Q: I'd like to see Sun mend their relationship with EMC? When can I see a similar partnership with EMC that you've previously done with Microsoft? Denis Vilfort (A): Our relationship w/ EMC is one of 'healthy competition'. Clearly we have chosen to partner with HDS and our latest collaboration on the StorEdge 9990 shows why: We smoke EMC in scalability & performance! As long as EMC is playing catch-up to HDS I do not see much motivation for us to do a 'Microsoft-like' IP partnership ? but stranger things have happened in this industry.;-) Q: What is Sun planning to do about winning mind share on storage products? it seems to me that people only consider you when they plan to use your servers/workstations. Jason Schaffer (A): The first step in winning mind share is to offer a storage portfolio that can go head-to-head against anyone in the industry. Today we have that! Across the board, the Sun StorEdge family of systems and arrays is arguably the best you can buy. Q: Will Sun start using S-ATA Drives, for internal drives, to bring down costs ? Will Sun bring out a server design for Oracle RAC ? e.g Dual CPU boots of network or SAN, comes with Dual Fibre Card, supports Remote DMA. (stop stop the cheap PC end of the market) Denis Vilfort (A): As S-ATA drives become more reliable, we will consider using them in server platforms. We already offer SAN based S- ATA arrays as part of the StorEdge 3000 family (the S-ATA array is StorEdge 3511) as a cost-effective networked storage option. SAN based storage & SAN booting w/ Oracle RAC can be done with Sun servers today. Sun has a comprehensive lineup of SAN switches and HBAs which are tightly integrated with Sun Traffic Manager under Solaris. No need to bring out an additional server for SAN and RAC. We are also making serious inroads in the low cost server market with our Opteron powered machines. The Opteron lineup runs both Solaris and Linux and are compatible with Sun SAN 4.x. Q: The 6920 and the 9990 seem to have alot of the same features, is that true? Jason Schaffer (A): You are correct in that the 6920 is architecturally similar to the 99xx series. Both products have a cross-bar that enables multi-dimensional scalability, centralized management and data services, application-oriented provisioning, and the ability to address heterogeneous data center environments (both server and storage). With a 100% availability guarantee, the 9900 series storage systems are tailor-made to address the extreme availability requirements of mission-critical business applications, and are the only Sun storage products that can address both mainframe and ?open? storage environments. As a baby brother to the 9900 series, the 6920 is priced/positioned to address the midrange storage market and can therefore not attach to mainframe environments. Q: regarding the 8 core, 32way cpu that was blogged about recently, I had a debate with a longtime Sparc and Solaris fan and we were wondering when you would release performance benchmarks on that beauty Chris Kruell (A): Stay tuned!!! We're excited, too. We'll continue to provide tidbits of information as we march toward products based on this cool new technology. Cheers, cpk Q: why wont the new pricing and subscription model prevent sunw from ever reporting a profit? im concerned about company sustainability.... Scott McNealy (A): Our profitability is more driven by the fact that we hired too many people during the bubble and signed too many building leases. We are working those issues hard. We made money last quarter. That is one in a row. Stay tuned. We have lots of cash to ride it out and have generated positive cash flow from ops for 15 straight years. While not compromising our future product calendar. We are in an enviable position going forward. Scott Q: Are Sun's product managers encouraged to publish their Solaris Opteron roadmaps? I don't see web pages on sun.com which state when customers will be able to host SunRays off Solaris V40z servers, develop Java server applications with Java Studio Creator on Solaris W2100z workstations, or intregate StorEdge SAN solutions on Solaris V20z clusters. John groenveld@acm.org Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): John, We make a great effort in giving the details on our products through our web sites. Sun also offers refernce architecture blue prints for common customer problems and a lot other documentation. Offcourse, there is always place to improve and I thank you for your feedback. Q: Will Sun release more documents about hypersparc/ultrasparcs in the future? Chris Kruell (A): We are active in the processor community and are constantly presenting papers at venues such as Microprocessor Forum, publishing in journals, and so forth, so I'd encourage you to check into those kinds of forums, as well as resources such as http://www.sun.com/processors/ Thanks, cpk Q: Will the promotion of SE6920 be extended far from Nov 17? Jason Schaffer (A): Yes. The promotion will be extended into Q3FY05...look for more details soon. Q: I'm with Higher Education. Sun has always been a great partner. Recently the Scholar Pac program was discontinued. We wanted to join JES for Education but found that the engineering departments could not independently join the program due to minimum FTE requirements. Is it possible that SUN may reconsider this position? Scott McNealy (A): Please send an email request to kim.jones@sun.com and cc me at scott.mcnealy@sun.com. Will get you answer asap. Scott Q: Why is Sun selling 3rd party products for storage? Jason Schaffer (A): The best solutions require the best system components. To meet this requirement, Sun has made a commitment to offering best-in-class storage systems and arrays. By partnering, Sun can offer customers the best storage systems today, while enabling us to focus internal development on technology, and advanced data services, that simplify the heterogeneous data center environment. Q: Scott - what is Sun's strategy for competing with IBM in the Enterprise Infrastructure Software space? Scott McNealy (A): It is called JES. Java Enterprise System. Websphere comes in dozens and dozens and dozens of CDs with armies of IGS service personnel to custom assemble your middleware. Cost? Out of this world. JES? One CD, unlimited internal use on Intel, AMD and Sparc machines from Sun, no extra charge for external access for $100/emp/yr. Nearly 400,000 subscribers already. Faster, less cost, assembly included, service included. And we support all of the same standard interfaces. Doesnt seem fair, does it. Q: Sun claims that many apps that run on Windows also run on Solaris but we have learned that that Solaris versions are usually in maintenance mode or not as user friendly or feature rich. What is Sun doing to ensure feature parity of apps running on Solaris with those running on non-Sun platforms, in particular, Windows? Jack O'Brien (A): We work extensively with ISVs and have built up a large community. If there are specific applications that you wold like addressed please submit here: http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/10/inquiry.jsp Q: With the newer USIV cpus coming out, what support is sun looking to give (early on) developers for alternative OSes, such as NetBSD and Linux on making code work with these new systems and take advantage of the excellent new features? Or is this a little further out? Chris Kruell (A): Our customers aren't asking us for these kinds of applications on the SPARC architecture, so for Linux and other OSes, we encourage people to look at Sun's Opteron-based offerings. I do encourage you to check out our developer resources at http://developers.sun.com/ cheers, cpk Q: Many of our customers (ISP, dedicated hosting, etc) think that a $3k machine is really too much so they ask from very basic machines, while the ones who prefer the kind of servers Sun used to sell still prefer bigger machines like Sunfire 280. My question is: aren't those Opteron-based machines bot too cheap or too costly? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Sun's Opteron based servers are very competitively priced and offer higher performance than competition's products. Q: Sun Sigma - the real thing, or just another fad? Can you point to successes? Is the point to "do things better" or "get closer to the customer" or "reduce cost"? Bill Vass (A): SunSigma is not about doing sigma projects, its about using metrics in your meetings... Trend charts, Peratos, control charts... and the CAP tools for changes.. IT is constant change. You manage what you measure. Sun Sigma is a great set of tools to get your job done. We also have documented savings through our ROSS process from Sigma Q: You said that ZFS is superior to WinFS. Can you give some specifics. The article does not mention any comparison to WinFS. Do you have any comparisons to show why ZFS is superior to WinFS and how? Chris Ratcliffe (A): ZFS will be available as part of Solaris 10, at this point it's unclear when Microsoft will ship Longhorn. ZFS is POSIX compliant and endian-neutral so your existing applications and systems can get all the benefits of ZFS without modification, that's not always the case with WinFS. ZFS is designed to be extremely easy to manage (typical sys admin tasks have been reduced by over 80% in some cases), WinFS integrates a database and a filesystem together, Microsoft has made no claims about how easy that combination will be to manage. ZFS offers 19 9's (that's 99.99999999999999999%) chance of detecting filesystem errors, no one else can even come close. Q: Will Sun continue to sell 2-way Xeon servers, especially with the upcoming 64-bit Xeon CPUs? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): AMD's Opteron is a superior architecture due to the follwoing reasons: 1. On chip memory controller offering lower latency, higher bandwidth memory accesses than Xeon implimentations 2. Hyper transport interconnect between CPUs vs Xeon's front side bus architecture for better scalability 3. Higher performnace than Xeon 4. Gluless scalability to 8way vs needing glue chips for Xeon Today Opteron is a superior architecture and hence we have chosen Opteron over Xeon. Q: Why not dump the Linux charade and just do Solaris - like Apple doesn't bother with Linux. Scott McNealy (A): Our customers like choice. They like knowing they can redeploy their dt and servers with Windows or Linux should they have an app that does not run on Solaris. We expand the market utility of JES, JDS, StarOffice, N1, Java VMs by making all of that run on Linux. And our customers are very excited about having Linux containers run on Solaris 10. This is not a charade. This is good business. Q: Will be a Sun Fire V290? Chris Kruell (A): Get in touch w/ a Sun sales rep or partner to get an NDA, since we don't publicly comment on our roadmap. Thanks, cpk Q: Scott (and staff), this is great that you having this forum, thanks! My question is: Now that project Janus is completed are there any plans to take that to the next level and make Solaris run Windows applications? Jack O'Brien (A): This is not something that we have heard our customers request. Our relationship with Microsoft is currently focused on interoperability around Java and .net, identity, and directory services Q: I want to get my company off of MS Outlook. When will you have a client for your mail and calendar servers? Bill Vass (A): You already can switch to Mozilla for mail clients. You can really switch to any IMAP or other standard client to get off outlook. You can also use outlook connect with the JES mail server to get off Exchange and still let outlook users connect Q: When is Scott going to grow his hair long like Jonathan? Scott McNealy (A): I am trying to get Jonathan to go with SuperCuts #3 on top, #2 on the side for $12 quarterly. Works for me. Q: How will the Fujitsu partnership impact customers "investment protection" in the current US IV processor line? Will the current Ex900 systems be upgradable to the APL? In other words, why should I buy now versus waiting to see what the new product line will look like in 2005? Chris Kruell (A): Why wait? You should buy UltraSPARC-IV-based systems today to double your throughput compared to previous Sun systems--in the same footprint, no less, and if you have one of our US-III-based V1290 through E15K servers, you can upgrade on the fly to the E2900 through E25K. As alwasys, binary compatibility is crucial to investment protection. With all Sun SPARC-based servers, you can pick up your Solaris-based application and move it to the next SPARC-based architecture and run it untouched. You see this with systems today-- and will see it tomorrow. So rest easy and go buy some Sun Fire servers now! Cheers, cpk Q: Sun's mantra is "Network = Computer" yet Sun has nevered offered networking infrastructure gear until this Nauticus announcement. Why? Didn't your motto imply where the big push would be i.e. the network & the computer? Scott McNealy (A): We are focusing on the intra datacenter nw issues. We let the Ciscos and others handle the dc to dc connectivity. Lots of work still to do in the dc so we are not looking for more R&D scope at this time. Q: The ZFS file system will offer significant improvements in Solaris 10. What's the future of Veritas support on Solaris? Jack O'Brien (A): Veritas will continue to be supported but we are confident that customers will see the value in ZFS Q: Bill, how do you deal with proving to your clients that you are serving their needs and how do you show them what you are spending their money on? (from IT perspective) Does Sun have any products that help deal with this complex problem? Bill Vass (A): We do regular interal customer CTQs, and we have budget review meetings. We use PoepleSoft to track our IT hours spent and Oracle to manage our $$ Q: What is your response to the Dell - "Scale Out" model compared to your enterpise class servers? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Customers deploy a variety of architectures in their data centers including scale-up and scale-out. Sun offers products for both the architectures where as Dell offers products only for scale-out architecture. Sun offers low cost 2way and 4way products based on both SPARC and Opteron CPUs for scale-out implementations. Q: Scott, with all the amazing happenings at Sun, how do you find time to enjoy your wife and three young children? Scott McNealy (A): I enjoy my wife enough to now have four children. Actually, the SunRay at home allows me to work very productively from home. Our mobility story is the best in the industry. I could not do my job and have a life without it. Q: Are there plans to enhance Predictive Healing to apply to Sun's Hardware RAID devices or will it only be useful with JBOD-type storage? Jack O'Brien (A): As long as the device has a diagnosis agent, the particular standard does not affect this. Going forward all hardware that Sun ships will be supported by Predictive Self healing Q: When Sun Cluster will support ATM (PVC configuration) - Classical IP addresses. So far, it is not woring beacuse the IPMP with Sun cluster feature. Jim Sangster (A): Sun Cluster supports ATM as the public network (not private interconnect). I do not have the answer at hand on PVC configuration, but if you send the question in through Sales and/or to me such that we can get back to you, we will. Q: I work for an EDA group at NASA and I am proposing moving away from our Sun Workstations, to non-proprietary Linux servers and/or clusters for our EDA work that will lower our TCO? And with ever faster AMD/Intel chips coming out with 64-bit compuing, Is there any reason to continue purchasing SUN hardware/OS software? Scott McNealy (A): Check out our new 1-2way Opteron workstations. They run Windows, Linux AND Solaris. They are hot! And Solaris is less expensive than RedHat. And you get Sun service and support. Q: I work for siesmologists and earthquake engineers. We might have a terabyte of data that we want to analyze through finite element analsys, frequency response, etc. $1 per CPU hour sounds great, but what about storage? Ashif Dhanani (A): Storage also available on a pay-per-use basis to the N1 Grid infrastructure for the analysis run. Information on pay per use storage offerings can be found at:http://www.sun.com/service/utility/midrange.html or the high end version at: http://www.sun.com/service/utility/utilitystoredge.html Q: Hello Can someone give me more information on Sun Rays Think client migration from Windows and also what Email Server Sun uses (I know they don't use Exchange, what alternative do you recommend to run on Solaris?) Bill Vass (A): We run the JES mail server, its part of the JES suite which has portal, web, IM, mail, cal, ident,... and much more. It scales to millions of users.. you can have any client you want. Search sun.com on SunRay, there is a lot of info out there. You can also contact alan.wilson@sun.com, he is in charge of desktop migrations. Q: When will the SUNW stock price start climbing to a decent level? It has been hitting all-time-lows! Scott McNealy (A): It is up 20-30% recently. Our market cap is in the $12b+ range. Not bad but if we show some growth and consistant profitability it might show some nice appreciation. Then again, who knows. I stopped predicting a long time ago. I am holding. And the largest individual shareholder. Q: When can we expect Solaris on Itanium ? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): We currently have no plans to offer Solaris on Itanium. Q: jim: but from oracle web site. If you want to use oracle 10g RAC then there is no cluster deployment. This is kind of a must. Jim Sangster (A): I am not sure I follow. Oracle10g RAC will work with cluster frameworks in a similar fashion to how 9i RAC works today. We are working with Oracle on a daily basis to get this supported. Currently Sun Cluster supports HA 10g, and RAC will be coming soon. Customers can select the best deployment option(s) available to them. Q: My developers complain that although Sun indicates Solaris is binary compatible driver support in Solaris is not. They are constantly having to try to map firmware, to driver version (when available) to Solaris OS. In particular, they recently tried to locate solaris drivers for DVD writers - not available. Linux and windows drivers were downloadable. how is Sun addressing more current and consistent drivers availability. Jack O'Brien (A): Driver development has been a big R&Dd focus area, resulting in now over 250 devices that are supported. See http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/ for details. This is an ongoing effort continuting with Soalris 10, we will guarantee hardware compatibility, and we expect the community that grows around the open source Solaris project to add a lot of value Q: How do you plan to win over the anti-sun crowd at SlashDot and LinuxToday? No matter what Sun does for open source, there are people bashing Sun for not dumping Solaris and going 100% Linux Bill Vass (A): THat is a hard one... if you look at the numbers, we contribute more and run more open source than anyone else... They just need to look at the facts. We have 33K open source desktops running at Sun, how many does IBM have? We have open sources a large number of lines of code and products, IBM has done well here also, but here comes open source solaris...when will they open source DB2 or WebSphere? I am not sure how to get Sun the credit we should get for helping out Linux, GNOME, Mozilla, GIMP, NFS, .... Q: Could you tell us if the alliance between AMD and Sun includes any any transfer of technology between Sun and AMD CPU's? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Sun and AMD alliance is very broad and it includes collaboration in market development, products development, echo system development, etc. We can not give specifics of the agreement. Q: Front page of Business Week and cover story on emerging markets in China, India, Brazil; 200M new users in next ~5 years. What is Sun doing to capture those markets? Scott McNealy (A): We are going after these markets aggressively and are growing in many of these geos. We are doing this with community development, 20,000 iForce partners, and direct investment. We have also donated billions of dollars of hw and sw products to the education market in these countries to give the next generation a taste of our technologies. Q: jim: but can I have one of my cluster nodes running Cluster update 3 and other one update 4 for a week. This way to make sure that I have a backout plan. Or one cluster nodes running Solaris 10 and other node is running Solaris 9. from my experince I can not have this setup. The question, How customer make sure that the has a backout plan when upgraded to solaris 10. In my case here, other node running solaris 9 is my backuout plan. However, this is not a supported configuration. Jim Sangster (A): Best case is to perform much of this in your test envioronment and using all the available rolling upgrade features (to minimize the backout issues ahead of time). You are getting involved in some pretty detailed issues that would likely require discussions in more depth. We would be happy to explore further if you can either involve your Sales Team and/or contact me so we can get you with Engineering. Q: What do you have in the way of desktop management? At my uni there are hundreds of centrally controlled Windows machines. They're seemingly easy for the it support staff to maintain, but they're a kludge to use. Could you offer something better? (of course you can) Mark Herring (A): One word... SunRay... Check it out! (http://wwws.sun.com/software/index.jsp?cat=Desktop&tab=3&subcat=Thin%20Clients) Gives the ability to centrally manage a group of machines. There are added advantages like security that might also be important in your environment. Q: It will be a way to try Solaris free on a x86 platform? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Every Sun x86 server is shipped with a 90 day evaluation license for Solaris on x86. You also can download Solaris on x86 for free from Sun web site for evaluation. Q: Also, what is Sun's position on software patents? A necessary evil? Things that need to be secured to ward of lawsuits? Something that should ultimately be abolished? Scott McNealy (A): Patents matter. Hugely. Imagine a world with no patent or IP protection. Would any drug company ever invest to invent a new drug? We would all die sooner. If it works for drug innovation, it clearly works for sw, hw, computers, movies, media, etc. The courts are the natural battle ground for disputes. I am a believer in IP ownership, capitalism and market economies with a minimum of govt intervention. Not a believer in IP anarchy. Not to say that our Patent system gets it right all of the time. Lots of work needed there. Q: I've heard of Sun working with cable providers, such as Comcast to deliver SunRay sessions to their customers in the future. Can you guys comment on this? Is it something we'll see with two years? Bill Vass (A): We have a first pilot starting in October of this year with a broad band provider. We have been deploying SunRays at home in large volume to our employees now. The first pilots are to Sun employees so we can work out all the technology issue before we open it to the general public Q: Will there be a replacment for Sun Cobalt Servers? for the ease of use and ease of admin... Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): As the market has moved away from dediacted appliances, we currently have no plans to offer applainces. Sun servers offer state of the art management capabilities for ease of administration. Q: Hi--is the 6920 based upon the same architecture as the 99xx series? Is it OEMed from Hitachi as well? Are there common tools for management. Thanks! Jason Schaffer (A): You are correct in that the 6920 is architecturally similar to the 99xx series. Both products have a cross-bar that enables multi-dimensional scalability, centralized management and data services, application-oriented provisioning, and the ability to address heterogeneous data center environments (both server and storage). However, the 6920 is not OEMed from Hitachi. The underlying technology of the 6920 is owned and developed by Sun. With a 100% availability guarantee, the 9900 series storage systems are tailor-made to address the extreme availability requirements of mission-critical business applications, and are the only Sun storage products that can address both mainframe and ?open? storage environments. As a baby brother to the 9900 series, the 6920 is priced/positioned to address the midrange storage market and can therefore not attach to mainframe environments. To the second part of your question, Sun offers a common management interface for both the 99xx series and the 6920 in the Enterprise Storage Management (ESM) utility. Through this utility you'll be able to easily interface with both innovative storage platforms. Q: I have Storage SE9980 and NOW Sun deliver SE9990. Any impact to customer when upgraded. Denis Vilfort (A): The Sun StorEdge 9990 builds on the software foundation and x-bar architecture of the StorEdge 9980. All the software tools you already are familiar with are carried forward on the 9990. Sun Hi Command, TrueCopy and ShadowImage continues to be part of the offering. The StorEdge 9990 is simply the next generation high-end storage system with industry leading scalability to 1152 drives, 256 hots connections and blitzing cache and I/O performance. Next time you are ready to purchase high-end storage, this is the system to buy. If you would like to trade-up today Sun IBB is ready to help. Q: How will you retain customers who insist on highly secure Operating Systems - We have avoided open systems as we feel they are more vulnerable to hacking. Chris Ratcliffe (A): We already have the most secure commercially available operating system available today - Trusted Solaris. We are integrating even more of the functionality of Trusted Solaris into Solaris 10 e.g. Process Rights Management, as well as making it easier for people to enhance their Solaris 10 systems with an add-on Trusted Solaris package. Q: When will Sun allow/test across campus multi-node clusters ? One problem I see with it is the SAN disk which needs to live at a different site ? Jim Sangster (A): Sun Cluster supports campus clustering today, one solution utilizes standard SAN infrastructure with the 10km limitation (and can either be a 2 room or 3 room solution where the storage can be in either the 3rd room or in the primary site). Another solution is the Enterprise Continuity Solution which leverages DWDM technologies and can stretch one cluster in the 200-400km range (including an active-active Oracle9i RAC capability). All of the above are single stretched-cluster solutions. Separately, Sun is currently working on cluster to cluster communication such that applications can be failed over across any distance....stay tuned. Q: Is Sun going to sell Solaris x86 as aggressively as Redhat sell their linux to the general x86 market? Jack O'Brien (A): We have been and will continue to be aggressive in the x86 market, both on Sun hardware and on third party systems. We already are priced lower than linux Q: Mr. Macnealy, Why Sun doesnīt support anymore Linux over UltraSparc architecture. I write from Mexico and we have many installaions over linux and it runs perfect over Sun HW? Scott McNealy (A): Most folks running Linux run on x86 because of the driver availablility and app compilation issues. Solaris on Sparc is far superior than Linux on Sparc. Cost of doing Linux on Sparc cannot be justified cost or demand wise. Moderator: Make sure to take advantage of the special offers of Solaris 10. You can get more information on these resources and offers at sun.com/nc... Q: Similar to Verizon being service company, would there be market for pure utility computing company using various technologies (sun being one of them) Ashif Dhanani (A): We are hoping that overtime there would be an entire ecosystem of Utility Service providers that could provide Utility Computing Technologies/Solutions based on offerings from different vendors. Q: Today, there are not enough training materials or text for the ordinary desktop user to buy and learn how to use Sun's OSs. What is Sun doing about it? Mark Herring (A): The answer really depends on what you are trying to do. If you are a consumer using Windows, the new Java Desktop is very familiar. StarOffice is very easy to learn and has many features similar to Microsoft Office. Similarly the Mozilla browser is similar to Internet Explorer. If however you want to get to know the Solaris Operating System have a look at our training site (http://training.sun.com/US/) for some fantastic web based and instructor lead training courses. Q: As a college student, I'd be interested in hearing about the possibility of getting Sunrays into college computer labs. With the java card, it's be nice to keep my session/papers/homework on the school's server and not need to worry about carrying around a floppy / zip / or usb drive. Any comments on if this might be a space you'll be trying to move into? Bill Vass (A): Yes, we have many SunRay deployments at colleges in Canada and in APAC. You can follow up with alan.wilson@sun.com, he is in charge of SunRay sales Q: Is the cost of a Solaris 10 x86 license built in, when purchasing a Solaris x86 box? (e.g. the V40z) What's the cost to purchase it seperately? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): The cost of Solaris 10 x86 license is not built in the x86 based server products. Customers need to pay seperate for the Solaris 10 x86 license and it depends on number of CPUs. Please contact your Sun representative for the pricing for your needs. Q: Since Opteron has such great performance and price/performance, will you ever consider dropping SPARC and just going with Opteron? Chris Kruell (A): No, this is not under consideration--we just strengthened the future of SPARC with our agreement with Fujitsu, which is allowing us to pursue next-gen CMT capabilities with Niagara and bring products to market even faster than before, including a jointly-developed SPARC-based product line to market in a couple of years. BTW, our UltraSPARC IV offerings have great benchmark results, too! SPARC has been immensely popular and with the largest 64-bit install base in the industry, we're keen on keeping our customers happy and winning new converts to the only binary-compatible roadmap in the industry. Thanks, cpk. Q: Is Sun going to merge with Fujitsu? Scott McNealy (A): Do you know something I dont? Q: I would be interested what the ojective "ease-of-admin" measure would be? Bill, some minds would have to come to gether to define measurables. But it is what is an attracting force to Windows and Sun needs to seriously address it. Bill Vass (A): I agree... maybe time to load, time to config, time to add a user. We have a lot of legacy Solaris users that like command line, we also have new users that like GUIs, we need to desgin for both. This is a big push from Jonathan as well. Q: When will Solaris 10 be released? and what platforms will it support (on that date)? Jack O'Brien (A): Solaris 10 will be released later this year and will support SPARC and x86 architechtures including 64 bit versions of x86 Q: Where does customer service fit in JS's list of eleven words: Make Money, Grow, Re-enlist Champions, Leverage Our Partners, Simplify Our Business? In the auto industry, management talks about customer satisfaction but I don't hear similar from Sun, IBM, HP, etc. John groenveld@acm.org Scott McNealy (A): All of the above. Services is growing, making money, winning our champions, is hugely leveraged through our service partners, and by offering servers on the net at $1/cpu-hour is driving massive simplification in our business. Now go back to work! ;-) Q: Can you see Sun taking the next step from just offering a computing service via pay by the hour N1 grid containers to offering a totally managed desktop/server/etc solution ? Ashif Dhanani (A): Yes. We have plans for complete solution offerings on a pay per use basis. We are currently piloting some of the offerings internally. Q: Hi, I've been beta testing S10 since the centercode process became available. First off, I think it's a great program and hope to see it continue. My question is about zones. Will Sun Cluster support zones? Jim Sangster (A): Sun Cluster and Solaris 10 Containers (zones) integration is not a trivial undertaking. We are working on very sophisticated integration, but do not expect this in the initial release of Sun Cluster supporting Solaris 10. Q: Hey Scott - why don't you and Steve Balmer call Gary Bettman and coach him on how 2 opposing forces can join hands for the benefit of customers? Scott McNealy (A): Union vs monopoly. How hard can we make it. In our case, it took 20 years. I hope we see puck sooner than that. Q: ANY PLANS TO RELEASE SU SOLARIS SOURCE IN NEAR FUTURE Jack O'Brien (A): Yes we have already announce that we will be doing this Q: Hello My boss went to the Army recently and was impressed with the thin clients rays.. is there a link to your site that document migration procedure? We have Windows on our developers desktop and I want to make sure Sun has migration procedure for the think client Bill Vass (A): Send an Email to alan.wilson@sun.com He is in charge of the desktops from a sales and marketing point of view. There are also a number of links to include TCO studies on SunRays related to SunWeb. Just seach sun.com for Sun Ray Q: Will the updating and patching process for solrais become more like windows or redhat update? Chris Ratcliffe (A): We are currently working on an improved patching/update process for all Sun systems, stay tuned for more details. Q: I recently heard a presentation about some Sun solutions revolving around the JDS and central application servers at a community UNIX users meeting in Southern California. Always considering Sun was for the the big guys, I was shocked to see that Sun had something that was very price competitive for my smaller clients. Are there marketing materials available that talk about solutions for this market? Jack O'Brien (A): A good place to start for Solaris 10 is here: http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/10/ And here for solaris on x86 platforms: http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/x86/ Q: Everyone is talking about N1 Grid. When Sun will deliver N1 provisioning Server product for med and High End servers. Ashif Dhanani (A): It is in the plans. Stay tuned. Q: I send a congrats on Sun finally seeing the light and going after Linux market and bringing SOlaris to the forefront as it's superior to Linux in the enterprise environment. Scott, how much input did you have in this changed role for promoting the benefits of Solaris x86 over Linux? Scott McNealy (A): I be the CEO! I take the blame for not driving it sooner and I give Jonathan and Greg credit for making Solaris on x86 a committed part of our strategy. Go Solaris! Q: Is sun still commited to their Consulting services division ? Why isnt sun as aggressive as IBM towards consulting services ? Mark Herring (A): We have a completely different philosophy to consulting services than IBM. Our approach is to "Teach our customers to fish" approach. IBM is in the "We do the fishing" business. If any of our customers need IBM-like services we can provide them through our partners. We are using technology , not people, to solve the network complexity issues. This is in our customer's best interests since technology over time will always be cheaper than throwing people at the problem. Q: How to you plan to push SunRays and the benefits of thin clients in the coming months? Few people I've talked to have heard about the buzz and even fewer get it. Bill Vass (A): Its hard for people to understand unless they have seen it or managed it. We are going to sneak into places like hot spots, help desks, and homes through ISPs... no more drivers to load, no more viruses, no more patches... it you have 125K connection, it can be yours :-) Moderator: Our event will be ending in 10 minutes. Please make sure to submit any final questions to our executive and expert panel..... Q: Jim Sangster: regarding SUn Cluster with EMC. How is the support is going to be?. Does Sun has a limited line where it can support?. Jim Sangster (A): Check out the information on the OSP site (mentioned before). We have established joint support for configurations, tested with tools Sun has been utlizing internally for years, with established backend resolution fostered via TSAnet such that we are offering a high quality deployment combined with high quality support. It is not a limited offering, as has been done in the past, this is an open program for all customers to take advantage of the options available. Q: Please, tell me the future ofr Red Hat over Sun UltraSparc Processors Architecture...will it be suppoorted near? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): There is no market for such an offering and we have no plans for it. Q: And if you don't read the New York Times, what the heck do you read? Scott McNealy (A): That personal! I read Jonathans blog, email, CNet, and Hockey News. Q: Is Solaris Linux? Jack O'Brien (A): No, absolutely different products. We do focus heavily on R&D to ensure leading compatibility between the two environments such as the technology in project janus which gives the ability to run linux binaries unchangeed Q: What is Sunsīs vision on the network concerning bandwith and capacity looking at Grid computing and sharing capacity of grids over the net ? Could this be done over the internet ? Will there be devices from Sun for "speed up" the net and high speed coupling of gridīs ? Ashif Dhanani (A): Our initial offering will be done over the internet. It is designed for non-transactional types of workloads. Overtime we expect to offer the services over higher bandwith mediums. I don't have specifics on specific technologies being evaluated. Q: Scott, you seem to have pulled back from day-to-day stuff and the media and let Jonathan handle this stuff. What are you up to these days? Scott McNealy (A): I am working hard. Doing press tour in NY next week. Explaining the new Sun to employees, customers, partners, ownwers aggressively. Also working our partnerships hard with MSFT, TI, ATT, AMD, Intel, FJ, etc. More than full employed. Golf game sucks. Scott Q: How do I convice my CIO that a $2k sun box is a better buy than a $400 dell box? I already know why, but for a non-technical executive how does sun market to this group? Bill Vass (A): Its all about features and long term ROI. However, from a price / preformance... we should be equal or less than Dell. Are you looking at a desktop or a server? Q: What's the future of Sparc IV with the inclusion of AMD Opteron Chris Kruell (A): The SPARC roadmap is stronger than ever before. Check out our recent agreement with Fujitsu to jointly develop an entire product line based on the SPARC architecture--not to mention our cool new next-gen CMT offering, Niagara (see Jonathan's 9/10 blog entry: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20040920). SPARC and Opteron are both good platforms for Solaris, so let your application workload requirements guide your decision on which architecture to implement. Cheers. Q: Many Sun employees make claims of best price performance, other than making the claim...how is that substantiated? Sun's participation in in public benchmarks is very seldom. Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Sun's Opteron based 2way V20z and 4way V40z products have so far broken nine world benchmark records and can be found on Sun web site. At the same time these products are very competitively priced to the competition, offering the best price performance. Please contact your Sun representative and he/she can walk you through the details. Q: Why does Jonathan bash RedHat so much. I thought you were friends of the OpenSource community and companies like RedHat and Novell? Are you afraid of the pulic choosing Linux as the "standard" unix in place of Solaris? Scott McNealy (A): We dont bash. We compete! ;-) We are huge partners with the community, we compete with companies. We run Linux binaries in our N1 Grid Containers on Solaris on x86, with lower cost, more scale, better ww service and support, and indemnification (vs RedHat). Not bashing, just our view. RedHat does not have dTrace, containers, our faster TCP/IP stack, doesnt run on Sparc, and doesnt have our IP portfolio backing it up. Why spend all of the money when you can get Solaris to run your Linux apps so much better and lower cost? Try in on one of our new Opteron boxes. If you dont like it, our boxes are certified to run RedHat. Just send them a big check and away you go. Q: What about support Intel Hyper Treating in Solaris 10? Chris Ratcliffe (A): Hyper Threading is currently supported in Solaris 9 and 10 for x86 platforms. Q: What do you think the sys admin role will be in future and how the new technologies would impact server/admin ratio go forward? Bill Vass (A): THe system admin will focus on managing grids of computers in virtual data centers. The ratio of servers and desktops per admin will go way up, but since the number of network services will be growing very fast, there will still be a lot of demanf for admins... just a different role Q: What is Sun postion with Oracle 10g RAC and Sun Cluster. Does Customer will no longer use Sun Cluster. Jim Sangster (A): Oracle 10g RAC can be used with or without a cluster framework in the deployment. What Oracle is currenlty positioning is the use of Cluster-Ware as a scalability solution (not availability). For mission critical availability, Sun (and other cluster vendors) agree that the combined use of 10g RAC with a cluster offers a significatnly enhanced solution for high availability. Additionally, the cluster frameworks such as Sun Cluster continue to add more and more customer value in terms of manageability, serviceability, distaster tolerance, and service level management which can not be offered by the RAC offering alone. Additionally, to be able to effectively tie many applications together and manage them as a single service is best done with a cluster framework with such capability. Q: Ashif - do you plan on offering UC for x86 based grids? I heard JS offer 1 cpu hour for $1. When I do the math, this doesn't look that good a deal for a dual Opteron node. $1 per node looks more reasonable. Ashif Dhanani (A): Yes! We plan to have follow on offerings with dual and quad processors coming in the next couple of months. Stay tuned, you will be plesantly suprised. Q: Microsoft informs developers with a developer newsletter. Where can I get an equivalent from Sun to get more familiar with the opportunities to develop with Frameworks in the java world? Jack O'Brien (A): start at java.sun.com there are a host of developer resources Q: Are you considering developing a File system like WinFS from Microsoft?, how zfs compare to WinFS? Chris Ratcliffe (A): Take a look at the feature story at http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/ We believe that ZFS is already a superior solution to WinFS. Q: Are there any comparative benchmarks for ZFS,JFS,ext3,VXFS, and XFS ? Jack O'Brien (A): all benchmarks to date have been internal, performance is looking excellent, formal benchmarks will be published next year Q: What is next for the SunRays. Do you ever see SunRays as the home computer end for ISP / Service providers? Bill Vass (A): Yes, we are working with a bunch of them now, and have some larger pilots coming in Oct. WE are talking with hot spot providers about putting wireless SunRays in hot spots for their customers to use when the are not lugging a laptop around Q: Rajesh: I think the NetLink question was about PC NetLink, the software that provides windows file/print services on Solaris. The roadmap for it is less than clear. Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): We will get back to you with the specifics on an individual basis. Q: I'll try that again, will all of Solaris be open sourced or will some portions be kept private? Jack O'Brien (A): We are going to open source as much as possible consistent with protecting appropriate IP rights Q: When will I be able to sell you my spare cycles for N1 grid computing? I have a few idle Sparcs and PCs here... ;-)) Ashif Dhanani (A): Soon (I hope). Today we don't have a secure public utility infrastructure to get to and from your idle cycles without security and latency issues. Sun is researching the idea around ability to share access computing "cycles". for more information, please visit: http://research.sun.com/features/puc/ Q: are there plans to offer an Ultrasparc IV system for desktop use? Chris Kruell (A): We are always looking at our roadmap and I'd encourage you to get in touch w/ your Sun sales rep or partner to get a peek at NDA information. In the meantime, check out the Solaris on Opteron offerings such as the Sun Java Workstation W1100z and W2100z. Q: are you going to fix better support for x86 solaris? Mark Herring (A): We are continually revamping, and improving our support offerings. Please fill in the survey at http://www.sun.com/sunsurveys/VOC/customer.html?AssociateId=svcsovw on what specific issues you are experiencing. Q: Sun on Sun has been a mantra for a long time. How much of Sun do you run on Solaris for x86? Bill Vass (A): Its growing every day. I don't have the exact numbers with me. We are focusing Solaris x86 on our stateless servers where AMS works very well at the front end to our portal and web applications, then expanding with SMP Opterons in the app server JDS space. Since we have a lot of SPARC already installed, we are not going to just switch over night. And we are still adding SPARCs in the stateful server space, where it makes the more sense. Q: Does SUN plan to expand to the desktop massively? Scott McNealy (A): Massively? Well, we are committed. The customer decides if we do it massively. We have great Sparc and Opteron workstations, StarOffice, JDS, SunRays, and wireless technologies like J2ME. All are part of our volume client strategy. Try them. They are very solid and have great interop with your MSFT world. Without the MSFT viruses. Q: Can you provide information on the TCP/IP stack improvements and the volume manager improvements/additions. Will I still need to buy Veritas VxVm? Chris Ratcliffe (A): The TCP/IP stack in Solaris 10 has been completely rewritten to improve performance as well as reduce resource usage, this has been particularly important as we move towards 10GB ethernet devices. We have a number of customers who are seeing 2-3x application performance improvements as a result of the new TCP/IP stack. With the introduction of ZFS we are totally changing the traditional filesystem/volume management model, take a look at the feature story at http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/ for more information... Q: Is Sun more bullish on 10-GigE w/ RDMA & TOE as a general purpose high-speed/low-latency interconnect or Infiniband? Jim Sangster (A): Good question, much of which has to do with what we call the "ecosystem" around any interconnect technology. What we mean by that is what applications, hardware, software (including APIs) and support are offered combined with the customer adoption. Both models offer interesting advantages, IB with industry standard APIs that application vendors are leveraging and multiple hardware companies offering IB technologies at attractive pricing. As such, Solaris 10 has IB built in. Ecosystems take time, and Sun does see the 10-GigE & RDMA & TOE as well. Benefits here include Ethernet economics and hardware offload of numerous SW stack functions and an easier model for ISV software. However, It is early in this ecosystem. Q: Hi, is it true that solaris is optimized to run best on sparc and might not perform that well on x86 platforms? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): As a part of Sun AMD alliance, both the comapnies have worked collaboratively to optimize solaris on Opteron CPU. Solaris runs best on both the SPARC and Opteron CPUs. Q: Some Sun people are pushing Sun Management Center and some push NetConnect. Which of these 2 semi-overlapping technologies do you plan to push as Solaris 10, JES, and N1 technologies mature? Mark Herring (A): Our fundamental goal with these technologies is to be able to provide the diagnostic services to allow the customer to have preemtive information on problems before they happen. Have a read at http://www.sun.com/service/preventive/ for a more comprehensive overview on how we approach this subject. NetConnect and Sun Management Center are important technologies that make this possible. Q: By open sourcing Solaris, is Sun expecting or encouraging external source code contributions that would be included in the Solaris OE Releases? Scott McNealy (A): We have always encouraged community involvement in driving our sw technologies forward. We have benefited by incorporating oss into our products and have donated more code back to the community than anyone else other than UCBerkeley. Keep the community going! Q: If MSFT was to launch a 64bit OS before the end of the year, what impact would that have on your business - HPC or otherwise? Is Solaris for x86 64 bit? Jack O'Brien (A): 64 bit support for Solaris on x86 platforms will be released with Solaris 10 later this year. Microsoft's schedule looks farther out. Q: When will Sun post ease-of-use and ease-of-admin measurements for it s/w products like it touts performance measurements? When will it provide ease-of-admin feature comparisons to the competition's products? Bill Vass (A): As an IT person at Sun, I love to see that happen... We have come a long way, we are standardizing interfaces,and we now have a common loader /installer for all of the JES products. That has taken us a long way. What used to take a few months to get working together can now be done in a few hours. I think we are moving ahead of other companies in that space since we run lots of other vendors products as well. I would be interested what the ojective "ease-of-admin" measure would be? Q: Has your N1 Grid computing anything to do with the Public Utility Computing (PUC) one could read off from sun.com/research web page a few months ago? Ashif Dhanani (A): Public Utility Computing is general research on how we could establish Public Utilities for Computing Services. N1 Grid Computing is a specific Utility Computing offering for specific non transactional computing workloads that require Grid type infrastructure. PUC info: http://research.sun.com/features/puc/ Grid Computing cycles info: http://www.sun.com/tech-center/ Q: Does Sun have any plans to take it's new x86 Opteron offering downmarket to the "mid-tier" market where it's never gone before but where it's a large incremental market for Sun? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Sun is making compelling products using Operon CPUs. We are looking at all markets for our products. Q: What is the strategy behind the Fujitsu and next generation of Sparc? Why not develop in-house at Sun? Chris Kruell (A): The strategy is to strengthen the future of SPARC and Solaris on SPARC. We have a 20-year relationship with Fujitsu that we've just strengthened with our recent agreement. By choosing to share resources, we at Sun are able to invest in next-gen developments like Niagara and Chip Multithreading (CMT). Check out Jonathan's Sept 10 blog entry: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20040920 We're also able to get more out of our respective R&D dollars by partnering with Fujitsu and bring an awesome product line to market faster. Thanks. Q: Why isn't Java following the open-source steps of Solaris ? Doesn't the same benefits apply to Java too ? Scott McNealy (A): Opensource means many things. More opensource licnenses than you can count. The Java platform is already a community development effort with over 800 companies contributing IP, code, ideas, ref implementations, compatibility tests, etc, to JavaCard, J2ME, J2SE, and J2EE. The JCP process is designed to ensure compatibility and indemnification. This is a critical set of characteristics of the Java platform that could be compromised with other licensing forms. We have protected the Java brand and its write once/run anywhere promise, in the courts if necessary. If it is "donated", who owns it? Who protects it in these ways? And we have worked closely to make sure source code is available and opensource implementations can be accommodated in the Java community. Q: Will Sun continue to port its Solaris OS to x86 systems in the future? Will the support continue? Jack O'Brien (A): Yes, we are expanding support. We even just recently added an Intel nacona-based system to our hardware compatability list http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/ Q: What is the stragegic value of not open-sourcing the JVM? This question seem especially relevant in light of open Solaris. Many believe that open souring the VM will help foster its becoming a defacto, and center of gravity. Bill Vass (A): As long as we make sure that Java as an open standard does not fork, which is our concern now. Once we open it up (and as an IT rep its not my choice), we just need to make sure there is a way to stay true to the Java standard. The stragegic value of Java is that you can be sure it will run on any device or OS, open or closed source. Q: Will solaris 10 support windows applications with 3d? Chris Ratcliffe (A): A future version of Solaris will most likely incorporate 3D technology such as Looking Glass, however, exactly which version and when has yet to be decided. Q: And chance of a Sun Cluster Lite, to reduce the entry price of the product ? Jim Sangster (A): Sun Cluster is included in the Java Enterprise System, and for customers who fit that acquisition model and/or are interested in multiple applications in the Java Enterprise System offering the price can be quite compelling. We do feel the product is competitively priced, but we are looking into new business models and new product offerings moving forward. Q: How is Solaris supposed to compete against Novell/Redhat Linux offerings on the low end? Jack O'Brien (A): lower cost/ economics proven enterprise capabilities (scalability, release compatability...) revolutionary technology (DTrace, ZFS...) Q: What diagnostics tools (for inter-operability of different devices) are available for Storage Area n/ws? Jason Schaffer (A): Managing data across different devices, within a heterogeneous storage environment, is critical to simplifying the data center and reducing a lot of the management costs. With the Sun Enterprise Storage Manager (ESM for short) you are able to quickly visualize, diagnose and resolve issues throughout the SAN, or storage environment. Q: How do your Opteron based x86 servers compare with the Apple Xserve G5's ? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Sun's Opteron based servers offer the best price and performance in the industry. The 2-way V20z and 4-way V40z have broken nine world records so far. Both V20z and V40z products offer backward compatibility to 32 bit x86 applications at the same time offer a roadmap to 64 bit new applications. Q: how does sunw plan to make any $ from java Scott McNealy (A): We dont make money from Java the language. We make money doing things with and that support the language. Same as a writer who makes money writing in English, but not by owning English. So we have JES, JDS, Solaris, workstations, servers, services, etc that all revolve around delivering Java web services. We made a lot of money last quarter. Q: Does Solaris 10's "Trusted" components include support for labelling packets as they pass through the OS, and restricting them based on that label? e.g. could I ensure that packets inbound from an Internet-facing NIC could never access a shell? Chris Ratcliffe (A): Yes. This particular functionality will be available in the Trusted Solaris add-on for Solaris 10. Q: what is the direction for "Sun Java Desktop System"? Scott McNealy (A): We will continue to leverage the open source community development efforts, continue to add value with localization, support, integration, aggressive pricing models, legal indemnification, training, etc. We will be releasing the next version of JDS in the next quarter or two. We are also converging the Solaris and SunRay user experience the the x86 based JDS release so we have MSFT interoperable/familiar desktop on our workstations, thin clients and x86 clients. Q: Bill, you just said "We have an alll open source desktop"; can you please clarify what this means in relation to typically closed-source components, such as your java vm, commercial wine variants, etc. Is this 'all open source desktop' all open source? I'm interested to gain more insight into your strategy here - are you ultimately moving to all F/OSS, or do you see the future as 'Both Source' (to quote Novell)? Bill Vass (A): We are and will continue to be as open source on our desktop as possible. However, I believe there will always be some parts we cannot open source because we don't own them, for example we have some fonts on JDS and in Star that we cannot provide in the open source version because we don't own them. I think in the long run you will see Sun Open Source everything we can.. At least as an IT person here at Sun you can count that I will always be pushing for that. Q: Is Sun intending to open Solaris in a way which matches the definition of Open Source set out by the OSI (Open Source Initiative) ? Jack O'Brien (A): Yes, this is a top priority Q: Can a customer upgrade from Sun Cluster 3.1 Update 3 to Update 4 with really "ZERO" downtime. If so, can we have this procedure. Jim Sangster (A): Procedures are covered in the manuals and are available online at docs.sun.com, the capability offers ability to upgrade the cluster software cascading through nodes one at a time. The notion of updates is an internal naming, we are now shipping 3.1 9/04 (internally this is update 3) so your question is a little ahead of the shipping product, so I am generically answering for all upgrades from one release to the next. The capability does require moving an application to another node (a switchover), and as such if the resource in Sun Cluster is an HA resource there will be a restart outage for that application. If the resource is a Scalable resource, then only one instance is removed/moved and the service is up and running with the other application instances. Q: Predictive Healing is really appealing, but eLiza from IBM AIX is weel established. Will Sun win against it? Mark Herring (A): We will continue to use technology like Predictive Healing embedded in the kernel, as well as other offerings like Sun Preventative Services (http://www.sun.com/service/preventive/) to ensure that our customers experience the highest uptimes. With these new services and products we will win. Q: One of the biggest problems with a new OS release is - Getting customers to agree with it - Vendors certification of their product on the new OS, which can take years. Do you have an answer to making it easier for vendors to check their product quickly and at a lower cost ? Chris Ratcliffe (A): Yes. For Solaris 10 we are introducing a new version of the Solaris Application Guarantee. Sun guarantees that any existing Solaris applications will continue to run on Solaris 10 unmodified. In addition, we will also offer a source code guarantee stating that existing SPARC applications will just require a recompile to work on x86/AMD64 platforms and vice versa. Q: There are a lot of brands offering Opteron servers. Will I be able to install Solaris 10 on a, say, IBM Opteron server? How much will be the price for Solaris when bought alone? (I guess Solaris-x86-64 won't be free) Jack O'Brien (A): Solaris 9 support over 240 platforms today, including 9 of the top 10 volume servers in the market. see: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/ for more info. We will continue to expand support for 3rd party hardware with solaris 10 and also continue to price below windows and linux Q: Good morning scott, thanks first for this oppertunity. What do you think about the barriers to entry to the sun hardware/solaris skillset for younger, college-student type developers. Does sun have any plans to help people get "a foot in the door" with sun? Scott McNealy (A): Yes. We have many programs for developers to get access to hardware, tools, training, and communities. Go to sun.com and java.com and java.net and check out all of the stuff we have for developers. Also, email kim.jones@sun.com and ask her what our edu marketing group can do to help you get up to speed with our developer technologies. We have donated just about all of our sw to just about every university for academic and research use. Good luck. Go Java! Q: If I put an application onto your N1 Grid, how do I know the application and data stays secure from my competitors (and you) ? Ashif Dhanani (A): You will be putting your application and data in a electronically sealed "containers" that will keep your data away from other customers/competitors. As for Sun, We will sign an agreement to keep your data/application protected. Q: When is Sun going to give us a 64-bit laptop (SPARC or AMD) we can be proud to show off...? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Sun partners have been offering 64-bit SPARC laptops for several years. These products offer state of the art securtiy, performance and reliability. Q: Is Solaris express available for AMD Athelon 64 bit ? (I see one for x86) Jack O'Brien (A): AMD64 support has not been release via software express and will be available later this year Q: Should young programmers and enthusiast adhere to the open-source suite, forget about ASP/MSSQL/PERL, and wait for an entirely open source world? Bill Vass (A): No,I believe open source is very important, but open standards is even more important. As long as you stick with Open Standards (open source or not), you have vendor portability... Q: Will ISV's be able to charge us extra for dual core CPU systems ? Chris Kruell (A): It's up to your ISV. ISV pricing policies can vary quite significantly; we're seeing ISVs start to address pricing policies with the advent of multiple core and thread processors (check out Jonathan's Sept 10 blog entry for some cool news about our upcoming Niagara processor: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20040920). Per-user/per- seat/subscription kinds of models are gaining even more traction than they had before. It's only in everyone's interest to make sure people have access to the tools they need at prices they want to pay. Cheers. Q: What is SUN doing to improve it's existing Technical Support Infrastructure. I've currently had frustrated encounters with the JES technical support team. "Time-to-resolution" is extremely poor in my view. Is Sun revamping it's technical support to respond to issues faster? Mark Herring (A): We are continually upgrading our centers with better technology and training. In addition we monitor "time to resolution" and are working to show consistent improvement in this area. Q: With Sun cluster 3.1 09/04. Does that mean I can use Sun cluster with EMC storage if needed. Jim Sangster (A): Sun Cluster 3.1 9/04 is the latest and greatest release of Sun Cluster. A separate but related capability is the ability to offer high quality deployments with storage vendors involved in the Sun Cluster Open Storage Program. EMC is certainly one of Sun's partners in this program. So the answer is yes, but understand that it is not specific to the 3.1 9/04 release. For specifics on partners and configurations, check out www.sun.com/clusters/OSP/ Q: Looking Glass will be added in which version of Solaris? Chris Ratcliffe (A): We are investigating the integration of Looking Glass but do not currently have a delivery date or version. Q: We rely heavily in NetLink for our campus file services. Do you plan to support compatibility with Windows 2003? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): All x86 architecture based Sun servers are Windows certified and carry a WHQL logo. Please contact your Sun representative for additional product details. Q: Is there Veritas Foundation Suite support for V40z with Solaris x86? Jack O'Brien (A): Support will be provided with Solaris 10 Q: Hi Scott...What?s in store for the bechtolsheim boxes??? Obv looking forward to see the servers?but kind of thinking desktops for the future?maybe stupid, but the thought of x86, msft (more positive relation), longhorn etc etc. A: We have 1-4 Opteron servers and 1-2 workstations shipping from our Scalable Systems Group today. Andy works in this group. You will see more and faster workstations and 8-way Opterons from them soon. Stay tuned. All will run Solaris, Windows and Linux. Fast. Very fast! Q: Hello, Can you give more info about JavaCard with Biometric ? Bill Vass (A): Yes, there are cards with the biometric built right in (fingerprint... kinda thick though). Most often the biometric information is stored on the card with the x.509 Q: Hello, how is adoption of Sun Java System Application Server, Enterprise Edition with high-availability? Jim Sangster (A): The Sun Java Application Server with the EE capability for session state availability is included as part of Java Enterprise System. This is becoming a more popular deployment option for higher availability in the mid tier of application deployments. This can also be optionally deployed within a Sun Cluster deployment such that all tiers of the deployment are managed in the same framework to deliver Service Management and coordinated availablity. Q: By introducing Solaris on the Opteron, are you going to move permanently to the Opteron instead of developing newer Sparcs ? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): In fact, offering Solaris on Opteron for single threaded application enables Sun to double down the investment in SPARC architecture for massively multi threaded applications through chip multi threading (CMT). Sun is making massive investment in newer SPARC products. Q: Will you continue with the Sun Java Desktop System development or has your focus shifted back more toward Solaris? Bill Vass (A): We will continue with JDS, we already have 33K desktops at Sun running JDS. We have sold over 200M copies, so we have a big commitment there. Remember that JDS is a suite of software (like JES on the server). It runs on Linux and Solaris (x86 and SPARC). JDS is not Linux, JDS is a desktop Q: Our company has never dropped 10k on a machine. We are small, under 15 employees. Is Sun too big for us? Scott McNealy (A): Try out our v20z. It starts at under $3k, runs like the wind, has Sun service and support, and runs Solaris, Windows and Linux. If Ford or BMW too big for you to buy a car? You want to buy from a company that spends billions on R7D and gives your company an edge. Or you can go to our N1 Grid and use our computers for $1/cpu- hour. Why buy what you can rent? Q: Does sun have any plans for solaris to try and penetrate non- traditional markets for sun? For example pc gaming, general desktop use, and video authoring? Chris Ratcliffe (A): With the combination of Solaris and JDS on Opteron we're exploring multiple new markets. Q: Where is your primary focus, on Solaris or JDS? Jack O'Brien (A): solaris is our os focus, and JDS is the desktop software stack. JDS is available on both linux and solaris Q: How does zfs compare with vxfs Jim Sangster (A): ZFS combines volume management and file system functionality while at the same time providing a resource pooling capability, 16 Billion Billion times the filesystem size of currently available filesystems....the end result is seriously increased performance and decreased administration overhead. Q: May I know the roadmap of UltraSPARC IIIi speed bumps as well as UltraSPARC IIIi+?. Chris Kruell (A): The best thing for you to do is to contact your Sun sales rep or partner for an NDA presentation--we don't publicly disclose unannounced product details, but do stay tuned for some exciting news. Cheers! Q: What is your primary "weapon" against Microsoft Windows, Solaris or JDS? Scott McNealy (A): The Java platform. JavaCard, J2ME on mobile devices, J2SE on PCs and STBoxes, and J2EE/JES on server. Write once, run anywhere, open, 1.8b devices ww, 800+ companies helping to create it via JCP. JES, JDS, Solaris, Java Studio, StarOffice, N1, our hardware all allow us to leverage the Java Platform aggressively. Bottom line, openness, security, and innovation are how we compete. Q: What is Sun's strategy for the Solaris desktop. What can we look forward to? Bill Vass (A): We have an alll open source desktop (JDS), it is a suite of software that runs on Linux, Solaris SPARC, and Solaris x86. It has about 200 components... to include features that let you run Windows applications.. I am working on JDS now,so is everyone on this chat session. Look forward to more features, applications, Javabadge integration, environment sync with APOC and WebDev, and much more. Q: When is the next planned release of the Gnome desktop in Solaris? Jack O'Brien (A): v 2.2 Q: I was beaten to it, but this is a slightly different slant: What can you tell us about your FOSS philosophy; what are Sun's motives with regard to opening up the source of Solaris and possibly other software? How do you envision this affecting current Free platforms, such as GNU and BSD? Jack O'Brien (A): we have already committed to open sourcing solaris we see this as a great way to empower the developer community and expand the reach of solaris Q: We depend on Sun for our technical computing environment. Are there plans for UltraSPARC IV to migrate to more entry level platforms? Chris Kruell (A): Stay tuned for more product news; with the UltraSPARC IV processor moving to the V490 platform--an eight-thread compute platform beginning at $30,995 US list, you've got a great low- cost, software-partitionable system. You should also check out our Opteron-based platforms like the V20z and V40z. Thanks. Q: What happened to those Sun Cobalt servers? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): During the early days of Internet expansion, there was a trend to have dedicated applainces. Cobalt made such appliances. The industry trend has moved away from dedicated appliances to standard low cost servers. Sun offers both SPARC and AMD Opteron based low cost 2 way and 4way server products to satisfy the customer needs. Q: we have a ton of legecy web applications written in Microsoft ASP/COM+ and would like to migrate those applications to Java. What is the best way to port those applications and can we migrate the COM+ applications to run natively on Solaris? Mark Herring (A): You might want to consider migrating in a few phases. Have a look at http://wwws.sun.com/software/chilisoft/index.html to see how you can your apps on Solaris (Unmodified) Then you can migrate the code to Java as you need to. Q: The rumors about the purchase of MontaVista, would that impact your relationship with RedHat or Suse? Scott McNealy (A): Sorry, we dont comment on rumors no matter how accurate or silly they may be. Solaris 10 on x86 and JDS are causing many customers to consider Sun technology for their x86 platforms. Check em out. Scott Q: Hello, Can you give more info on zoneing? Jack O'Brien (A): start here http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/10/ and also check otu the software express stite Q: The blogs.sun.com is a great resource. It's fascinating to see what the developers get up to, to see the things that are just around the corner. Just wanted to thank you guys for opening your developers up "to the floor" and not censoring them. Bill Vass (A): THanks... We are putting an RSS feed into our portal so updates can be seen as channels....even on your cell phone.. I love Mary and Jonathan's blogs, the top two most popular Q: Where could I find a 1 page spreadsheet like presentation detailing the rpoiduct features of your Solaris servers. This would include items such as the processor type and speed and the min/max number of them. Chris Kruell (A): Drop a line to me at chris.kruell@sun.com and I'll send a pdf file--I'll also make sure we get it posted to sun.com/servers. Cheers. Q: I am from latin america. We cant find retailers of Sun or a place like ebay, so we cant have the opportunity to use Sun hwardware. What do you have to say? Does Sun a commitment with latin america IT research? Scott McNealy (A): We are totally committed to Latin America. I just met with a bunch of our LA partners in our Customer Briefing Center yesterday. Send bob.macritchie@sun.com an email and he will get you in touch our a Sun person to help you out. Scott Q: Mr. Obrien do you see Sun moving to gain any market share now that Red Hat Linux is moving away from producing workstation software? Jack O'Brien (A): the short answer is we see lots of opportunity for market share gains. the combination of solaris and our new opteron workstations is a powerful one Q: Hi all, When will SunRay's GA in EMEA to work from home, using ADSL and VPN ? Bill Vass (A): We have it already in Beta, the product goes production with low bandwidth code on Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86, and Linux in October. You should see JDS running on an Opteron, you have a 3.2Ghz desktop on your SunRay. In the future we are looking to integrate VPN and MPEG4. Q: but unknown as windows/linux. How do you see possibility to change this ? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): All sun x86 architecture based products run Linux and are Windows certified (WHQL). Q: What does the future hold for Sun and Java and Sun's OS Scott McNealy (A): Our strategy is crystal clear and we are totally committed to it. Solaris is our OS. We are opensourcing it but will continue to invest and drive the product. Go to sun.com and see new capabilities of Solaris 10. Blow away! And we will make it run on all of the best CPU's in the industry. Including Sun Sparc, Fujitsu, our new joing APL Sparc, our new CMT chips, Intel Xeon/Nacona, Opteron from AMD, and we are even porting to Power from IBM though IBM does not seem to want to help. The Java web services stack is what you write to. Our implementation is the JES (Java Enterprise System). $100/emp/yr. Again, blow away. Integrated, modular, substituable, open, low cost, super fast, nearly 400,000 subscribers already. Fore!!!!!!!!! Q: what is your position concerning Linux being adopted in the desktop area Jack O'Brien (A): linux, along with solaris, is a big part of our desktop strategy Q: A lot of us are using Solaris not only by its outstanding features, but also because we rely on Sun engineers. If you open source Solaris, how can we be sure there will be no malicious code in future releases of Solaris? Are you going to apply a strong code-review process? Thank you. Jack O'Brien (A): Quality and security will continue to remain paramount. there will be formal check in and control processes that we will develop with the community Q: I'm really glad to hear about the enhanced security and other new features in Solaris 10. I think Sun is looking really competitive now. Bill Vass (A): I agree, as an IT person, I really like the containers to increase utililization, and Dtrace for application performance. ZFS is also really cool, its nice to ave an OS that is AHEAD of the storage vendors. I am also looking forward to the open source version and the ability to run Linux applications right on Solaris Q: Does SUN have any plans to offer large AMD Opteron based systems (16/32/64/... way)? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Sun is working on a very compelling AMD Opteron based server and blades roadmap. So far we have publicly disclosed our plans to do up to 8 way server. Stay tuned for compelling AMD Opteron based products from Sun. Q: Can you provide any information on how the service side (such as patch management, release management) will work with the new Sun/Fujitsu partnership? One of the largest issues we have currently with Sun and Fujitsu systems is having to get support from two different places, maintaining two separate OS and patch structures. Chris Kruell (A): We're actively working this, so you can expect to see better seamlessness in the future. Stay tuned for the jointly- developed, common Advanced Product Line, which will go a long way to addressing your concerns. Thanks. Q: Doesn't the page ever refresh? What kind of chat is this? Moderator (A): The chat tool will refresh every 30 seconds. If you want to refresh the content sooner, you can through your browser. Q: When are we likely to see ZFS in the Solaris 10 EA? Jack O'Brien (A): ZFS is already available through software express http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/ Q: What do you see as the single biggest challenge for Sun in the next two years? Scott McNealy (A): Image, reputation, getting the story out. So many folks love what we are doing but worry if we will be around and relevant. We will be. Great assets with Sparc, Solaris, Java. Great partners with MSFT, Intel, AMD, TI, Fujitsu, 20,000 iForce partners. Four million Java developers. Cash flow positive from ops for 15 years with $7.6b in the bank. We grew, gained share and made money last quarter. And the product line is best we have had, maybe ever. But you wont read that many places. Will will get the message out though. NY event this week is part of the plan. Q: I'd like to ask what the current build number is for Solaris 10, and a request - Can you please post that build number somewhere earlier in the download process? Jack O'Brien (A): we'll make the infor more prominant. the August release is current. Q: Hello, what exactly is the dividing line between what other parties call an "Open source Java"? We know that the runtime is open source, but is the virtual machine not? Bill Vass (A): Java code is "open" through the Java community process. I think people like JBoss already have open source JVMs Q: What new Opteron-based Sun products might we see in the next 12 months? Rajesh Shakkarwar (A): Today Sun offers Opteron based 2way (V20z) and 4way (V40z) products. We are actively working on offering new AMD Opteron based 2way, 4way, 8way server products as well as Optern based blades. Stay tuned for some compelling Opteron based products from Sun. Q: Since the retirement of the Sun Blade2000 UltraSparc workstation, I have not seen or heard anything about the next UltraSparc workstation, i.e. UltraSparc IV. Is there one in the works? Chris Kruell (A): We're always working on our roadmap, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out our Solaris on Opteron systems. Q: Sun is on the forefront of embracing open-source technologies for business use. With the Linux addition to your products, what additional strides will Sun take to further its venture into the LAMP technologies? What does this proactivity mean for Sun's competitors? Bill Vass (A): As you know we are open sourcing Solaris,and adding Linux extensions... This will help everyone in the open source community. We will also be offering JES containers on open source Solaris which adds portal, message, cal,IM and other servers to MySQL and PHP. Q: What is the impact open sourcing Solaris will have on the OSS community as a whole? Jack O'Brien (A): We are putting in place a premier deve,oper community that will add to the overal market momentum around the open source model. Sun (and our engineers) are looking forward to showcasing our technology Q: Hi Scott - Congrats on 10 release - very ineresting and happy for Sun Scott McNealy (A): THanks. Try it out. Download from Solaris Express on Sun.com and let us know what you think. Scott Q: what is the consideration when balancing security and the ease of use about network computing? Mark Herring (A): Naturally the answer to this question is longer than a web chat can accomodate, but have a look at http://wwws.sun.com/software/security/index.html for some ideas and solutions we provide. Q: Hi Scott, thanks for giving us this oppurtunity to talk with you. I was wondering - I've seen several articles out there, where they talk about Solaris 10 already being used to resolve problems for your customers in production (via DTrace). Does this mean that you currently have customers already using the Solaris 10 EA in a production environment? Scott McNealy (A): Yes. They are using it in production envirnments. Including on Wall St. And we are running Oracle, JES, and SunRay servers plus LAMP, PHP, and other opensource stuff internally today on Solaris 10. Many are just testing, porting, tuning but many discover that it really is absolutely binary compatible and solid and have started using it. Go to Solaris Express, download and try it. Let us know what you think. Scott Q: Hello... Can someone give me more information of the ZFS file system thing? I couldn't make out.... Jack O'Brien (A): start here: http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/ also look on the software express site Q: Great post in the New York TImes Yesterday Scott McNealy (A): Thanks. What did it say? |