Today was spent in meetings at Sun’s IEC (Indian Engineering Centre) here in Bangalore. [Of course Sun now has facilities in other parts of India, so perhaps the title is becoming inappropriate.] Most of the discussions revolved around engineering practices, site planning, and developing the senior technical talent in India. In the last session of the day, I met the engineering team that’s working on some of Sun’s N1 systems management technology, and I was asked to say a few words about systems and network management at Sun, and about where Sun is heading. On the first subject I know quite a bit. I was involved with a number of Sun’s programs in this area – SNM, SEM, SDM – particularly when I was doing CTO duties in the Solstice group. I also participated in several of Sun’s “visionary” initiatives – JMAPI, the original N1, and G2. Even if you don’t actually build the vision, you learn a hell of a lot from it.
Where Sun’s heading…. Hmmm. I didn’t have anything prepared, and I didn’t want to simply trot out the corporate strategy pitch. I decided to focus on three big trends:
- The shift from compute-centric to data-centric systems thinking
- Open source
- Utility computing and virtualization
I’m not going to go into detail now; suffice it to say that each of these trends has huge implications for Sun. It’s not just the products we build and the services we offer; it’s how we do engineering, and how (and with whom!) we collaborate.
My laryngitis has not yet abated, but I’m glad to say that I didn’t actually become speechless at any point during the day. And I didn’t find myself fading out, either: I think this travel schedule (leaving the US in the afternoon and arriving in India around midnight) works for me.