Can Sun make money on Open Source software? Will the billion dollar bet on MySQL pay off? Tuesday’s announcement was very encouraging.

On Tuesday, September 9, 2008, Sun announced that Belgian-based ERP software vendor Stésud adopted and deployed Sun’s open source MySQL database and GlassFish application server software.

Benoit Lemaire, CEO of Stésud stated, “Java-based GlassFish was the first piece of the puzzle we identified to meet our stringent new infrastructure requirements. As soon as Sun acquired MySQL, we decided to employ it as our new database rather than Oracle. With Sun behind both GlassFish and MySQL, it was the best open source infrastructure combination for our needs and for our customers’ operations.”

Yes, it does appear that Sun’s open source software strategy is working, particularly when multiple products are in play. This gives customers the benefit of open source innovation and open access at a significant cost advantage over the competition, while delivering very significant license and support services revenue to Sun. Win-win is a sustainable business model.

Technorati Tags: Glassfish, MySQL, Sun Microsystems, Open Source

According to a Fox News article today, the soon to be announced Chevy Volt sounds pretty exciting: “GM says it will be able to travel 40 miles on electric power alone, but carries a small gasoline engine on board to recharge the batteries on longer trips. The combination of the two power sources gives it an effective efficiency of over 100 miles per gallon.”

It’s a far cry from the ‘57 Chevy with a 4-barrel carb my wife drove in high school!

Technorati Tags: Chevy, electric automobile, hybrid

While searching for the photo of our “Murphy’s Law Sofa” I blogged about yesterday, I stumbled across this photo of the first computer I ever built. Back in 1976, while we were sophomores in engineering school at Brigham Young University, Larry Langdon (pictured) and I built a 16 bit computer completely out of TTL logic gates and flip-flops. It wasn’t very elegant, but it ran the specified instruction set just fine and got us “A” grades in the digital electronics lab class.

This was so long ago that bell bottoms and aviator glasses were still in style!

Technorati Tags: Computer, BYU

Will a new iTablet be available from Apple this fall? Drool, drool, drool!

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Yesterday, my wife found a little sketch I had made way back before I graduated from Brigham Young University in the late 1970’s. How things have changed in our perception of what computers look like. Note the bell bottom pants!

I can’t remember when I ever had a Fortran prayer answered. Perhaps I was praying to the wrong God!

PS: the faint faces you can see behind the computer are not the ghosts of dead computers. They are merely sketches I had made on the other side of the paper!

Technorati Tags: Fortran, Prayer, Computer, BYU

With all the traveling I do, the trend to charge for amenities poses new challenges:

Who could have believed that a drink of water on an airline would cost two bucks? What next?

Technorati Tags: Travel, Airline, Economy

Lest you ever wonder what goes on in Sun’s Executive Briefing Center, here’s proof. 🙂

Actually, this series of shots was taken in a photo booth on the exhibit floor at the Sun Microsystems Americas Sales Meeting held in National Harbor, MD, to encourage participation in Sun’s Executive Briefing Center.

We do take activities in the real Sun EBC in Menlo Park, CA, a bit more seriously.

Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Executive Briefing Center, ASM2009

Last night, AMD sponsored a gala event in conjuntion with the Sun Microsystems Americas Sales Meeting at one of my all time favorite museums, the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington, DC. With exhibits ranging from a re-creation of the first manned hot-air balloon to a celebration of space travel, this Smithsonian Institution museum provides a wide ranging and exciting overview of the wonderful innovation that has transpired in man’s quest to escape the gravity of our world and range quickly across its broad expanse.

It is inspiring to me that in a period of just over 100 years, we have advanced from the time when powered flight was a tenuous experiment of a pair of enterprising bicycle repairmen to where global air travel is a natural part of our everyday lives. We collectively stand on the broad shoulders of countless creative people, whose innovation, courage and tenacity have worked wonders in our world.

What will the next hundred years will bring?

Technorati Tags: Smithsonian, Air and Space Museum, AMD, Sun Microsystems

I am one of 3000 colleagues spending the week at Sun Microsystems’ Americas Sales Meeting held at the Gaylord National Convention Center near Washington, DC, this week.

Perhaps the outstanding fireworks show we were treated to last night is a fitting metaphor for the great hopes and plans we have for the new fiscal year!

Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Fireworks, Washington DC

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.” – Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States.

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