CEO Phooey

I've been reading Sun CEO Jonathan's blog. It was interesting at first but the more I read, the more I got the feeling its all fluff and no substance. He gushing about how Sun will change the future with things like UltraSPARC machines which has a lower TCO than any other machines, and about Solaris. He even had his friend Marc Anderson (creator of Netscape) to talk about how Marc runs his latest startup on Solaris on Sun machines. Then he talks a new service called Sun Grid at network.com that is offering Grid computing at $1/CPU Hr.

Here's why I think its all fluff. I tried to download Solaris. It's free but the site asked me to fill in a form so they can harvest my personal information in the name providing me with a license code. I decided against it. In fact, the download is more than a couple GB in size. No way I'm gonna waste my 10GB limited bandwidth on that. If they had made it available openly like Linux, then mirrors around the world could've host it making it more attractive. Plus as more people uses it, the more software will be available for it. Right now, it takes a year for a new software to make its way to Solaris platform. For example RubyOnRails.

Don't get me started on TCO. That topic is too biased no matter how impartial everyone tries to be.

Next, Grid Computing. Sun runs a Grid compting network on UltraSPARC machines. People pays $1/CPU hr. Who in the world will use that? Amazon started a similar service six months ago and it went nowhere. The reason. Well, the only people who legitimately needs Grid Computing (and heavily will use to make the service profitable) are research lab, utility, financial and government agency. But none of them worth their salt will use the service due to confidentiality/security/privacy issues. I think that leaves lame ass smaller companies at the long tail end that needs Grid computing.

And after reading through the site, I was right. The first customer listed on their press release to use it is a biotech company who says

Sun Grid Compute Utility Helps Genetic R&D Company Get Life-Saving Products to Market in Record Time.

How many times have you heard that from a pharmacetical company in the last 10 years. How many genetic based cure do you know that saved some ones life?

Anyway, I think Jonathan as a CEO is no good. He is at heart a techie. He believes in using technology to solve all of world problem Unfortunately, thats only a wish and not a vision. Without vision, you don't stand a chance. He would be better suited as a CTO.

Why do you need vision to win. Well, that post will be coming soon.