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10 responses to “Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?”

1. 2006/11/28

   Dave Levy

   re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

   Bloody Hell, Alec? There’s a two hour lunch break. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about it! 🙂 As you know, long lunches are a personal core competency. 😉

   Reply
2. 2006/11/29

   Cranston

   re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

   Alec,

   I and several others who read your post have no idea on what your point is? Are we missing something? The best explanation that we can come up with is that you are not happy about Sun’s absence at this conference, given its premiere status?

   If we’ve missed the boat here, can you give us a clue on what’s going on?

   Reply
3. 2006/11/29

   alecm

   re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

   The point is that someone else, someone who is not a Sun employee, is amusingly miffed that we are not on stage here or at many other venues talking about how blogging, wikis, and so forth are changing the way we do business, talk to our customers, cut through layers of journalists to “disintermediate” our communications with our customers.

   Now, to me at least, I see the above as a really *good* thing; people who are really far-removed from the IT hardware/software industry are starting to generate buzz about Sun being a company who talks to customers differently, are a company with whom you can engage on a more unfiltered level.

   Personally I would not merely be feeding this fire, I would be pouring gasoline on it.

   To get down to cases, look at the sort of people also represented at the conference, there’s at least one other three-letter vendor, one who is trying to say that they blog, they “get it”, they are “hip” – and then try and take the limelight and the mindshare.

   I say “no”, we should not let them do that. Not again.

   Reply
4. 2006/11/29

   Stephen Usher

   re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

   Personally, I just see corporate blogs as spin and part of the marketting effort.

   They’re a fad, they will almost disappear once the fashion and hype has passed and then, and only then, will the few that survive be worth reading.. that’ll be in five years time or so.

   My opinion is that they’re not as important as you state, Alec. Too many corporate blogs out there have been hijacked by marketting departments for them to be concidered a reliable communications channel. If anything, it’s more important what ISN’T said on them than what is.

   As for Sun not being represented at this conference, well, I’m not too bothered as an outsider. I’d far rather that they concentrate on getting their software up to the standard they had ten years ago (rather than the mostly working, poorly documented hotch-potch they have currently).

   Reply
5. 2006/11/29

   alecm

   re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

   <<<They’re a fad, they will almost disappear once the fashion and hype has passed>>>

   Like Open Source will?

   I disagree; I find myself in a situation which would have been weird ten years ago, that I am reading maillists on opensolaris.org to find out which direction Solaris is going, rather than internal forums.

   There are several hundred bloggers on blogs.sun.com and very few of them work for marketing; maybe in other companies there is a degree of “jump on the bandwagon” but I don’t think it’s ubiquitous and I know it’s not the case in Sun.

   As for being worth reading? Well you read mine, anyhow… 🙂

   Reply
6. 2006/11/29

   Stephen Usher

   re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

   Hmm.. as for Open Source disappearing.. well, it’s not as much of a fad as blogging.. it’s been a long, slow trudging ox in the background and it is only recently that the media have focused upon it. It is fashionable now in truth. I can see that in 5-10 years time the hype for OSS will have decreased and the ox will continue along its way but without the fanfare and the spin by certain commentators and marketting departments.

   Corporate blogging, however, is something which has appeared (mostly) in response to media hype and hence will mostly die once the media have got bored with it.

   As for your blog, well I don’t count it as a corporate blog.

   Reply
7. 2006/11/29

   Alex

   re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

   Well, they’re definitely reading security blogs…

   Reply
8. 2006/11/29

   Holly

   re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

   Yup IBM were there and Microsoft….

   To be brutally honest I have to say that I am not sure what they *really* added to the proceedings this year. Does Scoble still count as the MS poster boy even though he no longer works for MS? In any case, Sun were mentioned several times in a positive way. You know someone who flew the flag for you.

   Tell you what if you sponsored morning coffee – you’d be popular! 😉

   What interested me was that the software is beginning to take a backseat in many respects. The most interesting technological bit was on enterprise search from Stephen Arnold – he forecasts that the COST of search and search innovation and the server platforms required may cripple several big name websites if they don’t make efforts to keep it under control.

   Maybe Sun should investigate being there next year. I am certain that once more of these Web 2.0 tools go live infrastructure and backup and strategies for ‘managing’ the data are going to be as crucial as the ‘How Social Software is revolutionising the way organisations work’ story.

   Perhaps the challenge for the big names in IT is to provide a solid platform for supporting innovative products from third parties rather than driving it or ‘owning’ the solution. That’s what I believe I am going to need anyway……

   Reply
9. 2006/11/30

   Adriana

   re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

   Two hour lunch break? Alas, not. If you looked at the complete programme you’d see that delegates are supposed to attend a lunch roundtable and the exhibition during that time. No sense for decadence at Online Information, I tell ya.

   Reply
10. 2006/12/03

    Chris Samuel

    re: Sun Microsystems : Where The F*** Are You?

    I’m kind of between the two of you on this, I suspect that corporate blogs are useful for fostering community within corporations, especially if there’s no feeling of being judged on what you write.

    I’m more ambivalent about their usefulness outside of that, asides as a contribution to the results that you get from a Google search. Maybe that in itself is enough, I don’t know.

    Reply