy to this.
Well dear partners, your wishes are our commands, so, showing that I still have some power in the company (or had, who knows...), I ordered to restructure the company in three great areas or line of business: Software, Services and Hardware, and have ordered the different managers to increase partner cooperation in the business.

Of course, this is a perfect scenario to chop some more heads (figuratively, headcounts, I meant).

Or maybe Jonathan fooled me and this is the first step to sell the company by pieces...

IBIS update: rollout deferred

2009-03-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems that the final rollout of IBIS has been deferred a few months, until July.
Does it mean that somebody has finally realized that it is a suicide to do the final step of the implementation of the system in the middle of the final quarter of the FY, meaning that during a couple of weeks no orders from customers could be processed?

I know, maybe the IBIS team is thinking just about a different thing: why hurry up with IBIS if we are going to substitute it quite soon with the one from IBM (no, IBIS does not mean Ibm Business Information System). I assure you not, this is not the reason, as we inside Sun never comment or think about market rumors.

Sun, the rumor company.
(I never succeeded with the 'Sun, the Java company brand, so I'm proposing a new one).

Maybe the real reason is that a great part of the IBIS implementation team is going to be left go (what a horrible euphemism to say we are firing people to try to limit the company costs... and maybe it is the way, but just firing one person would be enough...). Instead of hiring thousands of sales reps. and engineers and consultants we fire them. It is like shooting ourselves. Or is it part of the IBM conditions to buy the company?
No, we do not comment on rumors...

Say NO to IBM.

A confederacy of dunces

2009-03-28T03:42:00.000-07:00

It is the 40th anniversary of the death of John Kennedy Toole, the writer of the wonderful 'A Confederacy of Dunces', printed after his soon death and awarded with the Pulitzer price.
At Sun we are celebrating this event with several homages. For instance, many people has been wondering during this years which is the meaning of the 'I' in 'Jonathan I. Schwartz'. It means 'Ignatius', as the main character of the novel, 'Ignatius J. Really' (probably the 'J' means 'Jonathan' too).
The second homage is the set up of our own Confederacy of Dunces.
It is the only explanation of the selling plan of the company.

Say NO to IBM.

A day at the races

2009-03-28T03:17:00.001-07:00

I'm just flying to Melbourne in the corporate jet (Jonathan is tired of flying to New York to plead IBM, so he left it parked for the week-end) to have a words with Sir Richard Branson (he is very fond of the sir thing, I have to remember calling him that in public: he'll laugh a little and tell me not to use is, but I know he loves that). How things changes. When I was CEO we were the ones sponsoring a F1 team (look at the mirrors of the car),
now I'm flying to meet Richard to ask him if he has about 6 billion in cash (I know he has much more) to avoid the IBM takeover.
Richard, are not you spending your money in the races? Spend a little on me, you can add your logo to all of our computers: free advertising of Virgin in major datacenters all around the World. Thing of it.
May the Marx's spirit be with me (Groucho, hear my plea and help me in this hard times).

Say NO to IBM.

Update: After winning their first race in F1 (one-two indeed), Brawn GP has fired 250 of its 700 employees. That's a way to celebrate... I don't know if I still want to do business with such people...

IBM-Sun talks could extend during next week

2009-03-27T03:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is what is said in the rumor-sphere, and analysts seem surprised to see that the due-dilligence process would extend for at least a couple of weeks (a process we do not confirm nor deny, as we don't comment on market rumors). What do you think IBM is trying to buy, John's Bakery down the street? As you might imagine, a company like Sun is a little bit complex, with a huge number of contracts, licences and customers: and this is what IBM wants to be sure of, the real value of Sun, its customer base.
On the other hand, our internal CRM, ERP, BI, Whateve-You-Think-About, the infamous IBIS, is based on Oracle software... so you can imagine that trying to analyze anything stored inside this engender takes much more time than a couple of weeks (and I'm speaking of Johns Bakery, so go figure the time needed with Sun...).
Remember dear employees, we do not comment on market rumors (neither if the rumor is from Intel and says we -indeed SEMA and KKR- have been bitching around offering the company to anybody with some money).

Again, repeat after me: Sun do not comment on market rumors.
Say it again: NO to IBM, I mean, we do not comment on market rumors. Is that clear?

Real Scott McNealy: We'd forget your mistake choosing this Pony Tailed CEO if you take the company back. Why don't you ring Vinod, Andy and Bill and propose them to do something great, like in the old times, and buy the company back? I'm sure SEMA is willing to make you an interesting offer.

Meanwhile I'll keep on ringing Chambers to find an alternative salvation plan. I hope he's still running Cisco...

If the IBM merger succeeds...

2009-03-23T10:12:00.001-07:00

Dear employees,

Just in case the merger with IBM happens to be more than a rumor, I just enclose here some useful information for that improbable, but not impossible, event.

Well, in my personal case I know what should have felt L uke Skywalker after Darth Vader told him "I'm your father". I guess that for you, dear employees, would be like if you are enrolled in the Rebel Alliance and then Princess Leia comes to tell you that the Empire has acquired all the shares of you revolution and now you all have been integrated in the Imperial Army... gasp!

Well, as I was telling you, here it is the most recent picture I have from the one that could become your boss: Mr. Palmisano (is an old one, when he took a more direct role in the projects leaded by IBM):

Oh, and here it is a picture of the IBM headquarters (don't use neutron bombs on it, consider it as 'home'):

In my next post I may talk about the new dress code at IBM, I've heard they've left blue for white.

I hope Ashok has not played with my photos as he used to do in the past...

Of silences, facts and treason

2009-03-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

Silences

Since the rumors started about IBM purchasing Sun in the sales store, nothing has been said by the management of the company.
The official policy here at Sun is not to comment on market rumors about our company, but this time I guess we should make an exception (even Jonathan's blog is being censored: no comments about the merger are allowed, and so his last post only shows a strange low number of just 9 comments).
The market has believed the rumor as a true fact, as a matter of time until the acquisition is completed (see this due diligenge report piece of news, or the growing number of articles talking about the subject). The best proof that the market is believing this is a fact is the rise in our stocks: nearly an 80%.

Jonathan, can you imagine the number of opportunities we are about to close competing against IBM in all our product lines?
Can you imagine the damage this FUD is making us in those opportunities?
Why would a customer buy a Sun product instead of an IBM one, if at last it will be the same company?

I never believed the many rumors about other companies buying Sun, but it is time to say something about it now, say that it is not true and everything will be fine again. In the past I've always agreed with this silence policy, but now is quite different, we could be even accused of rising the price of the shares with false rumors (if this is the case, why did not you do it before? You've seen the results in the stock price...).

Unless the rumor is not false. And this is the impression you are giving with your silence. And this is what everybody believes now.

Facts

There are a couple of major investors that now control the company: KKR and Southeastern Asset Management. KKR made an investment operation, too complicated for me to explain, so I'll give you a link to the press release where this was explained. At last, they are receiving a fine interest on the money they lent to Sun, and have the right to get their investment back in the form of shares, at about $7.50, so selling the company today at about
$10, and then wait until this shares are converted into IBM shares with a prevision to rise in the next years well beyond the initially expected outcome is quite a business, so I imagine that they may be for the agreement.

What puzzles me is the attitude of SEMA (you know, Southeastern Asset Management). They purchased a significant number of shares of Sun, making them the first investor in the company, but they did it by more than $10 a share (according to my information, they made significant investments between 9 and 16 dollars, probably most around the 16, just check the evolution of the stock price and the times when SEMA did the purchases of stocks). So, if they are the major stakeholder, they are the ones to be heard about making a deal to sell the company, and if they agree with IBM's offer, then they are assuming they are not able to take greater profit for their investments. This is weird for me, I don't believe they will sell for less than they bought, so we'll have to wait and see. Maybe this is why the took the reigns of the company, but in any case I think the price is not enough for them to even recover their investment.

Another fact is that the merger of the number 1 server maker with the number 4 (almost 3) server maker could be scrutinized by antitrust authorities in the US and in other cou ntries. It would create a 'de facto' monopoly in the server market. I guess Hurd must be quite nervous, but not as nervous as people at Fujistu or even Michael Dell. If the deal is finally closed, Michael should think in who he is going to sell the company, and I guess IBM and HP will not be candidates anymore.

The feeling I have today is that the talks already begun long time ago, and that all the recent moves at the company were just oriented for its sale: the downsizing of 6,000 people, the reorganizing in three major departments (that would ease the selling of parts of the company to face an antitrust issue), so this past week's rumors and news seem to be just the final stage of the long time announced selling of Sun.

Another interesting fact is that Sun's shares rose to $8.10 at the end of the week, so the offer made by IBM is not a 100% plus anymore over the price of the shares. At least investors think that the company is valued more than this: Jonathan, the company is valued more than this. Even more, the company is viable, has fantastic products and the only thing we lack is advertising and sales reps (and a proper management team...).

Another fact is that I'm checking if (fake) Palmisano has a blog already and if I can get the name for whatever happens in the future...
I'm also buying a set of white short-sleeved shirts to match my grey suits (you know, the standard dress code at IBM).

Treason

Sun is not only the dream of four friends that built this company back in 1982. It is the dream of his 40,000 (no, now 35,000; no, 30,000) employees. Sun is in most cases not only a place to work, but a dream, a way of doing business, a way of loving computers, a place for engineers. When running a company you have to think not only in shareholders and customers, but also employees: they are not a company asset, they are the company itself, they are the spirit, the soul of what we do, and we must honor them and take care of them.

SEMA was announced as a 'long term investor', as someone to give stability and guidance to save the company and make it come back to past success. They were defined as an investor with a 'velvet glove reputation'. Now it seems their only intention is to get their money back as soon as possible and no matter what is the cost for Sun. If this was the reality, this would be a treason: they'd have lied to all of us.

After all the pain suffered by the employees, after the savage downsizing of employees, after everybody working harder than ever was seen in the history of computer companies to give Sun back to profitability, dog-fighting in every deal to win as much of them as possible and some more, if the board just gives up and sells the company, it would be a treason to every employee.

Jonathan, such an effort restructuring the company, creating the most advance portfolio in the computer market ever (with no marketing), sacrificing such a good people, swalloing MySQL and StorageTek and many more great companies, to just give it everything for a fistful of dollars to one of our worst enemies?
I'd consider that a treason, and not only to the people that appointed you to the post of CEO, to every customer that believed in Sun, to every employee that trusted you and gave part of its life to build the company.

No matter what happens from now on. You diluted the value of the company in a way nobody ever saw before. I'm cursing the day you became CEO.

Say no to IBM

2009-03-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

I've just learned about the rumor (well, according to the rise of the shares, more than a rumor) that IBM is negotiating to buy Sun.
I only can say that I'll never sell my shares to IBM, and that I'll vote against this in the board (if they have the nerve to ask me). I'd really rather be selling to company to Micro$oft...
Yes, I admit that I've been talking to Netle's CEO to offer him the company, but this is for the sake of the people working here and to keep the dream we built along this years. Selling the company to IBM would mean the end of the dream, the death of Sun, as a company and as a spirit. IBM is only interested in two things: the installed base (our customers), and Java, and are most interested in the second thing, Java, to cut the grass under HP's feet. You know what I mean, HP is stronger than ever after buying EDS, so if they control Java (IBM), they'll have a strong argument to sell the bodies, I mean, the professional services they are both competing to sell. Otherwise, there is not a diferentiator in both offerings.
Make no mistake: IBM is not a technology company any more, they sell people, so if the technology doesn't work it is much better for them because this way they sell more services. And HP is willing to enter this market too.
Sun always represented a different choice: to reach the customers by providing leading edge technology to save costs. If we sell ourselves to IBM, all the innovation will be lost, as they are only interested in selling people (as I said, the worst the technology works, the more man-hours they sell to make projects work). If we sell ourselves to IBM, would be like selling our souls to the Devil, and so our souls might burn forever in the Hell of the abandoned cool technolohgy companies (like Netscape, Digital, Compaq, SeeBeyond....).

By the way, the one in the right int he picture is the Devil. The other one in the left is Jonathan with his Scientology celebration dress.

I hope this is just a bad dream, and that we'll all wake up and forget about this stupid subject. Perhaps is the influence over Jonathan of the old use our campus had in the past...

So, say NO to IBM. Post in Jonathan's blog, phone to your sales reps. saying that you'll never buy anything from Sun (and IBM) if the selling is done. Say NO to IBM, and over all, phone Steve Jobs: Steve, Apple-Sun is a great idea, and we'll keep your logo, please, give me a call.
Ok, ok, Ballmer is also invited to the bid... MicroSun is also a better idea than just dismanteling the company to just keep Java.

Say NO to IBM.

Flash Gordon

2009-03-11T17:19:00.001-07:00

Sorry, I was gonna write something funny about the new flash-driven servers we are launching, but I got blinded by the logo...Next time, I'll be back, with a pair of Sunglasses...

Again: HP is NOT buying Sun

2009-03-06T11:47:00.001-08:00

Just a while ago Hurd (the CEO of Hurd Practicioners, or HP for most of you), telling me, again, they are not buying us: 'apart from the reasons you say in your blog entry, which are basically true, you forgot to mention that there is no reason to buy something when we'll get it for free if we just wait enough time..." That is what he said. And that he wouldn't hire neither Jonathan nor me in the future.
I'm gonna play some hockey.

HP is NOT buying Sun

2009-03-03T14:57:00.000-08:00

I've spent a few days in the Mobile World Congress (I'll talk about Java FX in another post), and just when I got back I had to go to see our friend Hurd (in the picture he is telling me the size of a fish he captured in Ellison's ship, or was he telling me the amount of money they were loosing in the first quarter...?) to sign the agreement by which HP is distributing Solaris in (some of) their Pro-Liant servers (or Pro-Lier servers, as we like to call them at home).
So, many rumors have been spreaded away about HP buying Sun. This is old stuff, they begun when Don Grantham left the company to join HP a while ago, and now are back with this HP agreement.
I'll tell you why HP is not buying Sun:

1. We are not selling Sun (at least not me, and if I was doing it, I wouldn't tell you, I assure you that).
2. HP is not the most voted company to buy Sun according to my poll. If I had to talk to another CEO would be the one from Nestlé (but he is not answering my phone calls...).
3. They spent all the money buying EDS, they have no more cash and no bank is going to give it to them (cause banks is the last place where you can find money now).
4. This is the most important one: there are no synergies at all between both companies:
-They have their own operating system, HP-UX and we have Solaris (ok, they killed HP-UX and now it is a kind of zombie after being revived, so they have no enterprise/Unix-like O.S. at all).
-We have our own line of servers (I know, the CMT would be appealing for a hardware and CPU manufacturer)
-We have our own line of storage (yes, many of our storage is OEM hardware from HP)
-They don't have middleware (we have web server, app. server, identity management, e-mail, and they don't have any of these)
-We don't have consultants (they just bought EDS)
...
...
Maybe THERE ARE synergies after all. Well, I treated Don well when he was at Sun. I think I'm calling him to see how is he doing...

Getting tired of this pic...

2009-02-08T05:11:00.001-08:00

Jonathan, seriously, I'm getting tired of the use (better said, the abuse) of this pic... It's about the tenth time you use it to illustrate our financial results (well, your comments about our financial results). At least you could explain what the 'a' and the 'b' mean, and where are we at Sun. And don't let it to our own imagination...

After the huge rise in the price of our shares last week (5.76 in the after hours), I guess this is a much more appropriate picture this time:

And I'm saving this one for the day I can exercise my stock options (it's near, the shares only have to rise to $80):

Well, maybe not so near, Ashok just reminded me that I have to re-calculate my stocks after last year's reverse split. Thanks so much, Ashok, you know how to cheer me up...

New member aboard!

2009-02-06T09:48:00.001-08:00

I mean, we have a new member of the board, by appointment of our beloved investors Southeastern Asset Management. Some people have been showing some reluctance to the election of Rahul to the board, as he served in the past in Fannie Mae and Merril Lynch. Hey, what's up to you boys? Everybody has a past, and I'd rather a man with a past than someone with no experience... and Merril Lynch was not that bat at last, they managed to sell it to Bank of America. Maybe we need someone like Rahul... (or maybe not, the shares are going high today!!!).
Anyway, I didn't choose him, it was just a request from Southeastern, so if everything goes wrong, it is not my fault...

Announcing the McNealy Master in Business and Hockey Administration

2009-02-06T09:27:00.000-08:00

At last my talent to manage and hire brilliant people has been recognized! Most of the CEOs in the technology companies have been trained by me (somehow). Indeed I only made one single mistake along all those years... Guess who? Well, so I decided to launch a Master in Business and HR administration, where hockey and golf will be two of the compulsory subjects to be studied. Enrollment will be announced soon. Stay tuned.

We are losing but wining...

2009-01-29T04:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we posted our second quarter results. It seems that we lost $209M, so I went to see my friend Lehman (he insists that he is not one of the brothers, but I'm not so sure now...), so he could explain to me what that meant. Apparently we sold much more than analysts expected, but we still lost money, because we had to include $222M due to 'restructuring expenses'. It is: severance payments.
The math is easy: 222 - 209 = 13. So, by not firing anyone, we could have spent $13M in advertising and we would have finished the quarter in break even (if not selling much more on account on the adverts). Funny. I then asked Lehman what was next, if we should start shooting in our own feet. He's thinking about it and will send me a memo as soon as possible.

Obama counts on Sun

2009-01-21T23:51:00.000-08:00

As you may already know, President Obama has asked me to prepare a paper on open source software for the new administration. Even the Brittons are aware of such amazing piece of news!
Heard that, Jonathan? He asked me, ME, to give advice, but worry not: the first point in my paper will be to open source the job of the first CIO of the history of the USA (we'll see if this is the way we can get rid of... I mean, that Jonathan will reach such a prominent post to serve our Country, although as you can read in the article from the BBC there are some people, wrong people, that believe this post is not useful).

Thanks to Computer Weekly, I really like the picture they used for their article. The one from the BBC is not bad either, but I like it most. It makes me younger...

Remember my words: "Open source does not require you to pay a penny to Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or any proprietary vendor any money." It is, you don't have to pay Microsoft, IBM or Oracle: you have to pay Sun, the only and truly Open Source Company! We will charge much less to the Government, and the company will be saved, so this is a win-win situation!
And when I say open source I mean Software (obviously) and hardware (see Jonathan's blog).

Being a Republican who supported Hillary, I'm really liking the new President. Live to tell!

Sun acquires Q-Layer

2009-01-21T01:41:00.000-08:00

I know it is not precisely fresh news, but I have received a couple of questions about this recently.
Sun acquires Q-Layer, in a period where Jonathan has announced layoffs, we still make investments buying new companies. Might seem contradictory, so I asked Jonathan to stop the layoffs and read my blog to solve the situation at Sun, but you never know.
Anyhow, the most repeated question is how much did we spend buying this company, as in the press release it didn't say a number and only included a rather cryptic phrase: 'The terms of the deal were not disclosed as the transaction is not material to Sun'. Well, I find it pretty clear: the transaction is not material, is just spiritual to Sun. Like cloud computing: just a spirit, a ghost, a buzzword... (well, as soon as I learn what is cloud computing I'll be posting about it).

Kennedy is back to the White House.

2009-01-21T01:19:00.001-08:00

No, I'm not out of my mind. I know that Barack Obama is the new President of The United States, but after hearing his inaugural speech I had the feeling that he didn't said that we should 'not think about what our country can do for us, but think what we can do for our country' because it was already used. And seeing the expectation of this innauguration (even Ballmer is putting money for the parties!), somehow I have the feeling that Kennedy, or his spirit, is back to the USA.

I recognize that I was for Hillary and I think that we still have to see how he manages all the challenges in his presidency. Despite of that I confess I also have great expectations in Obama's term: I truly hope he will choose Jonathan as CIO of the USA... so we can get rid of him and stop the layoffs when I get back to manage Sun.

Mr. President, welcome to the Office, and good luck. You have a tremendous challenge in front of you, but you know you can count with the American People. And with me too.

Stop the Layoffs!!!!

2008-12-29T02:33:00.000-08:00

I was the other day at my alma mater's chapel listening to a marvelous Christmas concert that made me think about the situation at Sun and what we should do to reverse it. Well, it was the 11th, but I needed some time to put my ideas in order, and besides that, Ashok is on holidays as all the people at Sun (we decided to stop the engines from the 25th of December to the 2nd of January, everybody deserved a bread, and it is a way
of saving in electricity and other related expenses...), so it took me a little of time to type everything by myself.
First of all, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (and that our stocks keeps on rising to where they belong, the $200 reign!!).

Well, those are my ideas. And this time, I'm serious.

First of all, we should stop all the layoffs. You all know that layoffs could kill innovation, and in our case it is quite clear! This seems to be the easy solution, but not always it is the effective one (heck, is this the only thing that is taught at the business schools today?).
But it is also quite clear that our company needs a deep restructuring. What does it mean? Quite simple: we need to change the way we do things. If we lay-off people, we will be able to do less business, so we'll earn less money, and then, what is our 'leader' going to do? Fire more people to lessen the loss of money? This is a way to implode Sun until there is nothing else to sell. And the people remaining at Sun, is frighten with the possibility of being fired, so they think of saving their jobs and not in innovating and making more clever business for Sun.
So, what we need is to put people to do the right things, not to layoff people. Then, summarizing my ideas, I think we have to do the following:

1. 'Dellize' Sun (to some extent!): I've talked about this for a long, long time. We cannot use 6 people to build a $5,000 offer of one or two computers... Dell proved that this can be done via Web. We only need a web to sell 90% of our servers (all except the really big iron). That web application would only have two client interfaces and one maintenance interface (to add new products and change the price of the existing ones). The client interfaces would be just one for our customers, accessible from the Internet, and the other one only for sales representatives, where they can do the same as our external users (it is, customers should be able to buy everything from the web), but they -the sales reps.- could also add discounts for special customers or high volumes, as we usually do to our best customers.

2. Build customers relationships: One of our sales people told me one day: 'Sun doesn't pay us to stablish a long term relationship with our customers'.
This is terribly wrong!!! The only way to win loyal customers and to ensure a continuous volume on sales is to establish those long-term relationships.
This is not happening because of two reasons: Sales people are paid to the short term, so they just concentrate on selling the biggest iron possible in the Fiscal Year, and once done to one company, they go for another 'quick win'. This is the used car strategy, but it only works in the used car business because people buying a used car are not likely to come back in one or two years (or even never!), but our customers need IT infrastructure, software and services forever! If we build a serious relationship, they'll trust us and ask us in the first place when a new investment is needed. So this is key to our long-term success in the industry. And to our survival.
The second reason why this is not happening is lack of resources: we have not enough sales reps. and not enough pre-sales people. Some of our sales reps have 200 or 300 customers... This is nonsense! And the same happens to the pre-sales engineers and the people in the practices. You cannot have just 2 people to cover all the storage pre-sales in an area like California (and much less if they are the software guys). So, instead of firing 6,000 people, we should see where are needed those 6,000 people to boost our business (we could divert people from step 1, 'Dellizing Sun' to do real job). At the end of the day we may be needing people to be hired to cover all our targeted business and not firing them!

3. Simplify the organization: There is too much management in some areas of the company and many of the managers are just redundant. Jonathan, you'd be surprised to see how professional and responsible our people is: most of them need no management (and having an Ikea Human Resources department -you have to do most of the job yourself in behalf of HR- helps a lot in such a culture). So, many managers should be, again, diverted to do real job at the end of the day.

4. Focus on partners, but properly done: Yes, we are not an organization intended to be IBM Global Services where IBM gets most of its benefit (Jonathan, we have to discuss it at the Board, we might change our mind...). So, we have to trust our partners for the business, but we also have to dedicate people to take care of our partners: we cannot have one person per GEM taking care of 50 partners: it means at last that no partner is cared about and they'll end up going to Oracle or HP, because they give that kind of care and personal attention!

5. Focus on innovation: Our R&D department is one of the most admired of the Valley, and our customers appreciate it because they know our technology is superior and give them a competitive advantage. Don't divert money or people from this department, is fundamental for Sun, and most of our field Engineers can also help driving innovation, so help them communicate the voice of the field, and the customers, to our R&D.

6. Focus on CxOs: Most of our customers are geeks, and in some cases they are Chief Technology Officers, but that is all. Ok, we are a company made by engineers for engineers, and that shouldn't change. But our sales people (and then again, see point 2), should focus on the high levels of the companies we are trying to sell our stuff. It is frustrating to win in POCs and demos against HP, IBM, Dell, Oracle, BMC... and then the hard work of 6 months in the customer's CPD is spoiled by a two hours dinner between the CEO of the company we are trying to sell our goods and some Palmisano's emissary.
I said once that the best way for an engineer to get promoted at Sun was playing golf... Now, this phrase stands for our sales reps., but they have to play golf with our customer's CEOs. At last it is all about building relationships with our customers.

7. Advertising: For the shake of God, we need advertising!!!! Yesterday somebody showed me one of those old Darwin ads we broadcasted nationwide in the past, and tears started rolling down my face... Those ads helped us selling a lot of workstations, but most of all, they served us to gain awareness! (By the way, I couln't find the link to that fantastic monkey and Darwin ad, so I enclose a one more recent, but also good).
This is key, we need awareness not only in the engineers or the geek community, we need awareness in the CEO, CFO, CIO and every CxO community because one single reason: they are the ones that have the money! And sometimes they are not biased by the company's geek advice, but because of the awareness of the company they are buying the stuff from: 'I just read that HP Invent advert. I don't know what they invent, but if they spend their money in such cool ads, they must be a rock solid company'. The same applies to Oracle, SAP, Dell...
If you think this is too simplistic, if you want to know the way of thinking of the CxOs of the world, you should read Dilbert. Don't you believe me? Well, I find very simplistic to fire 6,000 people just to balance your win/loss balance when you are loosing some money, thinking this is the way of offering something to your stakeholders, and not going to the root of the problem. So, this is the proof that Dilbert is as good economic reading as a Master in Business Administration in many places.

8. Stop the Layoffs: I said it many times (this is why I stepped down as a CEO, I was against firing anybody), and I'll say it louder if it is necessary, but I cannot say it clearer. Layoffs are not the way to cure Sun, are just a way to make-up a little a short term results, but this will harm our ability to win new businesses. We just need to refocus the people to do the right things, as I explained before.

9. Get Scooter back: Well, I guess I deserve that after offering such a clear analysis on what is happening at Sun and how we can recover the company (MY company, remember that). So, I should be back to tidy up all this mess.

Southeastern Welcome on Board!

2008-12-14T14:50:00.000-08:00

As you already know, Southeastern Asset Management Inc. have agreed (well, has ordered us would be the correct phrase...) to add two independent members to the company's board.
Attending to popular demand (mainly Anil's (the fake, I guess) demand), I'll add some comments on that decision from those people.
First of all, we at the Board of Directors are happy with the addition of those two new seats, specially Jonathan and me. As they didn't ask for a replacement, just an addition of two new seats, we won't have to fight with the rest of the members of the Board to keep our seats, so those are good news.
Second, we are not only firing people, we are also hiring, so this is a signal of recovery (and the shares are again over $4!!!).
Third, those people, although they have not experience managing a technology company, they cannot do it worse than Jonathan, so they might be a help with fresh ideas after all.
Fourth, Southeastern is not known to be a 'corporate rider', so if they decide to take more than a 20% of the company (at a very low price to say it all), it is not likely that they will dismantle the company and sell it by pieces, so this is another piece of good news for all of us who love Sun (well, we all hope that they will keep on with such a history of not being corporate riders and are not taking Sun to start being so...).
Fifth, and this is serious: I really hope they'll stop the massive layoff that Jonathan announced. As we all know, layoffs may kill innovation, and Sun is innovation. I agree this company needs restructuring, but axing almost a 20% of its workforce is not the answer, is just fresh blood to content some shareholders. As soon as I can (as soon as Ashok finishes writing it), I'll publish my ideas of the restructuring I think Sun needs.
Good night, and good luck.

IBM discovers what we already found out 14 years ago!!!

2008-12-04T16:10:00.000-08:00

I've read absolutely astonished the following piece of news today: IBM Creates Microsoft-Free desktop....
Come on, guys, even Jonathan 'Defending Freedonia' Ponytail is able to do better than this. We at Sun have been running a 'Microsoft-Free' desktop for 14 years: Using StarOffice as an Office substitue (is that old, really?) -and now even works fine!-, and Solaris as the operating system. And, of course, the Only Ultra Thin Client in the market: Sun Rays instead of computers, saving power comsumption, cooling and noise (my wife is almost convinced to use one!). If you want to know some of the benefits of our non-Microsoft, non-PC, low-cost, high-productivity and ecological environment, follow the previous Sun links or this one for more information.

McNealy consultory

2008-12-02T10:27:00.000-08:00

Day after day I receive hundreds, thousands of e-mails (remember my address: fakescottgmcnealy@gmail.com), telling me how marvelous I am, how well would Sun go if I was the CEO again, and in some occasions I also receive questions and worries. Today I selected one of those e-mails and I'll try to answer to the questions it poses. So, thanks dear 'forangel' for your kind e-mail (although you forgot to add you SunID). The mail said the following:

"Scott,

Help!! All the investments in R&D are finally coming to fruition and the only people

that know are our loyal customers and geeks. We need air coverage fast.

I was at a meeting last month and asked Anil Gadre about advertising while our

products are still ahead of the competition and he said that the better return is through

Google ad words, blogs and article links....even Chevron is running ads. It would have

been great to have just one ad run during the biggest election in a lifetime...another missed

opportunity.

As Chairman, can you please force these guys to work on brand awareness in a

big way? We are the best kept secret in the industry.

Respectfully,

A Loyal Employee"

Dear Forangel,

I really wanted to answer your letter before, but after reading it I've been crying a whole week. You are so right... but although I'm the Chairman, Jonathan doesn't count on my opinions. I tried to influence about the advertising campaign during the election (Go Hillary!), but when I managed to talk to Ponytail, he had already made the order to purchase the phones for the SunRise, so the marketing budget was used at once in the second quarter of the fiscal year...

I understand your frustration. Last week I was playing golf with the GM CEO, and I told him if he was happy with our new line of products. He didn't even know we are a software maker, AND HE IS ONE OF OUR CUSTOMERS! So imagine what happens when I go to a non-Sun customer and start talking about the new storage, the software and the open-source: they start looking at me like if was from Mars and mumble 'Do you have software, really?'
I know you are not asking too much, like those 'Run on SAP' or ORACLE campaigns you can see in every media along the country and other countries too... but just a few well done, well focused advertisements to create some more awareness than the one we can create with Gaagle ADs and just the voice of the geek community.
I long for the day when you tell your mother, your wife or any of your significant other that you work for Sun, and they understand it without further questioning (like Ballmer does with his mother).

Keep pushing my friend, I'll do the same in the next board meeting and every time I see Jonathan in the lobby! (And next time don't forget to add your SunID...)

So,What Will Happen to Sun?

2008-11-30T09:48:00.000-08:00

Well, only heaven knows indeed...
I have to say we have a bright future (the same was said about Brazil by General De Gaulle: Brazil will always be the country of the future...). I expect Sun will not incur in De Gaulle's damnation, and we'll reach sooner or later (better sooner), our bright future again.
I wanted to add a link to an article in The Register about us, and a couple of comments about it:

-I'm eager to show we are the best and am not seeking retirement (and I'm sure I can say the same about my real me, that it is not me pretending not to be while being me, nor being mini-me. Is that clear?).

-As the article said, once I was able to take the company from less than 5 dollars to more than 80: My time has come (again) to take the reigns of Sun.

P.S.: (Fake) Jonathan, the PBS title of the documentary fits you quite well. If you want to dedicate it all of your time and effort I'll understand it (and with the $11 M of your salary I'll save some useful jobs at Sun).

UPDATE:
After seeing the results of the poll, I'm insistently calling the Nestle people, but they don't really understand what is Sun's business (they still think I want to sell them just a few desktops and laptops, as if we had any!). I'll keep you informed about this. About Fujistsu, I don't quite understand them, they are all the time saying "McNealy Sun, wait a moment, yes McNealy Sun", they always end their phrases with 'Sun', but it is the only thing I understand (Ashok doesn't speak a word of Korean!).

UPDATE 2: Ashok told me Fujitsu is a Japanese company, not Korean, so I'll stop calling Kim Jon-Il and the department of Commerce to solve the commercial issues of doing business with North Korea. Ashok doesn't speak Japanese either, so Fujitsu is not so clear candidate now. After all I'm not seeking retirement so soon... (and a buyer is unlikely too...)

What happens in Hawaii stays in Hawaii

2008-11-26T00:42:00.000-08:00

Well, I know this is not the real saying, but is quite meaningful.
A few weeks from now (that's why I've been so busy, I've been traveling all around the World!), I had to go to Hawaii for the SunRise 2008 event, where we give a reward to our sales team after they met their objectives. Many people was intrigued why Jonathan didn't show up to the SunRise event, and only was 'present' via video conference. Well, there were two major reasons: somebody had to stay at the Sun's Headquarters to announce the Q1 disastrous results, and I was first at the airport to grab the corporate jet (and you don't know how much does Jonathan hate to travel in regular airlines!!). No, now talking seriously, the reason why Jonathan didn't come to the SunRise event was because he didn't fulfill his objectives for the FY'08, so he didn't deserve to go. As I said before, the SunRise is for sales reps that have met or overachieved their objectives, and Jonathan was not the case this year. So,while he was at home announcing the bad results and thinking in firing about 6,000 people, I was in Hawaii with my gorgeous wife, delivering $400 Nokia phones to the 2,000 sales reps attending the event, and bearing the absurd rumour that I'm back to take the reigns of the company (well, I have cash enough to buy the whole company today, so maybe it is not so absurd; anyway, I won't be back while Sun is firing people, so I'll wait at least a few months until the dirty job is done).

I wonder how many people are we letting go to pay the Nokias... Well, it is a problem for Jonathan.

So, after the Hawaii event I went to Las Vegas (you know the saying, what happens in Vegas... this time I didn't bring my wife with me ;-) ), to the Customers Engineering Conference, and again Jonathan only showed up by video conf (yes, again I grabbed the corporate jet before, and besides, he was about to announce the firings, and was a little afraid to be assaulted by the engineers present at the event). Well, to be honest, I only stood at the Paris/Bally's swimming pool and went to the Tom Jones show, so I sent Ashok to mix with the engineers and write an accurate report of the state of the morale and so on. The problem is that Jonathan included Ashok in the list of the 6,000 'riffed' people, so now I have to write the posts in the blog by myself and so on (well, not really, because I'm hiring Ashok again, but this time as a contractor so he'll do the same job, earning a 20% less but costing Sun a 15% more because we have to hire him via a third company, but now is not included in the headcount, so Jonathan and the shareholders are happier).
Well, I'll probably talk about that later, Ashok now works less hours for me, so I can't write as often as I did in the past... now I'm sharing him with another two vicepresidents...

Schwart'z Interview

2008-10-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

This may have a few days old, but remember, I am traveling all around the globe to get customers for Sun, something that is not done even by most of our sales people, not to say our VPs...
Anyhow, I know you have been wondering about the strategies that Jonathan is following lately, about the opensource of software and all such stuff. Here you have the answers. Enjoy...

Thanks Steve Gillmore for such an enlightening experience.

Too Sad and Busy to Blog

2008-10-22T01:02:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry my dear followers, but after the pre-announce of our -so bad!- results and the way the shares (and my stocks...) are going, I feel too depressed to do some blogging.
Besides, I'm searching for Jonathan, I have a message for him, so until I find him I'll take some time off. Jonathan, my frieeennnd, where are youuu...?

Who is Buying Sun? Sun is an option...

2008-10-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is something I didn't mention in the past entries of the blog, but Sun could even buy itself. There are some opinions that say that we should go private by buying all the shares we do not control now, and amazingly, today this would cost us more or less the same as it costed us to buy StorageTek (and if we wait until we release the Q1 earnings it will be even cheaper... ups, I'm supposed not to say that, we are in quiet period...).
Well, as I was saying, our stunning Q1 performance and results will boost our shares (and if it doesn't happen, just turn the charts upside down...)

Of Junk and Jewels

2008-10-07T15:55:00.000-07:00

It seems that despite the crisis I've just won a travel to Dubai. I'll try to keep on posting while abroad, but you know how are those foreigners, and besides that I'll have to manage with jet-lag and so on, so who knows...
As I was telling, I've just won a trip to Dubai, to a technological fair, or something like this, and it seems that the Dubains (is it said this way?) are eager to see me (as you can see in this article: I'm the jewel, the most important asset in this year's event. Using their words: " the most prominent global leader ").
Of course, you do not need to read the rest of the article to get a context or something like that. The only thing you have to know is that when they talk about junk they are not talking about Sun's shares, although we have a value of less than 5 billions in the stock market... I could buy all the shares I still don't own with my chairman salary... whahahahahaha....

By the way Jonathan, it only took me three hours to reserve the tickets through the AMEX corporate travel page (could it be because they use Micro$oft IIS as web server...?). Is it a trick to dissuade employees to reserve travels and cut costs? I assure you it works... but not with me, I worked with 1440Kbits modems... oh, nice old times...

Salary Raises and $11M CEO's Pay

2008-10-01T02:53:00.000-07:00

I have to warn all the people at Sun that come to me asking for a salary rise: I cannot give it to you.
The main reason is that I'm not the CEO anymore, I'm the Chairman, so it is not my responsibility to decide about rises (fortunately for me, I don't have to fight with the employees). The other reason is that we already spent all the money we had for rises, although we invested in just one man... Yes, you are right. We decided to reward Jonathan for his stunning management of the company during this year, so we raised his salary t o $11M.
Again, Jonathan is a sample to all our employees. The stocks are at a historical minimum, the company didn't meet the objectives imposed by Jonathan itself, so he decided to restrict his rise to a mere 44% in relation with his past year compensation package. So, this is a sample for all of you working for Sun: don't dare coming asking for a 12, 7 or even a 4.5% of salary rise to overcome inflaction. We need to restrict our expenses, and the people working for us are the first ones to give a sample (I said people 'working for us', not US; of course Jonathan's chauffer is not included in the people to give sample either).
So, when thinking in asking your boss for a salary rise, remember Dante's words: Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

Farewell to a star.

2008-09-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, he was a real star, but not only in Hollywood, he was greater as a man, and he was the man my mother in law was in love apart from his husband, and without my father in law being jealous (he also admired Newman). I will not include here his biography, I just leave here the link to Wikipedia.
We will miss you.

John DellVorak attacks again

2008-09-24T03:42:00.000-07:00

I've been reading this funny story written by John Dvorak ( or DellVorak from now on).
John, in a past post in my blog I asked you to stop having those things for breakfast, but I see you must have doubled the dose instead...
Please, John, don't oblige us to do the same we had to do in the past when you started saying nonsenses about Apple. I still have Jobso sore about you, and he just offered me to send Moshe again to pick you up, you know what I mean...

Maybe we, Sun, should enter in the consumer market -and not only with the Blu-Ray and Java-, as I read in an article in the blogosphere or in the private jet magacine, I'm not sure, I'll comment on that someday around here, but this is just ridiculous.

It is true that I always wanted Sun turning in a more "Dellized" company, as you can read in previous posts, but this means that customers could buy the iron (the small one over all, even the medium size), directly from our web, in the way Dell does it, instead of using 12 people to issue an offer of less than $5,000, as we do now (and analysts ask Jonathan where our margins are!!!!).

I didn't even considered Dell as a company that could buy us, they are not in the poll list!!!
Although they have the money to buy us.. Well, today even Caldera (are they keeping the name?) could try buying Sun according to the shares price...
John, again, reconsider your attitude...

A way to solve our crisis (if there is any at Sun)

2008-09-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

I've order... I mean, asked, Jonathan to have a look to our legal situation to check if we can become a financial corporation instead of what we are. It seems that the government has plenty of money for saving that kind of business (and I thought that we were on the capitalist side of the Cold War, and now it happens that Bush acts like a Marxist! -and I'm not talking about Groucho, although some people think that all this plan is just a comedy-).

Anyhow, if Jonathan plan fails, I already have a B-Plan: We are going to sell mortgages as a way of paying the computers we sell to our customers. It's easy, we sell the iron, then the customer acquires a mortgage to pay the computer, using the very same computer and some other assets from the customer to assure the payment of the debt. Then, you may think 'what happens if the customer doesn't pay?' We get the computer back, and keep the money already payed by the customer.
Then again you may ask: 'What if the value of the computer has decreased and is lower than the debt of the customer? The customer may decide not to pay the debt and buy a newer computer to someone else -or even to Sun again- for less money then the remaining debt'. Yes, it is possible, and this is what assurance companies are for: we are launching immediately, together with Sun Finance, Sun Assurance, so we are going to assure our own mortgage and finance operations with customers. This way all the money remains at Sun at last.

You may then think: 'This is crazy, if customers stop paying, not only Sun would be in dire straits, also the new insurance company will be as they cannot fulfill the debt generated by customers that don't pay their debts. What are you going to do then?'
Easy: the same that Freddy Mac, Fanny Mae, AIG, Merril Lynch... That is why the Federal Reserve is creating that emergency plan for: to buy high risk mortgages and funds (those not payed by the customers, for instance), and assume the debt generated by those naughty (and sometimes even poor) customers. If they are doing it for the financial system, for those who won billions by doing risky business -that are leaving in exchange a black hole in debts-, why are they not going to do that for Sun or even for your mortgage or your medical debts? It would be unfair to rescue those that provoked the major crisis since 1929 and not to the rest of us who pay taxes (well, Jonathan and me do pay taxes in a remote island in the Caribbean, but this is another story).

New Corporate Drink

2008-09-15T16:42:00.001-07:00

We are changing our cafeteria offerings and Corona will not be served any more. The reason is obvious, we are serving 'Cerveza Sol' (although I like Corona, Sol tastes similar and the name says it all by itself about the reason why we rather it !!!).
And not only is more corporate, it's cheaper...

Today Mike Lehman came to show me the results forecast for this quarter...
and I'm thinking if my decision is correct or if I should be offering something stronger to our employees (and myself...).
By the way, I've just realized of something about our CFO that is scaring me really bad: Is he one of the Brothers? Oh my Gosh!!!! We are screwed!!!

Ashok, tequila will not be strong enough... order something more appropriate.

Making money from free software!!!

2008-09-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

We are the best, We are the best, We are best!!!!!!!!!
(Quoting Barbara Gordon in her last speech at Sun in front of hundreds of engineers, five minutes before running to Ballmer's company...). The good news are we have sold several million dollars (I know the exact amount, but I'm not allowed to say it; for sure it is more than one million, as it is a multi-million dollar deal).
It seems that the ERP leader company Stèsud S.A. (sorry, I guess the whole site is in French; I have to ask Jonathan when did he learn French, as it was a phone call he made to the CEO the one that closed the deal; I hope he didn't offer too much discount...).
I know what you are thinking, I didn't know that company before the deal, but if our press release says they are the leading ERP company in the world, I buy it (that's how we ERP in Belgium...).

Next step is sending hundreds of our sales reps to try selling our friggin iron into the customers' ERP installations sold by Stèsud. At last, this is why we are giving software for free, to turn it into a commodity, so we can sell expensive iron, the real added value we can provide in the business so far, not like Dell is doing. Mwahahahahahaha!

Town Hall Meeting questions: IBIS

2008-09-09T03:57:00.000-07:00

As I promised, I'll regularly answer questions regarding the company sent by employees to my e-mail address (don't forget to include your SunID, just in case...) or by asking directly in spontaneous town-hall meetings (I always wondered why tey are called this way).
This is the transcript of our latest meeting, containing question regarding IBIS, the new ERP-CRM-Expenses-BUGTracker-SoftwareForEveryThingImaginable we are installing at Sun

-(Sun employee -soon to be ex-employee) What the Hell is this S@~T you are imposing us? Why are we doing it in the opposite way it would be done in a project at any other customer? It is ORACLE software and it doesn't work well!!!

(Memo to Ashok: Edit the previous question so it will appera in the following way in the blog):
So, the question is: What is IBIS and how is it helping Sun?

-(Scooter)The answer is easy: just look at the picture aside or check the Wikipedia...
Ok, I'm just joking, I'm so funny... I know what is IBIS at Sun.
We took a decision a long time ago, to substitute all our internal systems related to CRM, ERP, Travel and Expenses, thousands of applications (Siebel, SunTea, etc.), for just one integrated system that would allow us to know in real time the status of the company, of our customers, if we are making money or losing it and where. And, by using just a single system to integrate all, we save in hardware (don't need hundreds of systems doing similar things), save in workforce (less administrators needed...), and save in software support (remember, just one product to be maintained).
Besides, it is back in the 2005-06 when we signed the non-aggression pact with Oracle, so while they bought Bea to eliminate one of our competitors, we had to buy MySQL to do the same, and as we spend much less money than them, we had to compensate Larry by using their software inside Sun, quite fair.

Ok, with this the session is over, and now we are off-the-record.

-(Sun almost ex-worker) Mista Scooter, an additional question. The idea seems right but it is a pain in the ass for the people at Sun, we are suffering a lot until IBIS started working, and the substitute of SunTEA (the Travel and Expenses tool), seems to be designed to make you desist asking for your money!

-(Scooter) Hehehehe, very funny, yes, yes, indeed the idea is to save money to the company because you stop asking for expense reimbursement... Just joking!!! (Ashok, take a picture of this dumb-ass). Maybe you have troubles because you didn't read the wikis (we had manuals, but wikis are much more Internet 2.0). Have a look to this link and you'll have no problem.

-(Sun almost ex-worker) Mista Scooter, it is in Korean!!

-(Scooter) What's the problem? I thought in Bangalore you were taught to understand anything.

-(Another almost ex-worker) It is rumored that the deploying process was done in the reverse way it should be done, and that some GEMs have been a whole month unable to issue offers or to record billings and contracts from customers.

-(Scooter) (Ashok, who the hell has come to this meeting? IBM Global Services!!!!) Well, when you sell a project to install a product, you usually learn the way the customer works, you analyze the internal processes of that customer and then you adapt the product to the customer's processes. But this costs money, and we don't want to waste it, so we decided to it the opposite and cheaper way: we installed the software as-is, with no customization (we even maintained the Oracle logos), and we are adapting our internal processes to be the ones used by default in the tool, so we are teaching our 40,000 employees to the new way we are doing business, the Oracle way. Clever, uh? If you want to know the exact method we follow, Scott Adams was there when we took the decision and illustrated it here.

Ok, the session is over, I have to go to have a little talk to Jonathan on account of an unauthorized use of my parking lot with a Prius he wasn't able to turn on... (we had to bring his wife to do it...again).

(Ashok, rememeber not to publish the later part of the meeting, it is highly confidential; and find out the IDs of the two guys making the questions).
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Update1: Ashok was fired this morning and his back was painted in yellow for treason.

Update2: Ashok entered five minutes ago asking why he had so much troubles entering into the office today. It seems that his cousin Vidyacharan impersonated him in the town hall meeting (he is working indeed for HP). I re-admitted Ashok, after all I need someone to write this blog... (I find their faces all the same!!!)

Software downloads at Sun

2008-09-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

I've just received a summary of the top ten software downloads at Sun (for hardware-like downloads, as Jonathan says in his blog, check here).
I have fun with the software, although I don't really know what it is for so, I'll enclose the list here:

1.MySQL Database (well, this is not surprising at all, I think we bought them to generate traffic to our site).

2. xVM VirtualBox 1.6 (somebody is getting tired of paying licences to VmWare when they can get it for free).

3. Solaris 10 Operating System (This should be the number one, this is the Jewel of the Crown, after Sparc)

4. Sun Download Manager 2.0 (To manage the previous downloads, cool decision).

5. Sun Studio 12 (of course, the best choice to build software for Sparc -and Solaris- and other systems too).

6. Solaris Express Developer Edition (We are confusing customers: they want to download, and pay support, for the genuine Solaris 10, not this. I'll send a memo to Jonathan tomorrow).

7. Services Tools Bundle (STB) 3.1 (Of course, the set of tools that our Sparc -and Solaris- customers need).

8. Sun Device Detection Tool 2.0 (I laugh at the plug-n-pray capability in Windows, this is cool!!!).

9. Directory Server Enterprise Edition (Of course, the place to authenticate your Solaris users in your huge platform! Now seriously: this is the best software product we had ever, and the corner stone and the best-selling product in the software area. You'll be amazed if you knew how much money we still do with this product compared to Identity Manager and Role Manager!!!).

10. Web Server 7.0 Update 3 (I don't get this... We even distribute Apache in our Solaris -all versions-, we push very hard for SAMP, and we still were not able to kill the Web Server, users still download it... People are strange!).

'Sunning' Dell

2008-09-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been saying for a while that Sun should imitate Dell's model in many ways (I'll come back to it later, I have to explain it _AGAIN_ to Jonathan this afternoon), but what we have now is Dell imitating Sun's way of manufacturing computers. They are even planning to be more aggressive than us, as we have some factories yet, but we don't do the microprocessors. They are planning to sell all their factories, like IBM did with Lenovo, but instead of selling the brand too (well, what else would they retain...?), they expect to have the PC manufactures fighting each other to be the supplier of cheaper and cheaper PCs. We'll see if this pays out at last... The PC market is quite hard, IBM decided to step out, and now it seems that Dell is struggling to keep the margins.

The truth about Jonathan Schwartz's silence

2008-09-06T11:14:00.001-07:00

Many people comes to my office asking me about Jonathan and the possibility of him stepping down from the post of CEO.
The truth is that he has been very busy with all the LinkedIn stuff, I mean, he has been updating his resumé in LinkedIn, but not because he is thinking in going someplace else, no, he is just promoting the deal between them and us, that's all.
Apart from this, as Jonathan posted in his private blog, he has been ill lately and this is why he posted so little lately. What makes me sick is his latest joining to Twitter: would you mind stopping loosing your time and going back to work? (Well, what pisses me off is that he got the idea before than me!!!)

Jonathan: Stop pretending the iPhone is dropping my calls!!! And stop bothering Greg P., he is preparing the dinner tonight. By the way, you should hop by to greet my guests. Don't forget to bring the white wine, please.

Shares down to a historical minimum: Why Worry?!!

2008-09-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

Hey, you'd think that this is a very bad news for us in Sun, the shares plunging at $8.50, but it isn't at all, indeed this is great news!
Oh, you may think that I'm furious because I own a lot of Sun shares and that I'm loosing money, but I truly know something you don't know... hehehe. The truth about this is that we are indeed making money, and in particular storage people are quite happy about their results (oh my God, so many time saying that nasty things about the ink that HP was selling, and now I'm happy selling so much magnetic-tape on my own!!!). So, sooner or way much more sooner the shares will boost up again. So, what is happening now? We have about $5billion in cash we don't know what to do with. We are trying to buy some more companies, but after MySQL there seem to be no more options, at least not by now. And there is the risk of being bought by someone (see my poll aside).
This is why we decided to repurchase some of our own stocks, and we need them to be as cheaper as possible to take the most out of the billion we are spending -we'll resell everything as soon as we got again to $50, and our stakeholders will swim in money-. So, there you have it, it is a planned schedule, so if you are smart, you'd all be buying Sun's shares like crazy (Jonathan, don't worry, I won't call to your freaking iPhone to tell you how silly you are, so stop pretending it is not working and answer my calls, I need you to bring some of your white wine stuff to my house right now; we have some executives from a company we are negotiating the selling of Sun; keep it secret, by the way).

Well, maybe this post is just fake and I want you all to rush buying Sun's shares to bring the actions up... Time will say...

Sun and Mitel (not Mittal)

2008-09-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

Hi!
If you wanna see me with the CEO of Mittal Steel corporation, you can access here to a presentation we did the other day at our headquarters. Hey, I look pretty good next to Stan Lee. I am a Stan Lee fan, but I never figured out that he was into the steel business. I guess this is why we are partnering with them, to use their steel in our servers at a nice price. I didn't read the briefing my secretary prepared as I was coming after playing golf with some customers and I was a little late to the event, but what else would we partnering with a steel maker? In some part of the talk I showed Stan my computer: my id card and my old Palm (I always do the same speech, it comes out automatically...), and he seemed pretty impressed.
Correction: Ah, Ashok came to tell me that I was slightly wrong... the presentation was with Mitel, a VoIP and communications company that just integrated our SunRay with one of their phones (see photo above)... so now it makes sense why they asked me to do the badge number... but I still am surprised that they coudl hire Stan Lee as their chairman, we shoud do something like that and hire some icon like Britney Spears or Lindsay Loohan (I heard Seinfeld is alredy hired... ;-) ).
He is even wearing his classical leather jacket as the one in his "official" Wikipedia picture. I love this man.

Chrome: The Network IS The Computer

2008-09-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

I'm quite excited to see that Google is about to launch their new browser. It is true that they were for long demonstrating everybody that our motto at Sun -thanks John Gage- is more valid that ever: The Network Is The Computer (although they are not quite used to buy our gear, they rather to build their own one... nasty boys...). Now, with that half-browser/half-network-Operating-System, they are going a step further into this philosophy. Maybe this way we can sell more SunRays...

What makes me really happy about this is that they are reviving the browser wars we lived in the '90s with Netscape and Microsoft. Why I'm so happy? Back then our shares were about $200, so I truly expect history repeating!!!!

By the way, I really loved the comic explaining the features of this new browser. If it does what they promise, it is going to be a really great stuff (Ballmer, you should be really worry if it proves right, I'm eager to test it). This is one of those days when I really feel proud of having let the car industry for the computer industry. Kids, you did a great job so far, I expect to keep on saying the same after trying the beta.

By the way, Sergey, Larry, as we agreed the meeting is tomorrow evening at my house. I guess we could discuss the financial terms of the fusion at dinner (Jobso recommended an excellent Chardonnay I'm eager to try). Oh, and keep it secret, please.

New poll: Who do you think is buying Sun?

2008-08-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

Well, as Sun is 'The Rumor Company' (I'm gonna trademark it before Michael Dell thinks about it...), and now it seems that everybody is speculating about who is going to buy Sun now that the shares are quite low, I'm opening a poll so I can recall your opinion of who should I start negotiating the selling of the company to.
It is not who you'd like to be buying Sun, but who you think would buy Sun most probably.

I'll give you some clues:

-HP: Well, after buying Compaq and EDS, why not buying the only real competitor left in the market? They'd gain a real operating system of their own and the software they lack in the middleware space. This would ramp them up to match and even overtake IBM. It is said that Don Grantham was negotiating with them and as no agreement was met, they decided to hire him. Who knows...

-IBM: They make a lot of money with Java, so they might want to control it and prevent HP taking control over it and become a formidable enemy.

-Oracle: They buy anything, so, why not entering the server market to complement its database offer? Besides, they'd buy a decent Identity and middleware software to abandon their own crappy one, and again, they'd gain control over Java. Besides that, they'd end up killing MySQL at once...

-Fujitsu: Everybody say that this would be fantastic for Fujitsu, as they'd gain a strong position in EMEA and USA, markets where they are weak selling servers, and complementing the APAC area, where they are pretty stronger than Sun. Besides, they'd get a cool middleware and Identity software and Java, and over all Solaris, would be under their control. But, I think this would be a bad move for them, as there would only be one SPAR vendor in the World, so the offer of this kind of server would be far less attractive.

-SAP: Well, they are getting now into the Identity market, and so buying a real Identity player, and having Java on their own would be an asset for the future. Apart form this, most SAP installations are running over Oracle, so shifting MySQL to be a real alternative to Oracle would be very interesting for them (and they'd kick Oracle for once in a while). What I don't like is that they speak German and I'm a little old to learn it right now...

-Sony: You may not know it, but in every BluRay there is a Java embedded, and we are paid for that. Apart from this, both companies are absolutely complementaries, and would cover the enterprise market and the consumer market (VAIO laptops, Play Stations, etc.). I'll write about this in a further post.

-Google: So far they build their own gear, so they'd be interested in a real hardware maker to improve their design and make a real server, and tweak a little more Solaris and substitute their crappy Google-OS. They are also trying to enter the mobile phone market, so Java-ME is something interesting to count on. And of course, Java would be very interested to be under their control.

-Microsoft: Maybe they are not at last interested in the server market, but they'd might maintain that line of business to gain credibility in the datacenter area, where nobody sane would use Micro$oft for anything really serious, like transfering money. They'd be very interested in Solaris, in using its kernel for future Windows Server versions and gain credibility. Also Java is an interesting asset (as .NET is a cheap copy of it at last), so they'd might make them converge and gain traction among developers. Also, they'd get an interesting stack of Identity and Middleware software to gain installed base, not to mention that they'd kill StarOffice to save their own Office Suite.

-Nestle: Well, why not... they are a big corporation, I can't think of a reason why they should not buy Sun...

Microsoft is hiring Seinfeld, really?

2008-08-22T15:56:00.000-07:00

I must confess I didn't believe this piece of news until I read it here... (sorry Dan, I should have believed you, but here at Sun the only one that remembers 'yada yada yada' Seinfeld is Tamara from Software -I guess she is from software, she never talks about irons...)

Steve (Ballmer), are you nuts? Are you really spending $300 M in a marketing campaign to save Vista -after you even recognized that it is only worthy as a weapon against its own users? Are you paying $10M to that guy to appear next to Bill Gates to make people think that the system is cool...?

Wait, I know understand your move, I should have supposed so: you are a genius!!! You are afraid that the old man may come back some day to threaten your position, so you are ruining his image by associating him to that retired comic and so he'll never come back to Micro$oft... Brilliant!!!
I have to do something like that with Jonathan when his time arrives... soon...

By the way, save those 300 million, you are gonna need them to hire our Solaris kernel for your Windows 7 (ZFS is for free, in shake of our friendship).

Mobile Enterprise Platform - MEP

2008-08-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

Yes, we are after the mobile market, Google is not the only one constructing and Android our there (hehehe, I'm so funny...).

What puzzles me out most of this article is to be aware that Sybase is still existing... Amazing, I thought they were with Netscape, somewhere in the cyberspace...

Is EMC buying StorageTek?

2008-08-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

There is rumor out there saying that we are selling the tape division (StorageTek) to our competitor EMC.
I have to say, without no doubt, that this is NOT true (they didn't accept to buy Sun completely, then the price we offer them to sell just the tape division was to high for them, not to mention that they, in no way, agreed to take Jonathan as their new CEO, and I was giving him for free as a bonus to take rid of the Tape and Software divisions, something not mentioned in the piece of news).

So, fear not dear StorageTekers, you'll stay under Sun's realm at least a little bit more...

You know, Sun, the rumor company.

Cloudy Dell

2008-08-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

It seems that my friend Michael Dell is trying to do some aggressive marketing to increase sellings and approach Sun in the third place of the biggest server makers of the World -no Ashok, I am sure that the data provided by Gartner is being corrected and that WE are the third maker, and anyhow, we are the number 1 in Unix servers, aren't we...?-
Well, dear Michael, I'm afraid you'll have to think about something different as it seems that the US Patent and Trademark Office is denying the request to trademark the term 'Cloud Computing' to Dell. Is like registering the term 'Computing' or patenting the electrons that run inside the microchips... although sometimes I'm really surprised by the 'inventions' that our Patent Office allows.
Well, after all it is not such a bad idea to patent the electrons... Ashok, I have some homework for you to do about electrons and electricity... After all we can save Sun...

Town Hall Meeting questions: AMEX Card

2008-08-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

As I promised a few posts ago, I will be answering questions posted to me. I request candid and direct questions and I promise to answer in the same way.
Ok, here it comes Ashok with the first question:

-Dear Sir Mista McNealy, on account of the implantation of the new ERP-CRM system, we are encouraged to use our corporate credit card, the American Express one. In the past, payments made with AMEX took about
two months to be charged in my account, but it is not happening anymore. So, as Sun doesn't provide any money in advance, and using this card means no advantage to me -my local bank rewards me with 2% of my expenses when using their card with no cost at all- could you explain me why I should finance Sun by paying in advance the expenses generated by my job using the AMEX card?

Ashok, one off-topic memo: ask the security office if they can trace the origin of an e-mail and discover the related SunID of certain person.
Ok, this is my answers: We all love Sun, and we decided this is the best for the company, and I play golf with someone from Amex who promised me some new platinum clubs if we improved the usage of the Amex cards in Sun, and that makes me happy, and if I'm happy, Sun's happy as I'm a great part of the company, and so the employees are happy and the people from Amex are also happy, so happiness around the world is a fantastic reason to keep using Amex cards inside Sun.

Ashok, just another memo: lets prepare a little more the answers before going live, please... I'm not happy at all with the happiness reasoning...

Note: This picture, and some other memorable moments for Sun can be found here...

Sun: The rumor company

2008-08-06T06:10:00.001-07:00

Rumor has it that we are seeking for a replace for Jonathan Schwartz. I think I already talked about this, but I want to do it again to assure you that, in no way, we are searching for a replace for our beloved Jonathan. I need him to receive all the criticism for all the bad decisions I take in the shadows...

Anyhow, Jonathan, you have to worry not, I'd never leave you go... would I?

Bad results: No Fear!

2008-08-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

Message to our investors: Don't worry about our bad results published this quarter. Indeed they are not so bad, we are making money again, although maybe not so much as we would have liked, of course.
The main reason why we made such bad numbers are indeed on purpose. We realized we were not going to fulfill our established objectives for this FY, so, instead of declaring each and every dollar we made, we took the decision (I cannot tell you who are this 'we'...), to delay the recognition of some important deals until the next quarter -people from legal forgot to sign some contracts on time; people from operations forgot to give the contracts on time to the folks in legal, and son on-. We have some good reasons for that: we will provide a better Q1 than ever, as we sill sum all the good results of our past Q4, so confidence in the company will grow up from our investors. Then, as our employees didn't meet the established objectives, we are not paying bonuses as it was expected, and that means more money for our stakeholders! And, besides that, less sales reps. made the established objectives, so we don't have to invite them to the SunRise FY09 (this year was in Hawaii, so instead of inviting 2,000 reps., it will be only the board: more money saved for the stakeholders as we save in hotels, flights and lost working hours!).

So, as I like to say, a win-win situation.

Have a nice summer.

Counting every penny

2008-07-31T06:53:00.000-07:00

You'll have noticed that Jonathan (the real and the fake) and me are not writing very much lately in our respective blogspaces. The reason is that tomorrow we are publishing the results for our '08 Fiscal Year, and so we are in the process of counting accurately every dollar to provide an accurate image of our company.
Oh, I forgot to tell Lehman to check the sandwich machine in the Santa Clara cafeteria... I'll do it myself (every penny counts.. ;-) ).

Stay tunned, we'll publish our results tomorrow.

Microsoft: another happy customer

2008-07-16T00:19:00.001-07:00

Believe it or not, Microsoft seems to be another happy Sun customer!
We cannot say it very loud, as it is a secret, you know, some of our customers don't want to talk about how they are building their infrastructures, but Microsoft is buying our Datacenter in a Box (aka BlackBox) to build some of their new data centers.

Thanks a lot dear Steve. Now I see a bright future to our friendship. You can even run Vista in my boxes if that pleases you (our offer to use the Solaris kernel in the next version of Vista Server stands).

I know some people don't really think this is a good idea, as they feel that the Earth is plenty of space to store an infinite amount of servers wherever we want, but, following that reasoning, there should also not be any problem in finding space for housing, and we all know how much is worthwhile a house in Tribeka or in Georgetown, for instance.

Follow my advice: put a Blacbox in your life (nice iron, and we have it in every color you want, as long as it is black... ;-) I'm joking, for a little extra we can paint it in white too). Oh, and we can add your branding in the walls, where it currently says Sun too just for a few extra bucks.

Town hall meetings

2008-07-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

I remember that town hall meeting before the first round of reduction in forces we had to face back in 2002. I had several thousands of our employees in a hotel in Broomfield and I opened the QA so anybody could freely ask whatever they wanted. The layoffs hadn't been announced but the rumor was already quite strong, so the first guy who asked for the micro stood up and make his question: "It is said that there is going to be a RIF in the company, what can you say about that?" I looked at the guy and answered: "Do you volunteer?"

The whole auditorium froze and nobody else dared making any question related to such a matter that I particularly don't like (I left my position as CEO because I didn't want to fire anybody. I don't even like that euphemysm of calling a layoff a Reduction In Forces). The truth is that this guy was an actor I hired the day before so everybody had a clear picture of what was going to happen and I didn't have to answer innapropriate questions...
Why I'm telling you this story? Well, now I'm not the CEO and so I can answer more freely any question, so I'm opening a virtual Town Hall Meeting: you can send me your questions (reach me by any mean you find most suitable: phone, mail, meet me at the office...), and I'll post here your questions and my answers.

I'm not on holidays...

2008-07-15T23:07:00.001-07:00

I know that I've been away from this blog for a while, but it is not because I'm on vacation nor anything like that. I've been doing just hard work setting... er, making..., you know, doing some calculations about our results of the fiscal year, and I'm afraid that this, together with the announcement of the date where we are going to release our results for the year, has led to some misunderstanding from the market. They thought we were broken, and so the shares plunged more than the rest of the NASDAQ (the gas price and the subprime crisis is helping a bit too, you know).
So, I had a little talk to Lehman (I'm working closely with him lately to propose some measures to help boosting our revenue up), and we decided to give some results in advance so our stakeholders could have at least a couple of days of relief untill we deliver the real data.
And yes, we are a profitable company again. Well, or so it seems from the mail Mike sent, as he gave me the raw data I'd rather read the summary in the press (but only those articles that say nice things about us, of course).

Stay tuned, there are many more interesting things to come.

Change of Season

2008-06-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

Hmmm, you can smell it in the air... (no, not the Mac), but the change of the season is about to come this Saturday, and you all will be in summer. I say you all, as we at Sun already change our season, but not to Summer or even Spring again: we are in the Gossip Season!

Yeah, a thrilling period of time where everybody is frantic trying to fulfill the objectives to be allowed to stay on board, and where everybody starts making quizzes about what the new Fiscal Year will be, who will get fired, who'll come back to get the reigns of the company again after traveling all around the World, if we'll be sold, which company we'll buy...

You know, there is something in the air... and it'll be until next 1st of July.

HPC Computing in a Box

2008-06-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

It seems that we are miniaturizing everything we have so far. Maybe it is that we are recalling what we did with the first 'pizza boxes', once upon a time in the late eighties, and we are just trying to repeat the same success.

Now it is the HPC in a box, we have been able to miniaturize most of the pieces involved in a HPC environment (even the price of it, the part I don't like to minimize...), keeping the power, so we have reached a wonderful 4th position at the top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. And with less cable use than our competitors (I guess this is also part of our green strategy...).

And no Steve, I'm sorry, we are not running Wirus Vista in our servers... but our offer to sell you our Solaris kernel for Windows 7 is still valid (plus a 20%, of course).

Ahhmmm, I just love iron.

Search for Differences

2008-06-16T02:59:00.000-07:00

I am proposing a simple quiz: search for differences between this picture:

and this other picture:

I'll help you: basically they are the same, but in the first picture IBM used a much uglier paint and used huge logos to hide the Sun logo. Oh, and most important at all, the IBM container comes "complete with IBM services", as they say in their video: it is, next to the data center container, they'll install a full city of containers with prefab houses for the zillions of consultants they are going to "install" too in your company (and that will drain your budget).

But not only our paintwork is much better, our box has been tested against 6.7 earthquakes! Top this.

Already tested our SunRays? IBM did, and they liked it very much...

Garbage Trucks Colliding (AGAIN!!!)

2008-06-14T05:34:00.000-07:00

I know, I didn't say anything about the HP-EDS eatin... I mean, merge, or buying, or whatever, but I can't stand it anymore...
So, instead of repeating myself I just recall what I already commented about the HP-Compaq merger a while ago... No need to remember my words, should I?, many people does, and even use them for other subjects too.
Bad news for us is that EDS is a huge Sun customer nowadays, so we have decided to be very careful with what we sell them from now on. Well, we'll see if Don does his job -the secret one I committed him- and HP becomes also a Sun customer and distributes Solaris (they are the only ones in industry that do not yet), as they are a little bit aggressive against us (and they shouldn't as their real business are PCs, Laptops, printers and over all things the ink for the printers -much better if is color ink-).
Well, I don't know if this is a good move, as EDS will never be seen again as a independent integrator for customers and HP becomes a mogul in the business. We rather keep our flexibility being the little big one in the business.

Visiting Europe (III)

2008-06-14T05:17:00.001-07:00

I just received this cute photo from my last visit to Spain, si I couldn't resist uploading it in the blog.

Ain't I a cute guy? I don't remember who is the other guy, some politician I guess, but I look terrific!
Asok, a memo to Rebecca, from my office: Update my travel information, the Google map and so on, it is quite outdated...
Well, it is time to get back to work. And it is wonderful, I just came back to the office, and the shares rose up more than 2%! Investors just love me...

Holidays in Spain (II)

2008-06-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

This Monday I arrived to Spain, and the first I did was asking Asok if we really were in the sunny Spain as what I saw through the window was this:
I was tempted to call Rebecca, from my office, to terminate Asok contract for this tremendous mistake, when the pilot confirmed we had arrived to Madrid indeed, and that there has been raining like never before during the past weeks.

Later on, after leaving my private jet (I always travel in my private jet, it is much more uncomfortable than regular liners, but I just do it for the sake of the business, you know), then only thing we could see at the road were trucks, hundreds of them, so a 15 minutes trip to the city took us about 2 hours...

As I was told later in the meeting I held with the Industry Minister, it seems that there is a truckers strike in Spain, so they decided to cut the roads. So simple.

Well, what I didn't see all the way was a single policeman, I guess they were pretty busy somewhere else.

The meeting with the Ministers were pretty interesting, although I think they didn't understand yet what are our SunRays for... Well, I hope that the local team at Spain will have the chance to explain that to them in detail. I have to say that I didn't have the chance to meet the Prime Minister in person (nobody could tell if he was busy or just surrounded by trucks in the Parliament), but everybody says he is a very very clever person (for those who don't know him, I enclose one of his most famous pictures).

No, he is not Mr. Bean, I checked that already. This is the real Prime Minister of Spain (what I can't tell is if this is the real photo or he was somehow favored with PhotoShop). I also heard some comments about that this man is a real jinx, but

Apart from the political side of the visit, I also met with the most important CEOs of the country, although someone might have made a mistake with the dossiers distributed before my visit, as they all asked about the 3G iPhone. I think they were somehow disappointed when I showed them my Sun badge, with JavaCard integrated, and told them that this was my computer and then showed the Sun Ray, but I'm sure it will take me less time to convince them to migrate to SunRays than the time I needed to do so with my wife (I'm about to make her abandon that crappy Mac!!!).

Of course I got time to do many other things in my visit, but it would make a quite boring entry in my blog. By the way, I followed my friend Steve's advice, and I won't be traveling to Hungary this time... (Steve, you are my real -fake- friend, be sure of that. The other Steve is my fake -fake- friend, but as they are our laptop provider, I have to be nice to him, otherwise I lose the rebates when buying more than 50 MacBooks...).

Out of the office: holidays in Spain

2008-06-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I won't be on real vacation, at least this is what I said in the office, as I will be meeting with some ministers of the Spanish government, so it is just work after all...

Don't think that I'm one of those illiterate that think that Spain is just south of the border with Mexico and that you can travel there by bus, I know it is in the old Europe (been there a few times before!), although I'm not sure if it is between Greece or Italy or south the UK (thanks, Ashok just showed me Google Maps and I can see it is south France).
Well, I'll have the chance to follow my friend (fake) Steve's advice and go to visit El Bulli after meeting with the ministers, and some Museums in Madrid. I'm visiting the new formed government and as I want to leave a permanent impression I'm giving them a fully new -pre-sales guys swear they had only been used in 345 presentations previously- and personalized SunRays (just as the one in the photo).

As you can see, it has surface enough to add much more drawings than those already painted in the personalized Zunes that both (fake)Steves are showing in their pages.

Win-Win Situation

2008-06-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

I'll offer you some of my CEOrish advice (Ashok says that CEOrish is a non existing word, as if he knew everything about English... Besides, my friend Pointy Haired Boss uses it constantly).

Well, as I was saying, I'll offer some examples of what is a win-win situation, although some situations seem to be the opposite. In summary, this is a scenario where everybody wins, so it is an ideal situation. That's what we search when we offer our technology to our customers. They pay us good money (which seems bad to them as they spend it, but it isn't!), so we earn our living, and our customers win a lot more because they leverage their businesses with our technology.

Some recent examples of other Win-Win situations, that doesn't seem so, but I'll explain why they are winning scenarios for everybody.

Yesterday, our former executive vice president of global sales and services, Don Grantham, left the company to join HP as chief sales officer. It seems that HP wins here and that we loose, but this is not the case. We all win.
From now on, we have someone in the HP headquarters that will defend Solaris as another operating system to be sold in the HP platform (just take a look at Jonathan's blog, he explains it all), so we are expanding our visibility and gaining a new channel partner.
Besides that, we are restructuring our internal organization, creating new divisions focused on emerging markets, and we are in a huge effort to cut expenses, and as you may imagine Dan had a huuuuge salary... so we are really thankful to HP to take care of Don's salary from now on (well, just after we have delivered Don's severance of about $6M or so... everything to keep my salary untouched).
Another reason why this is a win-win situation: our shares plunged after Don's leaving was announce. This is great as I was planning on buying a huge amount of shares, I mean, Sun is planning to buy its own shares (I cannot do that right now, we are in quiet period and that would not be legal nor fair to our shareholders), so we'll do it by way much less money than we though.

So, finally everybody wins, even HP, that will be compelled to use Solaris, a real OS in their crappy computers... This a clear example of a win-win-win-win... situation, everybody wins.

Want some more example of a win-win situation? A dream ticket, Obama+Hillary. This would be a great win-win: Obama would win, Hillary would win (and would be able to pay her campaign debts), and the Dems would win by going back to the White House.

For us would also be a winning situation: we'd had a young innovator politico in the House, someone to perform a complete overhaul to our country and our political system, while having someone with real experience to back him in tough times. A win-win for everybody, except perhaps for the old McCain...

The picture of the SunRay included here?
Well, I just felt that I had to add some additional pictures to make
the entry more attractive, so I guess it is nice to add some self propaganda.
Another win-win situation...

Another reason to switch to Solaris

2008-05-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

or even OpenSolaris... This is the only virus you can take by using Solaris. And this is only part of the fun!!!
Yes, the logo is the OpenSolaris new logo. And you can get a free cd too.

Q3 Results: I'm so sad...

2008-05-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, we finally posted a loss in the third quarter of the fiscal year, on account of the weak economy and the subprime crisis. But this is not a consolation at all... Besides that, we are also announcing the firing of 1500 to 2500 people. Well, if we were sure that we are firing the people that is not really working hard or making a difference at Sun, I'd agree, but you all know what I think of that kind of measures (that is the main reason why I left the CEO job). It seems that everybody at the MBA courses gets brainwashed and to the first symptoms of money loss they all apply the same cure: job cutting -really, it doesn't seem so difficult to get an MBA nowadays watching the kind of management CEOs are doing-. If I had done the same, instead of investing in R&D, the company wouldn't even exist today.
The funny thing is that we are loosing just about $34M, it is, what we are paying for MySQL diluted across several quarters, so indeed we are just even at last. Not so bad. The other funny thing is that while all the geographies Sun is present at are profitable (and some like India, China and Eastern Europe countries are very, very profitable), just missing the US target for the quarter has pushed the company to the abyss. So, you know what happens in this case: if we miss the target in the US, we have to fire people all around the World. If it was India, we would just fire people in India and never in the US; the same applies to China, UK, France, and so on: if a GEM does a bad job, they deserve a punishment. It it is the US, the whole company deserves the punishment. Yeah, I'm becoming a fan of that new MBA courses I mentioned before.

But there are some good news. We still have money in the bank, about $2,363M, so we still can buy a couple of MySQLs or so, and even pay the SunRise party this year in Hawaii -I guess there will not be very much people from the States, as you have to sell at least 100% of your target, and then be on the top list to be eligible for the party, so we'll save in hotels and airline tickets-.
Another good piece of news is that we are paying full bonuses for the Q3. Yeah, some people could say that instead of paying bonuses we could not lay-off anybody, but mate, this is not what you learn in modern MBA courses...
Another important thing is relevance. We have gained a lot of relevance, as every analyst was expecting us to provide profits for this quarter, and by not doing so we have provoked a little crash in Wall Street! If we weren't relevant, that would have never happened...

A couple of interesting things to finish: Sun stocks are under $13, so it is your opportunity to invest in Sun (we'll get back to more than $20). And what is more interesting: It is Jonathan who is in charge of this mess, not me, so I still can return to make things work again!!

I'm calling Steve to remember the old times, I guess he brought some European beer form his last trip to Europe. I feel a little depressed today...

We copying Apple?

2008-04-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

Come on, people at The Inquirer, are you kidding? Don't you think that we are the originals here and that it is Apple who is copying us? Remember that it was the real Jobso the one who said that "Good Artists copy, Great artist steal.." -Jobso himself stole this words from Picasso-.

By the way, I love the way The Inquirer calls Apple "the fruit themed toy maker". Nice -and accurate in my opinion- description.

Oh, and don't take credit for what they say about the chip market. Intel, you can rest in peace... I mean, you can rest assure we are not a threat. Well, you know what I mean...

Montalvo: Another mark in the gun

2008-04-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

Sorry Jobso, you are not the only one acquiring small chip-makers at the Valley lately, we also did our buying, and according to analysts, we did it so well that we underpaid for this little company (don't tell anybody).
If it was a software company I would have asked and prepared a poll to know your opinion, so in case of failure I could always say that people gave me a bad advice, but in the case of iron I don't need anybody's advice, I'm pretty sure of what I'm doing and I always do it right.
Welcome home workers of Montalvo Systems, (if there is anybody left at the company so far...) we'll treat you as you deserve!

Management Excellence

2008-04-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

I have a strange feeling lately. I have the rare sensation that there is something in the air (and it is not a Mac), that managers don't tell me the absolute true of what is happening here at Sun (well, I think that taking four flights to go from Las Vegas to San Francisco to make it the "cheapest travel of the world" may give me some clue of what is happening; hitchhiking in this case was a REAL option...). So, I made up my mind and I'm going to spend some time disguised among my people in the company. In this "incognito" I'm going to analyze the management style of my people and how people work at Sun. I think it will be funny :-)
Yeah, it'll be much more funny than this weekend when Hillary took me from Jimmy Carter!
Gosh, we laughed very hard and at last I didn't gave her my donation to her campaign as she was just pleased with my support as a SuperDelegate and some peanuts...

Well, anyhow, I'll go to PA and vote for her again this tuesday, we need her.

Oh, and I'll keep you informed through this blog about my adventures as a regular Sun employee ;-)
By the way, I remind you that I have a mail address (you can see it here in the blog, at the right side) where you can comment management excellence cases, traitor employees or whatever you want to comment about Sun. No disciplinary actions will be taken, I swear.

We are not in financial struggle

2008-04-21T09:14:00.000-07:00

There has been recently some false rumors about our financial performance during this third quarter of our fiscal year and about the perspectives of our fourth quarter (that corresponds with the months of April, May and June). I have to say that this is absolutely false, there is no reason to suspect that our systems sales have dropped in the US on account of the economy (the sub-prime crisis, you know), and our health is undoubtedly strong, as you'll see in our results announce next first of May.

It is true that I have been working myself in the forge of the new servers, but it is because of my profound wisdom and because I really like to do real work myself, not because the board said anything about my huge salary and a shortage of money to pay qualified workers. I just enjoy working in the factory like I used to in the old times.

Oh, by the way, a message from our CFO to our beloved employees: We are thinking in changing our internal travel website (currently Amex), for this one: http://www.cheapflights.com/.
Comments are welcome. Oh, and he also reminds me that hitchhiking is an acceptable option for any company travel from now on until new order (fake Lehman said so).

I'm Back...

2008-04-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

...so there is no need to worry about my long absence, as the one of my beloved fellow Fake Jonathan that seems to be eternal (he doesn't want to talk about that). Indeed it is plenty justified, and it is not that I've been on holidays, but I've been working very hard to contribute to the comeback of Sun in this thrilling economy we are suffering nowadays. I had to go back to the Sun laboratories to forge myself the latest version of our Niagara II servers, or to be more precise, the UltraSPARC T2 (yes, like Terminator) plus processor, now in two sockets servers.
¿Fujitsu? Yes, they paid us so we allow them to use the processors and so on, so we pretend this is a joint venture and so on (well, I forged the server myself, I wouldn't lie about this..., would I?).

Writers Strike: We saw that coming!

2008-02-25T11:56:00.000-08:00

Yeah, we saw that coming a long, long, long time ago, and we took our measures about it.
The Writers Guild of America just wanted to increase their share in the distribution of films and shows through the Internet, basically.
So, can you tell me what is the difference between a writer and a programmer? A writer just writes a few lines (or all the lines, ok), of a show, and then it is given to a director, who decides if he likes it or not -and always introduces its own changes, just to show who is the boss-, then the producer approves it (or not), and finally the actors play what the director say they have to play, more or less based in what the writers wrote before -it is, sometimes there is no relation between the original script and what is showed in the film-.

What about a programmer? Well, indeed they are much like writers, directors and actors at the same time, as they are the ones _the_only_ones_ that write the code and need to be sure that everything is working fine -believe me, Jonathan doesn't modify a line of the code generated by our programmers-.

What do you think, that we give our programmers a share of every software, of every Solaris we sell? Well, the answer is no. And the same happens in the rest of the industry (name it Apple, Oracle, IBM or whatever you like). Well, some may argue that some of our employees get stock options and all that stuff... peanuts. And we don't give an extra dime to those outsourced employees overseas, of course.
So, now that the Writers of America have managed to win in their demands, what may prevent Programmers of America to go on strike asking for their share in every piece of software sold? I have the answer: OpenSource.
Yeah, I have to admit it. Jonathan had a great, a brilliant idea: if the software is OpenSource, it, indeed doesn't belong to anybody, and so the programmers cannot ask us for a share in the benefits, because I'm selling it, but it's not mine, it's theirs.... Whahahahaha, I like it!

Relevance

2008-02-25T03:56:00.000-08:00

Relevance can be everything in our business. In the 90s, IBM lost all relevance and was about to disappear -some think they are irrelevant today-. So they had to reinvent themselves, to recover their relevance in the business. Sun suffered much the same pain, we lost relevance after the dot com crisis, and by betting for the opensource strategy, new processors, R+D, etc., we are coming back, more relevant than ever (and wait until Solaris is the reference OS in the
enterprise level: we'll never loose our relevance again).
I love this Jonathan's picture, that's why I enclosed it here.

Relevance is not everything, there is also transcendence in what we do, in our actions. They have to be transcendent for the future.

That is why John Edwards should endorse Hillary R. Clinton now. If he does it now, this movement may be of great importance, as Hillary seems to be half defeated by Obama, and Edwards' endorsement would give her the impulse she needs to win the nomination, so he would be in a position where he could influence in the Clinton administration, if she wins the General Election later.
If Edwards waits too much, either candidate could assure its nomination, and thus Edwards' endorsement would be of no relevance at all.
On the other hand, Edwards could give support to Obama hoping that he would later support some of his politics in the future, but, as important as it may be, as Obama is seen now like the front-runner, Edwards would not be in a position to provide such an influence in Obama's administration as he would in a Clinton's.

By the way, I spent the weekend with Jonathan, I guess that's the reason why I am writing very much in his style...

Mobile World Congress

2008-02-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

Well, my mission is clear here: not to buy a new iPhone (Can you guess which is the _only _ non-Java-enabled mobile maker not present at the fair?), but to sell Java to all those frig... I mean, those marvelous mobile makers of all over the world that now are joining in Barcelona to show their latest inventions.

If they don't already know, they will: JavaFX, Java in general, is what they need for their platforms, so they can build the games, the applications, the interfaces just once, and use them in any device they may build today or tomorrow (and pay Sun for each of them they build... it's a great deal for both parties).

I know, you are wondering why there is a picture of Robert Redford in this blog entry. It is simple: he is 'headlining' at the conference, and it seems he is going to talk about "...the potential of mobile - the ‘4th screen’ - as a medium for independent filmmakers to reach new audiences on a global basis..."

Hmmm, well, now I'm supposed to say something intelligent about this... but, er, well, what the heck, I don't really mind as long as the mobile has Java embedded and the broadcasting or the mobile operator is running Solaris and Sparc. That's why I like Robert, because he named his filmaking festival and the institute after our great company: Sun dance. Thank you Robert!

Sun is infected with the Oracle Buying Voracity: Now Innotek

2008-02-12T08:26:00.001-08:00

I'm this week in a place called Barcelona (I think they became famous because of the bullfighting and because the Olimpic Games, but I'll ask Ashok to search for details later), attending the Mobile World Congress. So, it seems that Germany is nearby, because I told James (he is the pilot of our company jet) to stop by in Stuttgart to sign the contract to buy another company for Sun: Innotek.

I know, I didn't include it in the las survey of Sun's purchase, but if I had done that the SEC would have warned me, and besides that, I'm interested in knowing which company should we buy, not what we are going to buy, I already know it!!

Well, talking about Innotek people, they are very nice, they already included in their home page a link to the press release we added in our corporate web announcing the purchase, so I guess they already feel in the family.
I really like those people, so civilized, we signed the contract and then got me to eat some strudel and Sauerkraut, you know, all the typical stuff -Memo: Tell James to refill the Alka-Seltzers of the jet ASAP-. Maybe they are even too civilized: in order to prevent global warming they didn't drove me back to the airport, the left me at the Endersbach station and instructed me on how to use the orange vending machines to buy the ticket (in the train it costs a little more...).
Well, it is the least one can expect from someone who has received a check of $-sorry, undiscosed ammount-.
Why did we bought this company? Well, it is crystal clear, at least for Jonathan, as indeed it was all his idea to make this deal, and he told me while I was flying over the UK to make that little detour to sign the contract before attending the congress (well, he told James to tell me...).

The truth is that I'm trying to reach him to get some word about the real reasons why are we buying those OpenSource, non-profit organizations instead of well established and recognized manufacturers. I don't want him to come again with the "community" explanation, that we are investing in the "community" and giving back what we got in the past, and all that hippie stuff about the karma and getting back what we seed in the past, and so on. I expect him to tell me where the real bucks are in this deal. I'll tell you as soon as I know.

Sun Shopping: New Poll

2008-02-11T09:02:00.000-08:00

Well, although we all know how reliable polls are, just have a look at California, I'm modifying the poll to take ideas on which software company should Sun buy. I don't know the names of the companies, nor what they do, or why should we buy them (I'd rather buying Dell or Mittal, real steel companies), but someone from the board advised me to run this poll, and I left it all in the hands of Ashok (so, he is the one to blame).
Your votes will be adequately processed and taken into account in the next board meeting (if Jonathan tells me when and where it is...).

Free Virtualization, and Sun's Q2 Results

2008-02-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

Well, back to (iron) business.
Memo: Ashok, don't write articles sooo long, people don't read till the end usually. Ups, sorry, we are in the air.

Well, as I was saying (I have to talk to Ashok not to write everything I say while I'm dictating him, just the information for the blog), I'm dubbing the title of this blog entry as the one from the Jonathan's one. As you know, we provided strong results for our Q2, so we are absolutely exultant those days at the office, and so are our customers and partners. You just have to take a look at this picture:

It shows a group of our partners drinking champagne and toasting for our success. Yes, they are toasting with such enormous smiles because they know something that you don't know. Do you want to know what it is? Me too!!! Jonathan, why didn't you told me anything about those people coming to the office, and all about the champagne? Come on, I appointed you to the job, just show me a little of respect and at least inform me when you are going to have a party at the office!!!
Well, at least Jonathan hasn't discovered the secret bar I made install under the presidential desk that emerges from the floor when pressing Ctr+Alt+Del in the SunRay...

P.D.: Does that biiig smile in Jonathan's face that he finally found my secret bar...?

The race card in the race to the White House?

2008-02-11T07:59:00.000-08:00

Hi friends, well, I don't like to talk about serious politics in my secret blog, I like machines, hardware and all that stuff, but I'll make (another) exception and will try to talk seriously.
Our friend (?) Jobso (or fake Steve), published an ar ticle criticizing another article (this time from a real person), about the race factor in the primary elections of the Dems.
I somehow agree with Susan Estrich, in that Obama does better in the polls and in caucuses than in general elections, but I don't totally agree with the race argument. Maybe some people lie in the polls because they are indeed racists and they don't want to confess, so they say they will vote for Obama and then they don't... But I have another explanation on why he is doing it better in caucuses. It has been stated that Obama has received support for most of the young people, and that his fans are real supporters (sometimes even hooligans ;-) ). They have been playing very well the "Establishment Candidate" against Clinton, making look anybody supporting Hillary more or less like a GOP ally, and they show that very fiercely in the caucuses. So, they manage to intimidate their rivals.
Then, to attend to a caucus you have to spent more than half a day discussing and showing your preferences, so if it is a working day maybe the only ones that can afford that are young students, people that are supporting Obama (sometimes just because someone told them that he is cool).
But, when you have the whole day to vote, when everybody can go to express their preferences, oh surprise, it is Hillary who wins, no matter what the polls said the days before.

Hillary and Magic Johnson

What scared me is that we, as usual, are forgetting the point of the elections. We should be careful reading the programs, and then electing the proper candidate for the country, not based on how cool he/she is, or the race, or the sex, but the program, the ideas, and how they are going to achieve their objectives. Obama and Hillary are very similar in objectives: they both focus on social protection and the extension of health care for everybody. But while Hillary states that this should be compulsory for everybody, Obama wants to make it voluntary. Well, insurance companies don't like at all Hillary's proposal, because they now can choose who to accept and who not to accept for an insurance, and they just accept those who they think are not going to be ill. If Hillary wins, it is not that they are going to stop making (an indecent and huge amount of) money, but they will have to accept everybody, and they'll have to take care of ill people, so the margins may be a little bit diminished. I insist: they will still make indecent amounts of money (more if everybody is insured), but they don't like the idea to win just an infinite amount of money with no responsibility at all. So, who is the system's candidate, she, that will extend the insurance to everybody, or he, that will make it an option: it is, will not change everything?

Think about it.

P.D.: Ashok also likes the immigration system reform that promises she has made, as he always mentions something about his spouse there in Bangalore waiting for him to come back. Maybe I'll outsource him anyway if Hillary doesn't make it.

P.D.2: This is why I like Hillary, because she is like Sun and the customers: they all say "wow, how wonderful are the Macs, how shinny, how glossy", but when they have to run a real business, they trust in our machines, and they send their IT frigtards to do the shopping for them to feed their datacenters. So, if you need someone reliable to run the Country, who you gonna vote?

SuperTuesday

2008-02-05T04:23:00.000-08:00

Today is the supertuesday, where very likely McCain will gain the nomination in the Republican side, and
either Obama or Hillary will obtain some advantage over his rival, but probably the Dems will not have a
clear winner (unless there is a surprise).
Which is the role of a technological blogger as us in this situation? I have my very own opinion (appart
from "The Network is the Computer" and "Surrender: you have no privacy"), and I think we should not give
any opinion related to this matter, as we should be only concerned about technology and our business.
But we are all Americans (well, Ashok isn't, but writes for me), and there are other fake CEO bloggers that

are asking to vote for some candidate in particular.
The funny thing about this bloggers is that they are not really putting their money where their mouth is
(for instance, neither Jobs nor fake Jobs are putting their money for any of the candidates involved in the
campaign, and fake Jobs is asking to vote for Obama).
I think a CEO (and a fake CEO too), should not fund any candidate: imagine that the winner is another one and
you are publicly supporting the other candidate... That's why Johnatan is not funding (at least not publicly),
any of the candidates: he has me and the other VPs to do the dirty job. That's why my real me is funding
Rommney (I know he will not win, but someone has to approach the GOP just in case they win).
The truth is that today I'm going to vote for Hillary, despite the funding my real me has done. Why? Easy:
We need the Dems back, and Obama is not a suitable candidate in my opinion. He is not experienced, he is not
making sustainable proposals, and so he would not be a good presindent. Besides that, Obama is the only
opportunity the GOP has to win the presidendcy again. He is not a candidate for the integration, but for
division, as he is too radical in his proposals. On the other hand, I believe that Hillary is the integration
candidate we need: many republicans that would never accept the radicals approach from Obama would easyly vote
for Hillary (as they are also fed up with the current administration). So, Hillary is the candidate we need,
and I'll vote for her today.

Oracle Buys Bea: Customers, your chance to run to the Sunlight!

2008-01-25T04:18:00.000-08:00

As you already know dear Larry has bought another company, Bea Systems. What people is asking is not why Oracle is buying Bea, but what will happen to the technology that now overlaps in both companies. Surprisingly to me they are not talking about hardware, so I don't really understand the concerns of customers and blogger in general in this matter. Of course this time I'm not going to say that it is like two garbage trucks colliding, as Ashok sustains that Bea has really interesting middleware software (I don't know what he means, but you know, interns are this way, giving opinions for free all the time...). Indeed, what Ashok and other people tell me is that the only garbage truck here is Fusion, what some people says is a pathetic attempt of Oracle to leverage their presence in the database market with a mock-up of a middleware software (a nightmare, in the mouth of the few developers that suffer it). Sorry Larry, this is not my opinion -I don't know what they are talking about- but I have to reflect it in the shake of impartiality... So, what those folks think is that it is an Oracle's clever move: not only they get a wider customer base coming from Bea, but they can also drop all the Fusion middleware to get a serious software as the one from Bea.

Well, I talked to (fake) Larry last night -he phoned me to congratulate us for the tremendous financial results of this quarter-, and asked him about this reasoning. Of course he agreed in the first half of the statement: they wanted Bea for the customers installed base, but he didn't understood the second half: "I can't see why a customer would be interested in replacing our Fusion middleware with that from Bea, I'd rather see customer doing the opposite. What we really were after were Bea customers, nothing else, you know", and the we arranged a meeting to test the new yatch Larry bought (that's why he abandoned his fake blog, cause he ran out of time).
So, as many people suspects, this is the real end of Bea. The message is clear to Bea customers: it is the time to switch to Sun, we'll never give you up (and if we did, our software is opensource anyway).
And if you don't switch to our middleware, well, think that our hardware is the best for Oracle apps.

John C. Dv-What do you drink for breakfast?

2008-01-18T14:47:00.000-08:00

I'm furious. I've just read an article of that Dvorak guy -I enclose his picture here if you, as Ashok, have never heard of that guy before- criticizing our buying of MySQL.
Pal, you may not like it, but you are absolutely wrong on what you are saying. The funniest thing is that supposed complot we set up with Larry and the
Oracle guys.
One of your pathetic arguments is about our looong acquisitions history -and you even use our own list-. Well, maybe not all of our mergers were successful, but lately we are improving: Afara an Kealia paid a lot back by designing a lot of our new hardware stuff; Waveset and Neogent put us as leaders in Identity Management software and helped us revamp all our software portfolio together with SeeBeyond -hmm, Forté is not on the list...-; Storagetek also is paying a lot in synergies and new customers and revenues -ahhh, I love iron-...), so, here you have it, we know how to merge a company and do it well.
How you dare criticizing us so lightly? Tell me, have you ever created a company that changed everything in the computer industry? Have you ever been CEO of a company for more than 20 years? Have you ever invented Java, available in zillions of devices on the Earth and other planets of the Solar System? Do you know what is to publish a preliminary results of about $250M? Do you know what is to have $5Billion in cash in the bank account? -Gosh... I have to stop right now, I'm having a hard on reviewing all my facts...-

Sorry...

The most fanny thing of the article by John is the affirmation that we are acting as a puppet serving Oracle interests. Well, maybe you have a clue here: Oracle is no longer our beloved friend, as they are not selling our iron in the same way they did before. They are now betting for cheaper and frigtard opensource operating systems and they are telling customers not to buy so much iron, but cheaper one, so, Why shouldn't we offer a database to compete with them? There you have it.

Sun Profitable in Q2 FY07

2008-01-18T14:38:00.000-08:00

Folks, I just want to thank all the people working so hard at Sun to make this things happen. I also want to thank all of our customers to make this big success for us. Again, we can say that we are a profitable company and we are going to post benefits for the second quarter of the fiscal year. Thank you all, I say it from my heart: my new yatch is nearer every day the stock goes up and the company bonus is more feasible. Larry, you'll die of envy when you see it!

Sun Shopping Again: MySQL

2008-01-18T14:23:00.000-08:00

Well, as you can see I've been quite busy lately closing the deal with the management of our latest acquisition: MySQL. As you can imagine, Jonathan has also been pretty busy helping me closing the deal (well, the media will say that it was all his job, but we know who is the boss here). By the way, he'll be busy a few days more, as he is right now writing all the zeros of the check we have to pay. I'd rather some king of electronic transfer, but they insisted as it is the way they do it in Belgium.
- Ashok tells me that they are Swedish, not Bulgarians. Who cares... those Europeans do many strange things, I only like them because all the trouble they are causing the Borg-

By the way, I took the picture from Jonathan's blog. Thanks pal.

Well, I only can say that I'm very proud and happy with this deal. I'm afraid that the poll about what software company should we buy has to be reformed taking into account recent news -sorry, the board didn't allow me to add MySQL as I cannot disclose some confidential information-, so before modifying the poll I'll accept suggestions on what companies should we buy (although my personal bet is RedHat: I still tell Jonathan and all the folks at the board that we should buy it, include all the RH software in Solaris, and then kill that stinking OS for frigtards forever).
Well, I have to leave, it's time to get my medication...

Farewell Netscape

2007-12-30T11:07:00.000-08:00

As you already know, AOL has decided to give up support for Netscape Navigator. I hate to recognize that, but I feel sad about it. You know, Sun became the hottest company in the .com days thanks to Netscape, as they could be considered the starters of the Internet fever (and bubble...). What memories I have from those exciting days, where you could open up a box of Cheerios and bang, an Enterprise E10K could be awarded to the lucky child about to have breakfast. And in a great part, thanks to the popularity Internet acquired those days, when everybody thought that the world would move all the business to Internet immediately (even Al Gore thought that!), we are what we are now.

I guess that is the reason why we reached that deal with AOL to build the iPlanet brand. You know, AOL didn't really want a software company, they only were interested in the millions of users of Netscape.com, so they never thought they were wasting the $4.2 billion they spent there although we all knew that they didn't want that legion of geeks and programmers. And that days our middleware was just crap, we needed desperate replacement to our Directory Server, Application Server (oh dear, I just remember NetDynamics, and a shiver runs through my back and my neck; that's when our Sales people got accustomed to sell BEA instead of our products, an issue we are still fixing...), Mail Server, etc., so it was a natural deal: they'd split the company, giving us the software factory and keeping the final users for them, to feed them up with contents, their real business.

But then, you know, there was such a stubborn VP from AOL-Netscape, and that other much more stubborn VP from our side (I don't recall very well the story as I never was very interested in software, what is important in Sun is the tons of iron we sell), so in 2002 we definitively splitted it up, retaining the code for ourselves to keep up the development of the products. Of course, we killed most of them (EcExpert, BuyerExpert, Certificate Server...); some had to be killed later (MetaDirectory), while others are trying to survive despite our efforts to make them absolutely horrible products (Communications and Mail suite).
I wasn't surprised at all when AOL decided to kill the middleware of Netscape, about six months after we broke our iPlanet deal. As I said, that was not their business.

The funny thing is that the Netscape Navigator was never intended to make big money for Netscape. That mission was to be accomplished by the middleware products, and they did a lot of money (App. Server got about 95% of the market, and you'd be surprised to know how many companies still use NAS 4 -we know that because they sometimes call us for support!!-). The Navigator was just a tool to make people easy to navigate through Internet, until they found that money can be also made from the browser, and big bucks too. But this is a long story. Far are those days where Moz ruled over Microsoft. It is rumored that Microsoft was feared of the ability to execute programs in the browser, independently of the operating system, and that this was the reason why they decided to play hard with their Explorer to kill Netscape's browser (Google, be aware of that, you are offering an office suite that can be used from any browser, does it sound familiar to you? ;-) ).

So, as the initial picture says, Netscape Navigator has finally reached the stability (although there is no beyond): Rest In Peace.

Merry Christmas to All!!!

2007-12-24T08:39:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it is because we are running out of enemies (Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Oracle... they are all partners now), because I'm not officially the boss anymore and have less worries, because I'm getting warmer with the age, or it's just Christmas, but I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year, plenty of SunRays, with a bright shining Solaris illuminating your lives.
Well, it may sound a little bit like propaganda, you know, you can't change so much even in this dates... ;-) but my feelings are true from the bottom of my heart.

Best wishes to all!!!

P.D.: By the way, sorry for Jonathan, he is not writing so much lately because he is quite busy with all the financial information of the close of the year and so on. This is the advantage of not being the boss, officially, I can play golf while he does the dirty job. Anyhow, he also wishes you all the best!