Saturday, October 31, 2009

GREAT Book: Advice Written on the Back of a Business Card by Roger Smith

This summer, Dr. Roger Smith, CTO for PEO STRI, asked me a very thought provoking question:

"What one piece of career advice would you write on the back of your business card?  Imagine that you are about to give your business card to a young person entering your profession. But first, you turned that card over and wrote a short piece of advice to help them get started in their career. What would you write on the back of your own business card to help this person? "

Roger turned this into a GREAT book that I highly recommend and is called:

Advice Written on the Back of a Business Card

This book provides fantastic advice from a variety of industry thought leaders that is succinct and to the point for anyone who wants to improve their career or life.  This book accomplishes a very rare feat  - it provides clear, concise and compelling advice for anyone.

The book can be purchased at Amazon.com here. 

The book can be purchased at Barnes and Noble here. 

The book can be purchase at Roger's site here as well.

My personal response was captured in the book as well :-)
     
I do have three things that I tell any young person, four things if I think they will listen and five things if I know them.

For any young person, my career advice is:

1) Life is short.
2) Death is certain.
3) If you do not make your own decisions now, time will make them for you.


If I think they are listening to me:

4) Always pay yourself first.  I tell the story about the importance of compound interest using the twins story on my blog.

NOTE: The entry above is from the presentation that I give to Colleges and Unviversities.


Best Halloween EVER 1991 Sunrise in Vienna Austria - SuperSPARC Chip and Socket :-)



Above is a photo from a 1991 Sunrise in Vienna, Austria on Halloween night.  Julie and I were attending Sunrise, which is Sun's highest honor it could give an individual employee, as part of a large group.  I went as a SuperSPARC processor and Julie went as the socket :-)

Friday, October 30, 2009

Brazil's National Health Care System

Brazil is an amazing country.  I would love to visit there some time to learn how they can be so forward thinking and progressive.  Here are some interesting statistics about Brazil and Health Care System:
  • The Brazilian National Health Care System treats about 1.2 million inpatients and 100 million outpatients per month, providing everything from immunization to heart transplants.
  • Complex, diverse computing systems that can effectively exchange huge amounts of patient data are a central requirement of a seamless health care system
  • One of the main goals of the BNHCP was to avoid vendor lock-in or proprietary technology.  
  • Two technologies -- Java technology and the XML data format -- were chosen to achieve this goal.  
  • The nature of the project called for multiple vendors and system integrators to implement the system, and it was necessary to ease integration without hampering the different implementations.  
  • XML, Java technology, and HTTP were used as the "glue" to bring these diverse implementations together relatively quickly.

40th Anniversary of the First Internet Message

Yesterday, October 29th, 2009 was the 40th anniversary of the first message sent on the Internet.

The two letter sent were "lo"  as in "lo and behold", but they were trying to get "login".

As CNN reported when speaking with Leonard Kleinrock:

"But there was no other computer to talk to. So a month later, Stanford Research Institute received its interface message processor, or IMP, connected it to their host computer, and we created the first piece of the backbone network when a 50-kilobit-per-second line was connected between UCLA and SRI.

What we wanted to do was send a message essentially from UCLA to SRI's host. And frankly, all we wanted to do was log in -- to type an l-o-g, and the remote time-sharing system knows what you're trying to do."

The systems crashed after the second letter was sent.  Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA sent the message from UCLA to Stanford Research Institute (SRI).  The two letters traveled about 400 miles.

As National Geograpic reports, "Packet-switching was the original transmission mechanism [for our network] in 1969 and is still the underlying technology of the Internet today," said Kleinrock.

Here is a great picture of the Interface Message Processor (IMP) that sent the first message.

Checkout this cool video on the start of the Internet. It also shows the last video game I played from beginning to end - Pong :-)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

What Is SOA?

  • First, SOA IS NOT A PRODUCT
  • SOA is a common sense approach that is both time and road/track tested software development style for building applications using services available in a network (think Sun Microsystems “The Network is the Computer”)
  • These software services are relatively large-grained:
    (like: Fraud Detection, Address Change, Payment Management, Trade Execution) 
  • Implementations are shielded by a public interfaces aka services  
  • The change to an underlying implementation, should not change the existing interface.
  • Services form building blocks of  SOA applications 
  • Applications that use these services are called Composite Applications

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

SOA Basics To Think About

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Basics To Think About...

Common Services are defined for all developers to use

The perfect program would simply call existing services SOA is about being pragmatic:

  • Iterative and incremental adoption and build out “Wrap and Reuse” instead of “Rip and Replace”
  • Going back into legacy code that is running fine, rip it apart, insert new functionality is typically not a good idea
  • Sometimes a rewrite in a more open and scalable language is the correct answer
  • The rules to use create and use these services is called governance
    Governance is the BOTH the definition and enforcement of these rules aka policies

Monday, October 26, 2009

Brazil and Java

  • A Java application sent and received 25 million income tax filings in two months.  That was 100% of all income tax filings.  
  • The main news organization stated that the number of submissions had surpassed all of their estimates, there were no problems reported, no last minute issues and they were “without words” in their analysis :-) 
  • Java is the language that is used to control 100% of all external commerce of Brazil Java is used in all the government owned banks for the ATMs 
  • A Java application manages the education system for all students in all public schools in Brazil.
  • Java and the LWUIT (Light Weight UI Toolkit) will be the Brazilian Digital TV Standard.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Thanks Mark Hapner - Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems

This past Friday was Mark Hapner's last day at Sun Microsystems.  Mark was a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems.

Mark has been a real friend and mentor.  I was very fortunate to be able
to learn from Mark over the years.  This included not only software at Sun Microsystems but in our private lives as well.  Mark is a real Corvette and automotive expert.  We went to Corvettes at Carlisle last year which was a lot of fun.

Mark was hired as a member of Sun's object technology group to work on the specs Sun was preparing for submission to OMG.   Mark later joined JavaSoft in early '96 to work with Graham Hamilton and Rick Cattell on JDBC which lead to the creation of J2EE.

Mark is a real thought leader and just a great guy.  Mark can not be replaced and will be sorely missed.  I wish Mark nothing but the best and hope we will remain in contact.  

Thanks Mark.

The Two Things You Need To Know

Glen Whitman, Economist( (his Two Things You Need To Know is here), was asked the following at a diner:

“What are the two things you need to know about Economics?  Glen replied with:
         
                  1) Incentives matter.
                  2) There is no such thing as a free lunch.

He then came to the conclusion that:  "For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.”

I think Glen Whitman is brilliant in his clear, concise and compelling summary of topics.


“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”  Mark Twain ended in a letter to a friend

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Droid Does Advertisements/Commercials

I love the new Android 2.0 "Droid Does" commercials.


  • iDon't customize
  • iDon't have interchangeable batteries
  • iDon't run simultaneous apps
  • iDon't allow open development   
      Everything iDon't
Have I mentioned that I want Android to kick the iPhone's butt in the market place (even though I currently own an iPhone as do two of my sons) ?

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Successful SOA in the Enterprise

I am in Moncton today to give a keynote on SOA in the Enterprise.  I am going to share some of the data over the next week regarding successful SOA in the enterprise.  This is an extremely strong area for Sun.  Below is just one example of Java being used for a variety of applications in Brazil.
  • The Brazilian National Health Care System treats about 1.2 million inpatients and 100 million outpatients per month, providing everything from immunization to heart transplants. 
  • Complex, diverse computing systems that can effectively exchange huge amounts of patient data are a central requirement of a seamless health care system 
  • One of the main goals of the BNHCS was to avoid vendor lock-in or proprietary technology.   Two technologies -- Java technology and the XML data format -- were chosen to achieve this goal.  
  • The nature of the project called for multiple vendors and system integrators to implement the system, and it was necessary to ease integration without hampering the different implementations.
  • XML, Java technology, and HTTP were used as the "glue" to bring these diverse implementations together relatively quickly. 
  • A Java application sent and received 25 million income tax filings in two months.  That was 100% of all income tax filings.   The main news organization stated that the number of submissions had surpassed all of their estimates, there were no problems reported, no last minute issues and they were “without words” in their analysis :-)
  • Java is the language that is used to control 100% of all external commerce of Brazil Java is used in all the government owned banks for the ATMs
  • A Java application manages the education system for all students in all public schools in Brazil.
  • Java and the LWUIT (Light Weight UI Toolkit) will be the Brazilian Digital TV Standard.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Scott McNealy's Keynote at Oracle World - Top 10 Innovations at Sun

If you are a fan of Sun Microsystems, a fan of Scott McNealy or just a student of computer history, this video of Scott McNealy at Oracle World is a must watch. 

Scott listed his Top 10 Innovations at Sun:

  1. NFS/PC-NFS Technology
  2. SPARC
  3. Open Source Technology
  4. BSD + UNIX System 5 = Solaris
  5. Java (Java Card, Java SE/ME/EE and JavaFX)
  6. E10K Starfire (came from a Cray acquisition)
  7. ZFS/Open StorateFlash (Exadata)
  8. Project BlackBox
  9. Sun Ray
  10. CMT (Chip Multi-Threading)
I agree with this list except for Project Black Box.  I think DTrace should be in its place.  I am biased, but I don't think there is a company that has been a better steward of technology and innovation than Sun Microsystems.

James Gosling, the father of Java, also came on to speak about what he sees happening with Oracle and Java.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Neil Groundwater Wearing Virginia Tech Solaris Shirt in Africa :-)



Above is Neil Groundwater wearing the Virginia Tech Solaris shirt I designed for my son John when he was a Sun Campus Ambassador and President of the ACM.

Thanks Neil for having Beth take this very cool photo!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

My Global Chief Technologist Role for Software At Sun

I was in Milan, Italy this past week meeting with lots of customers from all around the globe.  On the way home, I had lots of time :-) to think about how much I enjoy my role as Global Chief Technologist (CT) for Global Systems Engineering in the Software Line of Business.   This was very exciting for me as I was named the CT for North America's Software Practice in the summer of 2004 and a couple of years later I was the CT for America's Software Practice which included both North and South America.

It was on June 4th, 2009 I was announced as the Chief Technologist (CT) for Global Systems Engineering in the Software Line of Business reporting to James Hollingshead.


This Earth Rise Photo reminds me of my role :-)

This position of being the CT for Global Systems Engineering Line Of Business has allowed me to further  emphasize the global nature of my job and here is just a list of some of the functions I have greatly enjoyed:

Working with Sun's global customers, global partners and global employees is something that I truly enjoy doing on a daily basis.

Providing input to Sun's Software Business Units (BU) via the Product/Technology Leads Group that I lead was a key factor for Sun's Software direction.  We would gather global input from Sun's customers, Partners and employees in a very organized fashion.


The SoftWare Technical Roundtable (SWTR) is a weekly technology show that I initially hosted from a North America, then an America's perspectice and a few years ago I took it global for both Sun employees and Sun's Partners.

I am very proud of the work I have done with MTConnect, MTAG and being on the MTConnect Institute Board of Directors - all of which is global in nature.

I have greatly enjoyed being Principal Field Technologist (PFT) Guide for SEs around the globe.
Attending the World Congress for Information Technology was a tremendous experience.

It was a real pleasure to lead the creation of Software Genius University (SGU) with some of our top SEs in the Software Practice and across Sun that delivered 760 hours of content and to see that be embraced globally as well.

I was the "father" of the Mid Atlantic Area Technology Center for Sun.  This multi-million dollar Center had over 300 customers from around the globe through it in just over seven years and has posted world class industry leading benchmarks.  The Center won the 1996 World Wide System Engineering Creativity Award.

Just selecting one global trip of note is hard, but when a small group of us went to Bangalore to meet with Sun's Engineering group and spending a week there it was very educational and interesting.

Going to Puerto Rico to speak in front of 200 Presidents of companies from around the globe was a trip to remember as well.


Working Java One every year is always very education and interesting to talk technology with folks from around the globe.

Attending seven of Sun's prestigious Sunrise trips that were recognized globally was always a thrill.

These are just a small fraction of the global activities I have had, but I thought it was worth capture at least some of these...

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Google's Android - I Hope and Expect it to beat the iPhone

I have an iPhone and like it for most of the stuff that is not that important.  What I mean is that after getting an iPhone it became quite clear why business people will carry both an iPhone and a Blackberry.   The reason is that Apple has a choke hold on creative business apps such as email.  There is an article I just read in the New York Times about Android where there is much great emphasis on the developer.


I would absolutely love to see Android kick the iPhone's rear in the market place. I do not have anything against Apple or my iPhone 3GS, I just want to see open systems win.  Also, don't get me started on Google Voice and the iPhone :-)

Friday, October 9, 2009

SPARCstation IPC Can Be Still Be Useful :-)

This is someone's actual urn - a SPARCstation IPC:

Personally, I would like to think my "forever after" is worth more than 15.8
MIPS, but an IPC is about the right physical size.  Check out the caption as
well on the IPC - priceless :-)

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Reminder That The Open Source Tipping Point HAS ALREADY Occurred

It is worth reminding everyone that it has been almost a year and a half since Gartner stated that the tipping point in Open Source has already occurred.   
Gartner stated that 2/3 of clients are using open source software in Mission Critical Applications!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Open Government: Lessons Learned - NYS Forum Presentatation

Last week I was in New York City giving a keynote at the NYS Forum.  I put together a proposal for a keynote at the following event:

                            NYS Forum IT Corporate Roundtable
                                   MetroNY Program Launch
                                      September 30, 2009
There were only two proposals accepted and mine was one of them, which I felt great about:

                            Open Government: Lessons Learned

Dave Edstrom has worked in the computer industry for 31+ years in the Washington, DC area. Dave meets with countless government agencies who are implementing open source with the goal of increasing the quality of services while reducing costs.   Dave will share the good, the bad and the ugly of open source initiatives in the government with an emphasis on applying these lessons learned not only today, but also into the future of the cloud.

The talk went exceptionally well and I received a number of very positive comments and discussions for follow up.  I am looking forward to working with the great folks of NYS Forum.  Below is the overall agenda of the day:
Below is the agenda that  I created for this talk:

  • First, Some Common Vocabulary
  • The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Open Source Software in Government
         We'll get Bad and Ugly out of the way first :-) 
  • How To Create A Open Source Revolution 
  • Clearing Up The Clouds 
  • The BIG Picture Points To Remember
As one of my slides points out:

  • The first motivation with open source software is typically about saving money.
  • If saving money is higher than #3 on your list you likely have the wrong motivation.  Choice and  Flexibility, Security, Standards and building on a platform all should rank higher than saving money.
  • You're not NSA, don't try to be. Unless you measure your Data Center in acres and you have floors of world class Ph.D.s , then don't fork your own OS or major application.
  • There is a fine line between clever and stupid. (great Spinal Tap line :-)
  • A room and/or software library full of new piece parts will end up being a history bin full of old piece parts.  Think governance. 
Thanks to Chris Hankin and Mike Dergurahian of Sun Microsystems for their great pointers and suggestions!
I will include more specifics and photos in later postings when I get back from Milan, Italy next week.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

In Milan, Italy Attending EMO MILANO 2009 - Machine Tool Conference - MTConnect Intro

I am in Milan, Italy this week week attending EMO MILANO 2009.  I am attending for Sun Microsystems and working the MTConnect Institute demonstration booth meeting with customers, OEMs, vendors and Partners.    EMO MILANO is a HUGE machine tool conference.  What is a machine tool?  

I will meet with Sun's customers later this week to discuss cloud computing as well as MTConnect.   

What is MTConnect?

By far the most fun and most satisfaction that I have had in my 29+ years in the computer industry and my 20 1/2 years at Sun Microsystems has been working with the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT).
AMT's membership includes machine tool and software companies used in the CAD/CAM industry. Machine tools are the large machines that are used to create a variety of parts such as engine blocks out of raw materials typically by using a variety of cutting devices. AMT's membership also includes software companies used in the CAD/CAM industry. This is a classic American industry. This industry employees many of my relatives who live in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Back to the beginning of the story. I was ask to line up a Sun Manufacturing Executive to speak at AMT's Annual Member Meeting in October 2006. When my third contact at Sun was no longer available to speak, I called the President of AMT, John Byrd, to apologize that we had let AMT down. After finishing the half-hour long conversation with Mr. Byrd, Peter Eelman, VP of Marketing for AMT, called me and asked if I would like to do the keynote. While I was flattered that I would be asked to give this keynote, I explained I would Need to get up to speed on the machine tool industry.

To prepare for the Annual Meeting, I spent two days in Chicago at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) meeting with a number of companies in mid September. IMTS is the world's largest trade show of machine tool companies. I was very fortunate to have Paul Warndorf, ATM's CTO, taking me through IMTS introducing me to the largest as well as the most influential hardware and software machine tool-CAD/CAM companies.

At the end of the second day I met with John Byrd, along with a number of his VPs, to discuss what he learned. I told them I felt the machine tool industry did not have a manufacturing problem, but a computer science collaboration problem. When I inquired on the economics of our industry, I was told that the American machine tool companies have seen their domestic market share go from 70% in 1986 to 15% in 2006.

I made two suggestions for the machine tool industry:

1) They needed a wakeup call to start a revolution.
2) They needed to hear from someone who has led technology revolutions.

I said that I could, with proper preparation, do the wakeup call. The real challenge was that I knew of only one person who had the credentials to discuss the technology revolution that our machine tool industry CEOs would be able to relate to. That person was Dr. Dave Patterson of University California at Berkeley. I told AMT about Dr. Patterson's leadership with RISC and RAID. I said I would reach out to Dr. Patterson, but I felt the odds that Dr. Patterson would be available to do this, in a little over five weeks time, would be a long shot at best.

Fortunately for the American machine tool industry, Dr. Patterson agreed to change his busy schedule to come to speak at our member meeting.

There were numerous emails, con calls and meetings during that brief five week period to bring both Dr. Patterson and me up to speed as well as to collaborate on the wake up call and the revolution or "moon shot" as I called it.

The title of my talk was, "How The Internet's Participation Age Will Drive Dramatic Changes In The Machine Tool Industry".





Historically, the Machine Tool industry has been very Microsoft centric from the developer tools to the systems running the actual machine tools on the shop floor. I drove home the importance of open systems and open standards to AMT's members. I discussed the importance of taking advantage of the grid to reduce costs. Embracing standards has been a huge problem for our industry. In 2005, the manufacturing industry lost $90 billion dollars in data incompatibility costs. I discussed Sun's NFS Connectathons as a viable mechanism we could model to take standards from theory to reality.
The title of Dr. Patterson's talk was "Creating a Thriving Manufacturing Base in 21st Century America".




Dr. Patterson explained the "miracle" of university research. Dr. Patterson pointed to one example after another of university research efforts that turned into multi-billion dollar a year companies and industries. As he summarized his presentation, Dr. Patterson issued a set of challenges to the CEOs in attendance to start the revolution. There was a lengthy Q&A session after Dr. Patterson's talk.

The meeting was a tremendous success. Dr. Patterson were brilliant and I was not too bad myself in providing a wakeup call and issuing a set of challenges to our industry with a clear framework to accomplish these very important goals.

MTConnect is now being officially introduced to Europe via EMO MILANO 2009!

Friday, October 2, 2009

Key Java Stats

Key Java Stats
Java has become an integral part of our daily lives...
 
2.6 billion Java enabled mobile devices


850+ million Java desktop computers, 91% of worldwide desktops


5.5 billion Java cards


40+ million Java powered TV devices (Blu-ray players, Set top boxes)


6.5 billion total Java enabled devices


And a vibrant environment with a growing developer community:

6.5+ million Java developers worldwide


850,000 GlassFish downloads a month


33,000 GlassFish registrations a month


7,000 GlassFish developer community members


250+ million downloads of the JavaFX runtime and 400+ thousand downloads of the JavaFX SDK