'The age of participation'

SINGAPORE: With his hallmark jibes at competition as well as partners, Sun's chairman and CEO Scott McNealy marked the tenth anniversary of Java here.

At a special event hosted by Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), he spoke about the 'Age of Participation', Sun's new theme aimed at expanding the scope of its impact from back room tech specialist toward mass volumes touching billions of lives.

Thus far, Sun has used its 'The Network is the Computer' theme to convey the power of the network. Even though its thin clients and network computing model and products are very far from becoming ubiquitous, the theme was visionary, predating the rise of the Internet. Java was probably as visionary a piece of technology: while ten years ago it did not appear to fit in with Sun's core competence, server hardware. Today, the pieces come together very well.

Sharing and acquiring

Java is supported by over a billion devices, from mobile phones to servers, irrespective of operating system. “If you thought Sun wasn't a software company”, says McNealy, “well, all of a sudden, we've changed the middleware business.” And how does Sun monetize this? “With Java, we've created a large available market: 2.5 billion devices that can talk to the network. Even if it doesn't guarantee us orders but it does guarantee us the chance to get an order.”

In tune with this theme, Sun's new branding uses a visible “S” curve everywhere. “That's not S for Scott,” McNealy quips. “Nor Sun or StorageTek. It's about Sharing.” This sharing, or participation, theme drives Sun's communication and events now.

StorageTek is a recent addition, adding to several companies that Sun has acquired, including integration specialist SeeBeyond for $387 million, which filled the gap of a significant integration product in its Java server suite. SeeBeyond has a development center in Hyderabad, India. “But I'm not like Larry Ellison,” McNealy says, taking a dig at Oracle's acquisition of Siebel. “We buy complementary companies, instead of just trying to eliminate competition. And Skype's really cool...but a lot of people at eBay are asking, why'd we buy Skype?

Sun's StorageTek acquisition means that Sun devices now hosts over a third of the world's archived data. “Tape also fits in with our ecologically sensitive direction,” McNealy says. “It's extremely power efficient, versus the billions of disks that keep spinning all the time and drawing power.”

Power play

McNealy repeatedly referred to power consumption through his media meet earlier in the day, and in his IDA talk where he spoke of the digital divide. “You can't bridge the digital divide by giving everyone a Wintel space heater. Let each person on the planet turn on their Intel room heaters...then we'll really have global warming!”

He showed Sun's new Niagara chip, 8-core multiple-threads-per-core processor,

due 2006, which Sun says will bring power consumption down to “two watts a thread, versus Xeon 70 to 100 watts a thread...we save $3 million a year in Sun alone by using Sun Ray .

Sun announced the rollout of its Galaxy Sun Fire 64-bit X86 servers, based on AMD's dual-core Opteron, at the lowest prices ever for Sun hardware. The one-way Sun Fire X2100 lists at under Rs 44,000 in India, where it was simultaneously launched, and ships Solaris 10 (or Red Hat Linux or Windows Server, at the buyer's option; both are now supported). Another version, with more bundled software, is at the Rs 50,000 level.

But out there in the X86 world, can Sun continue to differentiate its products? “Well, it's hard to differentiate a DRAM and disk drive,” McNealy told CyberMedia. “Yet those have been the top two line items by revenue over the 24-year history of Sun! There's a market...and we make this at half the cost of the comparable four-way Dell server, at 1.5 time the performance and one third of the power consumption,” he says, of the two-processor, dual-core Galaxy server.

And then there were two?

So is the world moving towards x86 architecture? “Not necessarily,” McNealy responds. “But there's clearly a growing need for volumes at lower cost. Ten or 20 years ago it was mostly database or financial apps. Now we have a lot more high-power graphics, or eBay auctions, or Skype threads. That's where Xeon has been strong, but it's not efficient. Opteron is way more powerful today. Intel is not price performing right now--and they know it. AMD is gaining market share. But if Intel becomes better, we'll . We are not religious about the microprocessor. And they all have to respond to Niagara.”

Going forward, says McNealy of the server platforms, there will be only two operating systems that matter: Windows and Solaris, with Red Hat Linux a possible third. Where's IBM? “Oh, if anyone can tell me what IBM's OS strategy is, I'd be curious to know!” McNealy said. However, the “only two systems players that matter” are IBM and Sun. “HP hasn't been executing very well in the computer business this last couple of years. Itanium's dead meat.”

With its 'Network is the computer' theme, Sun has been projecting the grid utility as the ultimate sharing paradigm, where you “take away the complexity from the user”. “How many of you have root access to your nuclear power plant because you need to switch on your light?” McNealy asks. “Yet you have root access to your Wintel PCs.” In the Sun network computing model, the compute power lies in the servers across the network. The user has a simpler thin client, which essentially is a display and input device.

With all the digs at the leading names of infotech, McNealy is often asked who really are Sun's friends. “Well, we collaborate and we compete. That's not so surprising. I do that with IBM, Microsoft,” McNealy says. “We compete against those who do lots of R&D.

So that's Intel and Microsoft, whom I called the General and the Motors. We don't compete against Dell. We market against Dell. And there's IBM. That's like Boeing and Airbus: IBM and Sun. HP's kind of checked out. They're no longer on the shortlist. They're into maintenance.” Yet McNealy does refer to Dell rather frequently. He says Sun flew an airplane around Dell's facility in Texas with a banner saying, 'Watch out for our Opteron machines'!! “I got a lot of angry mails.”

Exit policy

While Asia still contributes less than a fifth of Sun's revenues, this is growing faster than all the other regions. “That's simply because there's more construction cranes in Asia than elsewhere!!”

Finally, McNealy warns CIOs against getting lost in acquisition cost or running cost or TCO, while forgetting the third and real cost: the cost to exit a platform. “You're stuck with an expensive mainframe, while these new boxes are as good and cheaper. But you can't exit, it's too expensive!” All tech products have the shelf life of a banana, he says. “So don't ask: how much does it cost to acquire, run...ask how much does it cost to exit?”

(The author was hosted by Sun Microsystems)