Views on the Industry

Following the debacle at the end of 2002 or the beginning of 2003, when he signed-off on the disgraceful removal of your responsibilities to run the Java Web Wervices product team, to be replaced, by the wholly incompetent Joe Keller, who i have no concern what he thinks of me, as he signed-off on my demise (pay-back is a b*tch, Joe)...I remember when the re-org was coming in the summer of '02, and there was a buzz about Mark and Jonathan being close friends (something about BBQ's), or at least colleagues that relied on the advice of each other...i actually listened because i thought Mark was pretty cool, his diatribe that he sent out when he took over following the re-org was cogent and impressive...

I was motivated, and still believe that i was the only one doing any work on the application server in Mark's group during that year, as my colleagues check-ed out, as i have discussed already...in a flash, Mark was gone and i left some months later, and in deep hibernation Sun software went due to the complete disgrace that was Orion (apologies, Kampmeier), only to be resurrected with the release of Glassfish some years later...it is time to put wood behind the Glassfish arrow and promote someone who actually understands middleware, and the way forward for Sun...that person is Mark Herring...

I honestly thought he had left the company, but have seen him in press releases throughout the year, and i know it would be a tough sell to the Board, as they would be taking a huge flier on a middle manager, but honestly not as big a flier as when you replace the demi-god, Scott McNealy, with a complete neo-phyte in Jonatahn "PTB" Schwartz...Mark is the kind of person that would shake the conventional wisdom of openSolaris that has spread like a cancer within the company, and while you are at, get rid of Anil Gadre, John Fowler, and Rich Green, and promote some talent, not yes-men who are too scared (or too dumb) to come up with an idea that falls outside of Jonthan...

I am free, i can continue as long as it takes, Mark Herring is the kind of guy who works hard and knows the industry, and someone who employees would rally behind, and change the trajectory of this company...it is time for hard decisions, there is very little time left, i am simply calling on the Board to ask Jonathan to explain what his plan is to turn things around, and then realize he has none...

Glassfish and MySQL are the future for hardware sales, not openSolaris...Mark Herring understands this, Jonathan does not, its as simple as that...the announcements this week around openSolaris, Oracle, and Fujitsu only demonstrates that this is the case...Red Hat will do a deal for $100/yr.: do it...get going, i will not stop until someone gets tough over there, and demonstrates that there is something other than fear that runs the company...Jonathan Schwartz is done, whether you can bring yourself to admit it or not, he has failed on a truly epic scale...bring in someone who can save this company, maybe Mark could use Scott in an advisory role, whatever it takes,

just get it done...

I mean one day I am public accosting Jonathan, then i realize that this xVM virtualization thing has some legs and issue a public apology, basically because i have such a warm and fuzzy from the Glassfish ESB move, and then Sun PR gets back to doing what they do best: issuing inane, irrelevant, and utterly pointless openSolaris press releases...

I know i have basically lost a lot of readers by going negative and even broaching the nuclear option of eliminating Jonathan, but can anyone defend Solaris to me, well, please don't even try, this is a dead issue to me, i am kind of pissed that i am even writing this entry, as my historical post from this week on the JBI-influenced ESB market that has re-written the economics of middleware will no longer be at the top, so please do wade below this entry if you are stopping by, because i am not a flame-thrower for the sake of a personal grudge, i think, or at least that is what i tell myself...

But look at the September 17-18, 2008 press releases from Sun on the link above, i mean, is anyone even qualified at Sun to be talking about the IT marketplace anymore, let alone is anyone in the PR department have any say in what is marketed, or do they just take orders?...this is just a re-hash of the same problem that has been going on for more than 5 years now, that because Sun sold a lot of boxes to start-ups in the dot-bomb era, they think that makes Solaris permanently relevant, its just mis-guided analysis, i guess the whole concept of press releases needs to be re-thought, as well as product releases, and partner announcements...

I have a tough time staying positive, when Sun Tech Days does not even mention Glassfish, i have a difficult time ever saying sorry anymore when Jonathan allows the openSolaris cancer to continue even when he has the opportunity to put a lid on it, and i have a very tough time believing that Sun is going to have financial results that provide some cover to the people that are betting on its ongoing survival, i don't know why, some days, i look at Google Finance for JAVA news, as it just brings me down, and i am not sure if i am making a difference re-stating the obvious state of the company, when Jonathan just keeps on smiling and getting paid...

What will it take to see change come to this company, i mean Glassfish is alive and well, MySQL needs massive investment, and Red Hat needs to be brought-in to sell some hardware, what else can i do, i honestly feel run-down, like i am just coming out of a psychiatric break from reality, like i am just entering recovery from an episode, this whole raise the spectre of what is hurting Sun has hurt me to a certain extent, and Jonathan keeps on allowing openSolaris press releases...

will someone please save me some sanity, and explain to me where do we go from here?...

and:

I have some ideas that i want to float by the community of Sun followers, ESB players, Java developers, and general interest readers, so bear with me, as i lay out the battle-plan for a JBI-influenced middleware strategy, something that, no doubt, Mr. Bauhaus thought about long-ago when he brought together this specification, but it probably needs a new characterization to get things going again, and this time, make it sustainable for all the constituencies involved, here we go...

Maybe i have discussed this in a previous post, i know i have gone around and around with Dave and team at MuleSource (good luck, Dave, on the new venture in to the cloud),  so i am going to try and not do too much of the value proposition of JBI and rather just assume competence with the readers of this entry, that by-and-large understand that a standard means moving on with business, and not having to explain so many things that a non-standard implementation must go over with customers and developers, that is the thing that i have been hammering Mule on, that it is just a waste of time to argue that speeds and feeds matter more than a standard to follow, so lets move on, we all agree here that JBI is the way to go, its just a matter of time before all ESBs get on-board, absent any new development in the standards process, and i know that Oracle and IBM may join Microsoft in ignoring the JBI specification, but everyone else will be there, sooner or later (hows that for a statement and a run-on sentence)...

It is important to go on the second link that i provide above and see Frank's response to my question about compensation and how developers and vendors can work with Sun on the distribution of the Glassfish ESB which is a productized effort coming out of the openESB community: it is a very encouraging development, because it is Sun's and perhaps the industry's first foray in to a model of truly pushing revenue out to the partners, in this case JBI developers, instead of clamoring to maintain all revenue in-house, it is in short, Sun's largest competitive advantage over IBM Global Services and Oracle Fusion, that they can begin to build an army of experts that will build solutions that can be supported by Sun Services, Sun PS, and Sun GSO, this is a major development...

I am not going to spell-out the value proposition of JBI, but i am going to spell out the benefits of working with Sun on the Glassfish ESB, even if it is potentially obvious to some of you...first, just like the economics of the application server market initially, the developer community does not have to worry about the pain and effort of 'rolling-your-own' and can just rely on the distro. of the ESB to take care of most of the infrastructure plumbing and build solutions on top of it...second, there is obvious scale advantages in working with Sun even as they do not co-opt all the revenue, as may happen with working with IBM due to Global Services or with Oracle due to their fanatical need to maintain licensing margins on Fusion, and Sun can take partners in to all corners of the worldwide IT market, and you don't have to build offices in Sri Lanka or Texas, you can just get on-board with Sun's global presence and pick-and-choose your moments where you over-invest in certain accounts....

most importantly, it is the ability to grow account presence based on innovation as opposed to proprietary upgrades, where the customer knows that they will not be locked-in, and will be able to rely on inter-operable components from different vendors that should by-and-large work together...at this point, i should be hearing from the negative nay-sayers who claim that standards are never perfect and do not allow inter-operability let alone portability, well, i just have one response to that, and that is that it is infinitely more reliable than say the Spring model where you have to carry along the Spring platform in order to maintain compliance...in this case, with JBI, you can write to the specification that happens to be community organized and driven, and maintain a level of abstraction away from a specific vendor...maybe i am being naive and there is always some level of power that is being given to the sponsor of a standard, in other words, which vendor, Sun or SpringSource, is more altruistic, i guess only time will tell, but at this point, if there is even one additional vendor supporting JBI, that is an improvement on what Spring, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, or Mule can offer...

So, what have i missed, is this the realization, on the back-end of a dream that i have talked about was my initial motivation for getting involved in the application server market back in 1999, and why i pushed so hard for an independent market of EJB components?...has JBI achieved what EJB has so-far failed to do - - to turn the economics of Java developers in to a true competitive advantage over Microsoft's model of ubiquity?...are we at the precipice of making plug-and-play on the ESB as easy as it sounds?...or will there be a new effort within Sun to dilute the promise of standards turning power over to the developers?...i have a lot of confidence in the people running Glassfish, and so i am willing to state that this is the single biggest opportunity for Java developers in the 10 years that Enterprise Java has been chugging along: bigger than WebLogic initially, bigger than writing JBoss apps, and ultimately on-par with the value proposition of Visual Studio and .Net, 

there is real money to be made with Glassfish ESB - - can anyone else in the middleware market make such a claim?...

I completely understand the pressure that the man is under, and i understood why he took the latter part of the summer off from explaining Sun's financial position, and their deteriorating reputation, as he needed to collect his thoughts and come out with something that would give perspective on the situation...

so, i waited, and wanted to believe that he had some ability to comprehend the incredible predicament that the Sun sales force finds itself in, and the reality is that he doesn't, he has no idea how to run this business, he got to the position on a fabricated set of circumstances that look more-and-more to me like a corporate coup of insiders placing this guy in charge for their own reasons, and not for the benefit of shareholders which is the legal responsibility of a publicly-traded company....

he is an abject failure as i have outlined in previous posts, and has no capacity to make the necessary changes to make Sun viable, if there is any independence left in the Board, or the institutional shareholders, then they will dispose of the CEO before the company goes under...

i have nothing left to say about his completely myopic approach to openSolaris, and now that cancer is infecting openStorage, and forcing him to do reckless moves like sue NetApp, on bogus terms, he is not capable of making an adjustment, he is not a visionary, he writes a blog, that is the extent of his contributions to the business model established by Sun...i am embarrassed to say that i defended his move to CEO, as i said earlier this week, that decision has basically cost Sun everything, the only thing remaining is its ultimate demise, as will be evidenced from the Q1 call...

to Sun: i charge $15K/quarter, and now have a few further stipulations since i do not work with incompetent old-school management:

1. I will not discuss a single decision with Anil Gadre; and will not take any directives from Rich Green or John Fowler.

2. Jonathan can suggest his preferences, but will not be allowed to make decisions on software strategies, except to provide financial support in the way of lining up acquisitions or moving resources within the company to further product development.

3. I will make Glassfish the leading application server, openESB the leading integration server, and will give Sun an ERP business by the close of FY09, if allowed to work with the individuals that i choose within Sun.

eventually, you will be scared in to motion, by your fiduciary duty that is regulated by U.S. shareholder laws, to try and save this company, and i think we have established how the working relationship will work...i can sit in the same room as anyone, but will not take orders, i did that once, and it did not work, so if anyone is more interested in saving Sun more than saving their own career, you know how to reach me,

i am more than willing to work for a fraction of what any other pseudo-consultant would charge, but i am dead serious about the additional stipulations i have laid out above, and this must be written in contract if the relationship is to be established,

call me whatever you want: naive or whatever, but if you really had the guts to try and save this company, i would have an e-mail in my inbox by the end of the week, unfortunately, i worry that the longer you wait, the more contentious the arrangement will be; for me, i don't care one bit about anyone at Sun's executive management level, so it is not a problem for me, but it will be more difficult for you to explain and manage this executive team under Jonathan, 

so, if you want to wait, more power to you, but things will not change, and your job will only be more difficult the longer you wait,

get in touch, a.s.a.p...

and

I made some statement some weeks back that Sun should abandon any account discussion that involves ERP, with a specific reference to Oracle, but also finally settled on the costs of supporting a SAP implementation being not worth it, and really making the argument that Sun is the ultimate Web-tier vendor, where all of their money comes from, and their only competitive advantages lie...the only problem with that analysis is not the installed base, because Sun is going to lose that anyway, the problem is that ERP actually works, and is essential to running a business, and therefore, is at the forefront of being web-influenced, and will need to be a part of any infrastructure decision...so without issuing a back-track, I will ask: why not buy this Belgian company?...

I mean, you could probably get it for less than $500M, and have a new area for conversations in all sales discussions, built around MySQL and Glassfish; it seems like this little announcement just fell in to the laps of Sun PR, as there is little in the way of fanfare on the site to explain to the thirsty followers of Sun what it means to pour millions of dollars in to Sun software, I mean, honestly, outside of E-Trade in 1999, and potentially Telstra in 2002, has there ever been a multi-million dollar deal for software at Sun?...(don't give me any crap about Solaris, or i'll shut you down in 1 comment)...

for all the problems at Sun, that start with a neophyte as CEO, extends to his choices for a product management team (Fowler and Green) that have no ability or guts to call him on bad or expired ideas, and ends with terrible, completely atrocious marketing execution (yes, Anil, there is nothing you can do, at this point, to redeem yourself, as far as i can tell), the end-game scenario probably does not happen soon, and that is surely a testament to the unparalleled leadership of Scott McNealy during the first 20 years...i was one of the last to get on-board the campaign to move Scott out of day-to-day leadership, and personally felt that Jonathan was not ready to become CEO, but he wanted it, the Board wanted it, and i ultimately agreed that the time was right to have Scott move on, and give the youngster a shot...

That single decision has cost Sun the bulk of its innovative legacy, its reputation, its cash, its installed base, its swagger, and its ability to survive another severe down-turn...so, we look with cautious optimism that the worst of the American-inspired financial crisis is behind us (even considering some hick-ups, like Lehman Brothers), and that more than ever, companies of all sizes and types will look to IT vendors on the basis of ROI, not some other TCO analysis, but actually how is the installation of a set of software programs running on a set of hardware servers going to improve my bottom-line: that is the only metric that matters, and it bodes well for Sun Microsystems...

Sun can do this, not on the back of Storage or Solaris, but on the back of Glassfish, as the announcement above should make vanilla-plain and clear...there is no option left, but to double-down on Enterprise Java, and force the conversation to be on Sun's terms, where only they control the nature of the implementation, and therefore, have a built-in, irrefutable competitive advantage that results in customer ROI being more than justifiable to support the premium on Sun products...I mean i love the Glassfish people, i think they have done something that no one predicted, and some are even unwilling to admit: defeat JBoss at their own game...Sun is in a position to turn the corner, i have complete confidence in the Glassfish guys and the developers worldwide who are betting on it...

I just got to think that ultimately they are going to have to pay me to keep doing this, to show the way, to give perspective, and to bury the hatchet...i mean, if anyone needs reminding in Santa Clara, I didn't pick the fight, the fight came to me, and i responded, i don't roll over, ever...i will fight for what is right, and that is what i have always done, there is nothing that is going to change, i will be here, Sun will need me, and i have no problem doing whatever they ask of me, except:

apologize or change....