Author: geoff

Back to the Future

On April 4 I posted a piece in which I discussed my reactions to the Sun-Microsoft deal. This week I was in California for meetings at the Sun Menlo Park campus when the news broke about the big reorg. As the dust begins to settle, I thought I’d blog my initial reactions to this. After all, I’ve been at Sun nearly 19 years, and it’s a big part of my life.
First, let me summarize the announcement (since some journalists still couldn’t get it right even after the press flash, the analysts’ call, and widespread discussions). Before this change, Sun was organized into a number of business units. ESP built mid- to high-range SPARC servers; VSP built low- to mid-range servers based on SPARC, Xeon, and Athlon processors, as well as SPARC workstations; PNP designed SPARC chips (fabbed outside); NWS did storage systems; SW did software: Solaris, Java, middleware, desktop, N1, identity, embedded.
After the change, NWS and SW are essentially unchanged (so far). Throughput Systems absorbs ESP, PNP, and the SPARC-based products from VSP. Network Systems gets the Xeon and Athlon lines from VSP, plus the Kealia acquisition. My guess is that Nauticus will also go into NS, though I haven’t seen anything definitive.
My thoughts on all this. First, I think it’s a step in the right direction. In the past, there have been charter issues about exactly where ESP and VSP should draw the line: now we’ll have a single division responsible for a (hopefully simplified) range of SPARC based products. The big debate about the roles of MPs versus blades in systems remains – after all, it’s not just a Sun thing – but it should be easier to get the balance right when it’s not seen as a turf issue any more.
Second, I want to understand exactly what the NS value proposition is. The announcement talked about low-cost horizontally scaled systems with off-the-shelf components that leverage industry economics. Does that mean a low-margin model, or a high-value one? If the latter, there needs to be a substantial investment in software to complement the off-the-shelf components. Does all that get done in SW, or should we split SW and move certain pieces into NS?
We’ve tried various ways of organizing SMI over the years. I regard the new structure as SMI 4.0. Here’s the taxonomy:
SMI 0.x: The original Sun with Scott, Vinod, Andy, Bill and the small gang of obsessive crazies who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and got Sun off the ground. Led to…
SMI 1.0: when Bernie Lacroute came on board in 1984. Strong, relatively centralized engineeering and operations, with Bernie as effective COO. In this period we laid the foundation for real growth: SPARC, the AT&T deal to unify Unix, strong engineering processes under Rob Gingell. This was also the era of the 386i workstation (with which I was involved), and the infamous “Larry Garlick Memorial Decision” not to get into the router business. I think the last of these may have been one of the things that precipitated…
SMI 2.0: The era of “The Planets”: a core computer business (SMCC) surrounded by a number of independent business units: SunSoft, SunConnect, SunPics, SunSelect, and so forth. I remember Fortune magazine hailing this as the breakthrough model for the 1990s. It allowed us to enter and exit certain markets fairly painlessly – who remembers SunPics, the Sun printer business? – but it confused customers, because each BU had its own sales force and we couldn’t coordinate the customer-facing activities. Plus each BU was really very independent, and there were armies of people doing nothing but negotiating intra-Sun transfer pricing. (There’s a lesson here for bureaucracies that try to achieve efficiency though “internal markets”: they don’t work.) So during the 1990s there was a gradual shift to…
SMI 3.0: The defining characteristic of this version of SMI was the move to a single sales force. Because this changed the nature of the BUs, and led to a degree of functional rationalisation, it was tempting to see functionalism as the driving force, but it wasn’t. Behind the single sales force, the various BUs remained (?fiercely) independent. And the functional organization was never as total as it might appear. Scott might tell me that he’d “put all of software under Jonathan”, but these days engineering is software, except for a bit of physics, and there was (and is) software development going on all over Sun – appropriately so. The fact that Zander was COO for a while, and a few high-profile people came and went, and we went through the bubble, didn’t really change this model. But the decision to put Jonathan Schwartz in as COO, and his “activist” managerial style, definitely signals a shift, to…
SMI 4.0: Maybe this should be SMI 3.1 instead, but never mind. This model has a strong Back To The Future feel: Jonathan Schwartz gets to play the part of Bernie Lacroute. One sales force, internal units organized for operational efficiency and execution rather than along business lines.
It’s never boring.

Music for flying

Just flew down from Seattle to San Francisco. Due to ATC restrictions at SFO, we left late and had to hold for a couple of orbits at Point Reyes. This gave me the opportunity to listen to one of the best bands you’ve never heard of: Family. English, hippie, musically eclectic. They released a couple of brilliant albums at the end of the 1960s called Family Entertainment and Music From A Doll’s House. A couple more albums followed, but IMHO they never recaptured the genius of those first two. Anyway, those two albums have been released as a double CD, and I have them on my iPod. Listening to Processions and Face In The Cloud while gazing down upon beautiful Point Reyes was delightful. (And the former seemed so apposite – how far I’ve come from the teenager who first listened to that record in my student dorm at Essex University all those years ago.)
Anyway: highly recommended.

Easter, part 2

I didn’t mention where I was staying in Seattle. It’s a new Silver Cloud hotel at Broadway and Madison. I love the slightly freaky cosmopolitan character of Broadway, and yet we’re only a few minutes walk from Pioneer Square. Highly recommended.
So this morning I met up with Chris and Celeste for coffee, and eventually we headed over to the Cathedral for the 11 o’clock service. One of Chris’s jobs as acolyte was to to be one of three manipulating 12 foot long poles (actually more like fishing rods – really flexible and whippy) with long streamer ribbons on the ends. As the Easter procession snaked around the pews (accompanied by a satisfying amount of incense – that takes me back a few years!), they twirled the ribbons above the congregation. The whole effect was like something out of a painting from the Italian Renaissance.
Bishop Warner gave a nice sermon in which he quoted various poets including John Lennon, citing (without any irony) “imagine there’s no religion”. The folks at St. Mark’s don’t seem to want doctrinal issues to get in the way of being nice to each other and building a community….
The other cool thing about the service was the music. I grew up on Palestrina and plainsong, and I’ve found much of what passes for “religious” music these days to be about as moving as “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”. The music at St. Mark’s was delightful, both as music and in context. From a performance perspective, the organist, trumpet soloist, and percussion were superb, while the choir was very good (but not great). As for the compositions, much of the music was written by one Peter Hallock. I’d never heard the name before, but the style was striking and effective – and very English. Strongest influences were clearly Britten and Warlock, though there were touches of Saint-Saens. I visited the Cathedral shop and bought a CD of his works after the service. I gather that he has been associated with St. Mark’s for years, and was responsible for arranging their renowned Sung Compline program.
After lunch, we split up, and I did some serious power-walking – from the hotel down Madison to Pioneer Square, up 1st Street to the Public Market, then over Pike Street to Broadway and back. After that I was too knackered to do much else; Chris and I met up for a drink and then retired. (Memo to self: my drink was a strong English cider by Aspall. Stunning.)
Tomorrow morning to SFO on Alaska Air, and so to work.

Easter with Chris

Just got back to my hotel [in Seattle] after the Easter service at St. Mark’s Cathedral. No, I haven’t gone and got religion; I was there with my son, Chris, who was being confirmed. A long service (started 8:30pm, finished about 11:15pm, we left the post-service socializing around 11:30pm), and a beautiful one. For the first 2 hours the church was lit only by the hundreds of candles the congregation and celebrants were holding. Now maybe I’m just an old fogey, but they don’t make candles like they did when I was an altar boy! These skinny little things burned down in around 45 minutes for most people, around 30 minutes for me. (No idea why mine burned quicker than usual.)
Chris’s sponsor was a really nice ex-teacher called Steve. During dinner before the service he and I got into a nice discussion about the relative importance of tradition and integrity (as in, why do Christians not cut out all of that blatantly un-Christian stuff from the Bible? Cue Thomas Jefferson…). Ironically, most of the readings during the first part of the service (before the baptisms, confirmations, and reaffirmations) were Old Testament passages of really questionable relevance to Christian values and beliefs. Steve had the good grace to acknowledge the fact….
Ah, well. I must head to bed, so that I can get up and meet Chris and Celeste for breakfast before tomorrow’s service when Chris will be an acolyte (complete with white robes and coloured streamers).
[By the way, religious proselytizers need not waste their time posting comments about religion. I’ve heard them all before, and I’m not interested.]

My best places to live

Inspired (as so often) by Chris, I checked out Sperling’s Best Places to see where my ideal place to live might be. Of course, this only looks at the US, so thoughts of London, Oxford, Paris or Melbourne will have to wait. My top ten:
1 San Francisco, CA
2 Boston, MA-NH-ME
3 Long Island, NY
4 Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV
5 Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
6 New York, NY
7 Pittsburgh, PA
8 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI
9 Chicago, IL
10 Stamford-Norwalk, CT
I could have guessed the first two, but it’s interesting that a fairly complex multivariate analysis came up with the same results. Dunno why Los Angeles in in there – maybe museums and music.

Marxist quotations

Today’s leader (that’s “editorial” for you Americans) in the Guardian begins as follows:
Shortly before being elected US president, George Bush wasn’t able to name the president of Pakistan when asked in a televised interview. Yet, according to his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, in the months leading up to September 11, President Bush was fully briefed and supported a detailed plan to help General Musharraf cut off support to al-Qaida in Afghanistan. As Groucho Marx once asked: “Who do you believe – me, or the evidence of your own eyes?”
Precisely.

Not always an early adopter

Those who know me as a geek par excellence, owner of lots of hand-held computers (including two different models running Linux – is that geeky enough?) may be surprised that until now I’ve never purchased a camcorder. In part, this is because I mistrust electromechanical devices – the mechanical bits tend to fail – and I’m well aware that I am unlikely to use the device very often. I’m not the kind of guy that has boxes of family photos and videotapes of “precious moments” stored in order to be used as unconventional weapons against unsuspecting visitors. I tend to scurry around looking for a camera right before I head off on vacation, and if I haven’t transferred all of the pictures to my computer the day I get home they’re likely to languish in the camera in the closet until next time.
But enough of that. Inspired by a crude video that my son-in-law took at my father-in-law’s 80th birthday bash, I have acquired a Mini-DV camcorder, a Panasonic PVGS9.It cost $349, plus a FireWire cable and some tapes. Circuit City threw in a tripod and a camera bag. The tripod is nice (but will I remember where I put it when I need it?), the camera bag is useless. It was designed for the last generation of camcorders but one; this baby is tiny (3.38 x 2.75 x 4.38 inches). It would be lost in the bag.

While charging the battery, I read the manual. There are dozens of weird and wonderful effects built in, none of which I will ever use. I plan to suck the video straight into my PowerBook and edit it using iMovie (which has wonderful effects and simple drag-and-drop composition, editing, sound track addition, transitions, and so forth). Then I’ll burn it to DVD using iDVD, which will allow me to do the titling, menus, etc. A simple test suggests that I should be able to edit, title, and render a simple 30 minute video in around an hour, which feels like the right input-output ratio. The camera did its job really well: nothing unexpected happened, it just worked. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Didn't want to imply….

My last post about Iraq might have given the wrong impression about the troops over there. Just because things are fraying at the edges doesn’t mean everybody’s cracked. I’ve been reading A View from a Broad to get a soldier’s perspective. Most eye-opening comment: about the poor XXXXXXXXX troops:
If you want to take some of the time and attention you’ve been giving to me, you might want to think about the XXXXXXXXX soldiers who provided help, support, and first aid to our lost soldier. They have been stranded here without pay for six months, and lack even phone cards to call home to rectify the situation. They helped a dying man at the scene of the accident, and now it would be nice to return the favor. Some of the toiletries various people have been nice enough to send will be going to them.
Edited: The original poster has just deleted the nationalities of the soldiers involved for “security reasons. I’ll do the same, although deleting stuff from the web is a pointless exercise.

"We didn't realise that he didn't care"

This afternoon my wife was sitting in her doctor’s waiting room. She was reading Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies; the only other patient, a man, was reading Ron Suskind’s book on Paul O’Neill, The Price of Loyalty. They started talking, and the man said that he was reading the book because a friend had told him to do so, saying [approximately] “I voted for Bush last time, but after reading this I could never vote for him again.” My wife asked if the book was having the same effect on him. “Yes,” he replied, “we knew that Bush wasn’t very smart, but we didn’t realise that he didn’t care.”