DELLizing Sun

Well, it seems that Jonathan and his team are trying to earn their living this week.
I was about to write an article about how we should improve our selling methods by "Dellizing" the company, but I think that Jonathan heard one of my interns commenting about that possible article -we'll talk later about information leaks, Ashok... maybe I should outsource the blog to the same country where FSJ has its own- because I just learned that WE have an agreement with Dell, so they'll sell our beloved and marvelous Solaris in their small irony machines.

Well, I think I have a "dejavou", Did you know where it was said that Dell rhymes with hell?

Namaste, Jonathan, good job, and keep on selling! (although it is not Sun's iron...).

Sun goes shopping (III)

I've just arrived to my office, thinking of a new post, when my interns inform me about the latest acquisition intent we are doing: Vaau, a company that seems to be in the line of the Identity Management Software area.
To be honest, I don't really get the point, as we have the best IdM solution in the world. I swear it, Gartner also says the same (you don't know how much did we have to pay to hear that from Gartner; what I'd love to know is how much did IBM and Oracle pay to be next to us having such a crapy products... Well, those are my interns opinions, of course, what would Ashok and his friends know about real business?).

Well, the thing is that everybody at the Software practice is excited with this, and they say this is what we need to keep us ahead in the IdM competition. I hope so, as long as this is good to sell our Niagara II.

By the way, I still keep my poll to know what company we should buy, apart from Vaau, of course. So far it seems that RedHat is winning our little competitions, but I still want to hear your opinions so I'll let Jonathan know what you think is best for Sun.

Pic taken from Vaau site (I hope a Sun site soon).

Congratulations: Sun posts 1Q profit!

Man, oh man, I'm so glad with this kind of news, and just a few days before our stockholder meeting! Maybe this way they'll just cheer us up and avoid the difficult questions...

Jonathan, I have to congratulate you, you are doing a great job turning things up (and I expect all the shareholders to congratulate me as I was the one who choose you for the job...).
I've heard you are inviting Ballmer to taste some good fine wine, so, you don't have to invite me, I'll hop by your house in half an hour, don't worry.

And of course, thank you very much to our workforce that is making possible this recovery (despite that our software is free, did I mention that?).

So, dear Sun fellows, keep doing what you are doing, I'm proud of you (not to mention my wife when she knew about the bonus I'm going to earn thanks to you!).

Did I mention it was free?

The other day I went back to Las Vegas for the NICSA Technology Summit 2007. Man, I guess I was invited there to give some kind of speech about Information Technologies, or something like that. The thing is that I made a mistake and used the speech I had prepared for the CEC event, only for Sun Engineers, a few weeks before... so, once I had said that software was free about three or four times, I couldn't step back, and I had to go on with this.
Anyhow, I heard that Jonathan is quite happy to see that I finally adopted Sun's policies, and it seems that this is one of the most important things we are embracing. No, it is not creating valuable IP, or expensive software or hardware, but giving the software for free.

By the way, did I mention it was free?

Well, so, now that I said it is free, I asked Jonathan to help me defending such an statement, so he gave me some hints apart from the fact that we indemnify and protect our users against any legal action that may be issued by the fact they are using our open source technology (I don't know why are we doing this without charging our customers for that; in the automobile industry this things doesn't happen...).

So, the main reasons are:

1. Lowering the barriers to entry (well, this is obvious... but I cannot see the benefit in here; RedHat is somehow free, and they don't make even half of the revenue we have with our proprietary stuff...).

2. Open drives interoperability, as a greater community of developers will adopt our stuff and make it easier for interoperability (well, apparently our friend Jobso didn't heard about that, as they are not using Java in their iPhraud neither their new Leopold!! Well, as Jobso says, namaste).

3. Open lowers the cost of R&D (yep, it is true... or well, it makes sense, as long as you have a community developing software for free that you can sell later... but the thing is, how you make those frigtards to develop new and cute products for you for free? The answer is that finally you have to pay most of the "community programmers", so they can finally build a real community, 'cause otherwise they end up doing their own applications and not the Sun applications we want to sell to the customers. Not to mention the hardware stuff, that we also made free: not many mentally sane people are going to make improvements _for_free_ in our T1 chips. And then there is the quality assurance, as you cannot provide support nor sell a code that you are not sure that doesn't contain any IP belonging to other company or violating any patent. And then you have to freeze the versions to provide appropriate support, as to provide real support for a open source code you need to hire an army of programmers and the become IBM Global Services... well, maybe it is not so easy to see the lowering in costs so easily.. ).

4. Open is secure. And although this is a counterintuitive statement, nobody can think of a Java virus so far (I don't know if this statement makes sense, but Jonathan told me to say that. Did I mention it was free?).

5. Open lowers the barriers to exit. Wait, wait, wait: I'm not supposed to say that to customers... Well, I can tell them the usual story of "we are using standards so you can choose technology from other providers", but we know we don't really mean it, do we?

Well, the people at the conference were so shocked that they didn't make many questions at last. But Jonathan, you have to help me because next week we have our annual stockholder meeting, and I'm afraid they'll ask just one silly question: Sun is not a services company, as IBM, to make profit from open source products. So, how are we going to make money by giving all our staff (not only the old-fashioned products everybody can download because there are hundreds of similar clones that do the same job -example: Web Server vs. Apache- also the new very valuable products nobody has so far) for free???

And then I'll have to respond to all our sales people in the software branch asking for their bonuses... and for their jobs...

Leopard and Java: Is the party really over?

Dear Jobso,

I'm astonished after knowing that you are not including Java 1.6 in your latest version of Mac OS, that kitty thing (ups, sorry, my intern says the real name is Leopard). I've read some comments from our developers, you know, the communities we love to love at Sun, and that you should also love because they give you the value to your frigging operating system. Admit if my friend, just the OS is not cool enough to attract the public, you need the applications. As one of my advisers told me, is like having Viagra without having a chick: it's worth nothing. And you have to admit that there is a frigging huge community of Java developers out there waiting to upgrade to Leopard to make cool Java applications that are now thinking of switching to the Borg!

But, why is Apple not including Java in Leopold, as Ballmer calls it? It's quite simple: because they have to pay us royalties for every copy of Leopard including Java. It's that simple. That is the reason why the iPhone is not including Java, because Jobso doesn't want to pay us the royalties.
Jobso, my friend, I was about to think that you are having financial troubles with your company, but then your shares are skyrocketing and you are getting so much money from the iPhone (you are even getting money from the carriers if they sell your product!) that you even had to sell it cheaper... or is that you were not really selling as much iPhone as you say? Come on, Jobso, don't be so mean, spend a little money and make those poor developers happy again (and the Sun board will thank you too).

Scooter.

Scooter is back.

I'm back from my tortuous travel, and I have some interesting things to say in the following days. It took me more than I had foreseen to be back from Vegas, not because Jonathan doesn't allow me to use the corporate jet anymore (I understand it Jonathan, but making me travel with (low)Cost-inental and even not in business at least, is outrageous!), but because I had some interesting meetings. For instance, I stopped at D.C. to meet with (fake) Hillary to talk about her campaign and her funds raising (man, she is accumulating zillions for the presidential race), and to tell her that I will be supporting her (as soon as I know who will probably win in the Republican side I'll probably do the same, but less passionate, you know, we're Sun, we were very happy with Bill in the White House, with the bubble and so on, making the shares to boost to $80... I'm feeling nostalgic...).

Jonathan, if we haven't contributed to Hillary's campaign, believe me, it is the time to do so.

On the other side, one of our readers has suggested I should talk more about Sun Federal. I'll do it, I promise, as soon as I found out what it is about, I'll explain it to you.
If you think I spend all the time at D.C. pushing Sun Federal, you are wrong: I only go to D.C. if there is a good concert at the Kennedy Center, or if the President invites me to the inaugural party (this week they had the Solar Decathlon, a competition about Sun powered houses, so that's why I went there, to find out that those frigging houses were powered by the Sun, not by Sun Micro equipement... I was lucky to have scheduled my appointment with Hillary so the voyage was very interesting at last).

Scooter is Travelling these weeks

First of all I have to thank (I'll deny it in my memoirs), our (now, after we signed the OEM deal agreement with M$) dear Fake Steve Ballmer for sending me the photos from our Fake CEO's of The World Conference.
Yes, as you may have guessed, this is one of the reasons why I'm writting so little lately. The meeting was very interesting, and I had a real chance to expose to other CEO's the way to ruin, I mean, to reign a company as Sun, using samples from my decisions and the ones Jonathan is making lately.

I'll try to come back as soon as possible to share my vision with you, but I've heard that sun is holding an engineering conference in Las Vegas next week. I'm not interested at all in talking to engineers now that I'm retired, but I'm curious to know what is Jonathan to talk about there as he didn't invite me this time to go and make one of my arch-famous speeches!! (No, I'm not jealous, just curious...).

By the way, our poll about what software company should we buy is running, and RedHat is winning so far.

I'll come back as soon as possible and maybe I have some interesting things from Las Vegas to tell you (maybe I'm even lucky gambling).