The Two Things That Will Separate Cloud Computing Companies

I firmly believe that the two most important areas that will separate real cloud computing (CC) companies from the wannabes will be:

• Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
  
• Certified and Accredited Security
  

SLAs came out of the telco industry and I have always had a fundamental belief that you look to the following industries for best practices:

• Telcos--> availability and scaling
• Wall Street--> real time and availability
• Intelligence Agencies--> security
• Health Care--> privacy and security
• Search Engines-->Massive scaling
  

Right now we are in the hype phase in terms of cloud computing. Except for the companies that already understand scaling, security, availability, privacy and real time, we will see new cloud computing companies stumble in the marketplace which will hasten the time when we enter the "trough of disillusionment" as Gartner has coined it. In my opinion, those companies will not just hit the "trough of disillusionment", but they will die. We will still see the "trough of disillusionment" happen because the many who will fail will cast a long, dark shadow on cloud computing. I expect that to happen in late 2009 and 2010.

Cloud Computing is the right answer for many, but not all problems. It was Sun Microsystems Founder Scott McNealy that used to call for the Big Friggin' WebTone Switch (BFWS) as he called it. Scott was right when he would ask the question of customers, "why are you building this yourself?"

If the cloud computing company you are dealing with does not have a clear SLA, run, don't walk to a different company. Just a couple of weeks ago Twitter went down. That was not surprising to me, but what was surprising to me was the example of a company that had planned to use Twitter that day as its only mechanism for a product announcement. Are you kidding me? Who possibly thinks that you can place such a large bet on a company that has a best try mentality with no guaranteed SLAs in place?

Security is hard. Period. Full stop. Here is the bottom line on security.

• All data in motion or at rest must be encrypted.
• Realtime governance is the enabler or disabler for security.
  

A great example of this issue is the article in The Washington Post today titled, "European Cyber-Gangs Target Small U.S. Frims, Group Says". As the article brought out:

"The FBI said it is working to stem the problem.

"We share a mutual concern with respect to criminals' unrelenting intent to target our nation's financial sector and customers, whether through computer hacking or by other schemes to steal customer account information and make unauthorized withdrawals," Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant director for the bureau's cyber division, said in a statement."

This article amplifies the importance of security and some of the real costs that can occur.

The reputation of a cloud computing company can be lost with just one major outage or security violation.

A Year Ago at Corvettes at Carlisle

Mark Hapner, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems and I attended Corvettes At Carlisle. Corvettes at Carlisle is always a great experience with the highlight being the ability to speak directly with the Corvette Engineers.

Above is the logo on the amazing Corvette ZR1.

Above is the ZR1 638hp LS9 engine.

Above is the LS9 SuperCharger.

Above are the AMAZING specs on the ZR1. Check out ZR1 Nurburgring Official 7:26.4 Record Corvette Run

Leo Laporte - President of the Internet and TWiG

Leo Laporte was elected President of the Internet in a mock election.

Leo Laporte is the best host of podcasts that I have ever heard and I listen to lots of podcasts. Leo's education, training, work background and a natural ability to bring up topics that are relevant and keep the discussion moving is a gift he truly has. My only disagreement with Leo is the amount of time spent discussing twitter. I agree with John C. Dvorak that the amount of time on TWiT should not be spent 50% of the time talking about twitter.

Leo just started TWiG - This Week In Google. I listened to the first three podcasts this weekend while riding my bike on the Washington and Old Dominion. I thought it was an interesting podcast to subscribe to for those interested in not only Google, but cloud computing in general.

Interesting Lunch with long time friend Roger Fujii

I don't use the term "old friends" since it is neither as accurate as "long time friends" nor can it be misinterpreted in a derogatory fashion :-)

Roger is one of the most brilliant programmers I have ever met - ever. I still like to tell the story of watching Roger, write an assembly language program in his head, assemble the code to the machine code, convert that back to decimal, place that code in a BASIC DATA statement, execute a gosub to that DATA statement and watch it execute. This was a classic, "kids don't try this at home unless you chose your parents VERY WISELY." TRUE STORY......

The other purpose of this post is to act as a semaphore on whose turn it is to buy. We both
fight for the check, so hopefully this will end those fist fights :-)

LOG OF WHO PAID FOR LUNCH

• August 17th, 2010 I paid.
• March 8th, 2010 Roger paid
• October 29th, 2010 I paid
• April 7th, 2011 I paid 
• November 2011 Roger paid
• February 22nd, 2012 I paid 
• June 22nd, 2012 Roger paid
• August 31st, 2012 Roger paid (note, Roger insisted on paying since it appears I paid twice at one point) 
• December 19th 2012 I paid
• August 20th 2013 Roger paid
• December 16th 2013 I paid 
• August 7th 2014 Roger  paid   (I should pay next two times for the Z-Wave Door and Window Sensor Roger gave me)
• December 12th, 2014 I paid at Clydes in Reston Town Center
• April 17th, 2015 I paid at Spartans in Burke, VA 
• August 11th, 2015 Roger paid at Buffalo Wing Factory in Ashburn 
• June 28th, 2016 I paid at Passion Fish in Reston 
• November 22nd, 2016 Roger paid at Ted's Bulletin in Reston Town Center 
• March 20th, 2017, I paid at Blue Ridge Grill for lunch and Ford's Fish Shack for dinner since Roger helped me move to UI5 for Vera Z-Wave and this was a HUGE improvement
• August 11th, 2017 I paid at Spartans in Burke, VA where we talked with Kumar's nephew about manufacturing jobs in Ontario, MTConnect and Z-Wave.  Roger gave me a few cameras to try out as well.
• December 6th, 2017 - I paid for Roger, my son Tim and I at Mediterranean Breeze in Ashburn

10,000 Hours: Bill Joy, Bill Gates and The Beatles

Thanks to Neil Groundwater, long time friend, mentor and Unix legend, who sent me this fascinating article called A gift or hard graft? written by Malcom Gladwell.

The premise of the article is:

"This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours."

Gladwell discusses the great amount of time that Bill Joy invested to hone his programming skills:

"According to Joy, he spent a phenomenal amount of time at the computer centre. "It was open 24 hours. I would stay there all night, and just walk home in the morning. In an average week in those years I was spending more time in the computer centre than on my classes. All of us down there had this recurring nightmare of forgetting to show up for class at all, of not even realising we were enrolled.""

Gladwell tells a great story of Bill Joy at Berkeley:

"In 1975, Joy enrolled in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he buried himself even deeper in the world of computer software. During the oral exams for his PhD, he made up a particularly complicated algorithm on the fly that - as one of his many admirers has written - "so stunned his examiners [that] one of them later compared the experience to 'Jesus confounding his elders' "."

The legend of Bill Gates and the amount of time is well documented. What is not well documented is just how hard and long The Beatles worked. I was always under the impression that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were just pure musical geniuses and it just easy. Gladwell corrects this perception:

The Beatles ended up travelling to Hamburg five times between 1960 and the end of 1962. On the first trip, they played 106 nights, of five or more hours a night. Their second trip they played 92 times. Their third trip they played 48 times, for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two Hamburg stints, in November and December 1962, involved another 90 hours of performing. All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times, which is extraordinary. Most bands today don't perform 1,200 times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is what set the Beatles apart.

The article ends with a very interesting point about the importance of being born in the years 1954 or 1955 with great summary of Sun's founders:

"By the way, let's not forget Bill Joy. Had he been just a little bit older and had to face the drudgery of programming with computer cards, he says he would have studied science. Bill Joy the computer legend would have been Bill Joy the biologist. In fact, he was born on November 8 1954. And his three fellow founders of Sun Microsystems - one of the oldest and most important of Silicon Valley's software companies? Scott McNealy: born November 13 1954. Vinod Khosla: born January 28 1955. Andy Bechtolsheim: born June 1955. "

Now I know where I went wrong in life, my parents waited four years too long to have me :-)

The Myth of "May You Live In Interesting Times"

The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson writes a very interesting article almost a year ago dispelling the age old myth about the origins of the phrase"May you live in interesting times"

As Mr. Robinson wrote on November 27th, 2008: "May you live in interesting times" is supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse, but I can't find evidence that the saying is Chinese at all, much less that it's ancient. One of the earliest reliable citations seems to be a 1950 short story by the British science-fiction author Eric Frank Russell, writing under the pen name Duncan H. Munro, who quotes the imprecation and then adds: "It isn't a curse any more. It's a blessing."

Voting Machines: A Logical Approach

One of my three sons wrote a paper on Voting Machines that briefly discusses David Chaum's logical approach to this challenge.

Below are three paragraphs from my son's paper. I am posting this not because I am just trying to fill up my blog :-) , but the three paragraphs below do clearly and concisely state a logical approach to voting machines.

"A new more reliable voting machine has been developed by David Chaum, in which you physically type in the name of the person that you are voting for. When your choice is confirmed 2 receipts that look like a random scatter of squares print out, although you only take one. The other receipt drops down into the machine, and it is stored, in case your vote needs to be recounted. Your receipt is specific to the card you didn't choose, and the candidate you voted for is saved from being lost. I felt this was an ingenious idea to keep people's votes from being left out and made it fairly easy to recount them. You can even check online by typing in the serial code on the receipt into a web site to find out if the person you wanted to vote for got your vote. I like the idea of a receipt that is merely an encrypted card; it doesn't tell people who you voted for, but it is simply used to verify that the vote that is cast belongs to that specific card.

These voting machines can affect our system of democracy in both expected and unexpected ways. The obvious way is the technical errors; despite what we would like to believe, machines are not perfect. They do break down, and they can make mistakes. While it does reduce the human error of physically losing a paper vote, it creates a whole new set of possible errors, such as casting a vote twice, not casting it at all, or even casting it for the wrong candidate. This could cause the wrong person to win an election that maybe should have gone to the other candidate. This would certainly affect our democratic election. Such problems on national scale would not go unnoticed and the proper actions would be taken to correct the problem, but the few who do experience these problems probably never know it. The lack of a paper trail means we are putting our vote into something that we cannot physically see or touch, and this can frighten most people.

This leads to another unseen impact the machines have on democracy: people's willingness to vote. In the states where only machines are allowed, a person with very little confidence in the credibility of these machines, may feel so inclined as to not even show up to vote on Election Day. This does not apply to everyone, but I'm sure it is very possible. This is why I feel the best solution is to get the most reliable machines to cast our votes in election, but always provide paper to the people who want it."

My Favorite Phrase from The Pentagon

Sometimes the most clear, concise and compelling statements come out of the military. My current favorite from The Pentagon is:

A vision without resources is called a hallucination.

Great Unix Buttons by npg

The great part of Unix lore can be captured in the buttons.

I am not sure the 1983 USENIX button would be allowed today :-)

Privacy, Domestic Intelligence, and Information Sharing on CSPAN

This is a CSPAN captured video titled "The Way Forward: Privacy, Domestic Intelligence, and Information Sharing" on CSPAN is absolutely worth watching. As was stated at CSPAN: "The Majority Staff of the House Committee on Homeland Security hosted this series of roundtable discussions on the future of privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties at the Department of Homeland Security in Cannon House Office Building."

The balance between privacy and security is an ongoing balancing act. A good point brought out is that we need not only a CTO for the United States, (John Doerr suggested Bill Joy) but we need a Chief Security Czar as well.

Sun Microsystems has the absolute best Identity Management solution that is being open sourced with Sun's Open SSO Enterprise being a great recent example. As I have often said, look at the Intelligence Agencies for the right way to think about security, look at Telcos for the right way to think about availability and look at manufacturing and NASA for realtime and look at Wall Street regarding putting all three together.

Look for Sun Microsystems to continue to show leadership in all of these very important markets.

Unix turns 0x28 or 40 (decimal) this month...

Gary Anthes, writes a great article in Computerworld about Unix turning 40 this month.

I have been working with Unix since 1981 on a Microsoft Xenix system. Yes, for you young kids out there, Microsoft was a leader in Unix with its Xenix software. As Wikipedia states:

"Xenix is a version of the Unix operating system, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually began distributing it as SCO UNIX."

As Mr. Anthes states:

Forty years ago this summer, a programmer sat down and knocked out in one month what would become one of the most important pieces of software ever created.

I would disagree. Unix is THE most important piece of software ever written.

Thanks to Neil P. Groundwater (npg) for sending this on and introducing me to Dennis Ritchie many, many years ago. Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie are gods in the computer industry and they deserve to be....

Identity Managment In A World WIthout Fences

In 2008, I gave a talk at The Fairmont at The Open Group's Conference in San Francisco.

The title of the talk was

"Identity Management In A World Without Fences."

As noted above, in 45 minutes, I discussed three topics.

The above slide barely touches the numerous standards that become involved with Identity Management when the fences start coming down. These fences started to come down in a significant way when Sun Microsystems led the Liberty Alliance effort.

The vision statement on the Liberty Alliance Project firmly set the stage for the network identity on the web:

"The vision of Liberty Alliance is to enable a networked world based on open standards where consumers, citizens, businesses and governments can more easily conduct online transactions while protecting the privacy and security of identity information. This world, where devices and identities of all kinds are linked by federation and protected by universal strong authentication, is being built today with Liberty’s open identity standards, business and deployment guidelines and best practices for managing privacy."

XACML is and will be a very important standard and why you see that I highlighted on the slide above.

Since my good friend Dr. Scott Radeztsky was attending the conference I felt the need to tie in Quantum Mechanics to this talk since Scott's Ph.D. is in particle physics. I also felt the need to create a corollary to Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

The first bullet above is my attempt to create this corollary what I stated:

"It is impossible to predict both the method a developer will take in solving a problem and the many different ways that end users will want to use software. "

The slide above is my summary slide. The slide is self explanatory except possibly for the ABAC. ABAC is Attribute Based Access Control. The real key point for this talk is that security is in the message and the context/security level of the message can change while in transit with today's composite applications.

The final four bullets are beliefs that I have had that have stood the test of time.

Oh yea, after I totally customized my talk around Quantum Mechanics and Identity Managment, Scott Radeztsky blows off my talk :-)

Apps on my new iPhone 3GS

Here is the list the apps I have as of Wednesday April 28th, 2010 on my iPhone 3GS:

1. Informant
2. Evernote
3. Whitepages
4. GoogleCalendar
5. Shazam
6. Call Google 411
7. Units
8. Stocks
9. Planets
10. Dictionary
11. Urbanspoon
12. pic2ship
13. YP.ca
14. Trapster
15. Translator
16. PhoneFlicks
17. Google Earth
18. Huffington Post
19. Facebook
20. TideApp
21. YouTube
    
22. WorldView
23. Seadragon
24. DocsToGo
25. Mover
26. AP Mobile
27. Heads Tails
28. Sleepmaker
29. BargainBin
30. TouchCalc
31. Voice4Mail
32. GuitarTuner
33. VIN
34. WifiFofum
35. WiFinder
36. Free Wi-Fi
37. TripIt
38. LinkedIn
39. LIVESTRONG
40. FreeBooks
41. Movies - Flixster
42. LDAP Directory
43. LDAPeople
44. Air Sharing
45. OpenTable
46. Panorama
47. The Weather Channel
48. Bump
49. USAA
50. iSSH
51. Constitution
52. AroundMe
53. Skype
54. myWireless
55. zippo
56. CNN Money
57. AppBox Pro
58. PhotoMap
59. Appsaurus
60. Time Mobile
61. OperaMini
62. Yelp
63. C-SPAN Radio
64. Trails
65. Spending Lite
66. Alarm Clock
67. Mover
68. Dragon Diction
69. Washington Post
70. Constitution
71. FactBook
72. myWireless
73. Spinal Tap
    

GREAT MTConnect Student Competition - Trip to Milan, Italy!

There is a GREAT Student Competition for MTConnect with the winner going to EMO Milano 2009!

Develop a novel application for MTConnect^SM , and you may win a trip to the EMO Fair (Europe’s premier manufacturing show) in Milan, Italy next October 2009!

Below are the Contest Details from the MTConnect site. After you read the contest details you can click through to the MTConnect student competition site with lots and lots of details that can get you started!

Contest Details

Use MTConnect to develop and report on a novel application for intercommunication between manufacturing systems, machine tools, devices, sensors, software and have a chance to win a grand prize of a trip for your and your team to attend the EMO Fair in Milan, Italy, October, 2009 and display your work to the international manufacturing community.

Simply:

1. Go to MTConnect.org, and become a member of MTConnect^SM community (free) by following the login procedure.

2. Go to the student competition area of the website for competition and entry procedures. Sign in and download information/resources including:

· MTConnectSM Draft Standard (0.9.11) (Final),

· MTConnectSM Simple Client Application,

· XML Schema,

· MTConnectSM White Paper and

· watch the Student Competition Video at YouTube (follow link) to get familiar with MTConnect.

Sample project applications are also available on the MTConnectSM Student Competition Website.

3. Develop a cool MTConnect^SM application for manufacturing using MTConnect^SM.

4. Write a report documenting the details of your application (motivation, approach/procedure, results, future potential, etc.) of your application and send it in. See Judging Criteria below.

5. Do it before May 15, 2009. (See details below about concept paper submission by March 13th, 2009 – approved concepts will be able to submit a final competition entry).

6. Winners will be announced on June 1, 2009.

7. Winning entry team members will be invited to EMO Milano 2009 in Milan, Italy October 2009 to display their project at the MTConnect^SM Booth.

CLICK on this link to learn more about this GREAT Student Competition for MTConnect with the winner going to EMO Milano 2009!

Sunset.... This was my last post at Sun Microsystems

The vote by the stockholders was approved to sell Sun Microsystems in July 2009.

This will be my last blog at Sun Microsystems. I do not know what the future holds at this point. I imagine that I will be told along with everyone else when/if the Oracle acquisition of Sun occurs. I am ending my blogging at Sun because it just feels like the right time to do this and I want greater flexibility in expressing my personal views. I do clearly understand and respect the legal requirements when a company is being acquired.

I chose the photo above because my best memories of Sun were at Sun's Club for High Achievers and that was called Sunrise Club. I was fortunate in that I was selected to go to 7 of them in my career.

Sun Microsystems will be just a memory, but a GREAT memory for those of us who put in a lot of blood, sweat, hard smart work, and fun all while creating lifelong friendships. I came here as a true believer in "Open Systems for Open Minds" and that has been part of my DNA. I will always bleed Sun purple :-)

What was the most fun I had at Sun? That's really easy. Working with Dave Patterson at Berkeley to reinvent the machine tool industry with MTConnect.

What was I the most proud of? My oldest son, John, being selected Sun's Campus Ambassador of the Month out of over 500 Sun Campus Ambassadors.

What team effort at Sun am I most proud of? That is much harder for me. I would say it would be a three way tie:

• The East Coast Technology Center (ECTC) that was an all SE volunteer group that created a Technology Center that held over 400 benchmarks and POCs in the Dunn Loring and McLean, VA Sun Microsystems offices.
• Software Genius University (SGU) This was also an SE led effort working with a variety of groups around Sun that put together over 740 hours of content.
• A little background history...
  
  Sun SGU grew out of the extremely successful Software Genius Program (SGP). The
  genesis of SGP was a conversation that Scott Radeztsky and I had in the fall of
  2005 when we asked the basic question, "what can we do to help the SEs to
  embrace the developer and Sun's software stack?" In January 2006, we kicked
  off the Software Genius Program Council (SGPC) where the SEs in Americas
  Software Practice created ten courses, or twenty hours, of software training.
  This program had one goal - to ensure Sun's Systems Engineers were properly
  equipped with the necessary software knowledge and skills to be successful.
  
  Sun SGU served a very important need when it was announced globally on July 1st
  2007. SGU now has 740 hours of course work in it and the best of that content
  will be transitioned to Software University. There are countless individuals
  who should be thanked for the (literally) 1,000s of hours that went into Sun SGU.
  We will continue to make the necessary student competence mappings transitions
  from the Sun SGU's University certifications levels to Software University's
  Accreditations much like we did with the global Solaris training that came out
  of Dan Berg's organization last FY. We will make it very clear regarding the
  how, when, where, why and what as we go through this effort.
• Last but not least, was the High Performance Workstations opportunity that put $2BILLION (Billion with a B) into Sun Microsystems over the years.

• A little background history...

  When I first spoke with Sun Microsystems, it was the summer of 1984 and Betsy MacLean (later Ferry) and Steve Ferry had recently went over to Sun Microsystems from Systems Development Corporation (SDC) a Division of Burroughs Corporation. I met Betsy and Steve while we were all at SDC. It is interesting to note that SDC based in Santa Monica, California, was arguably the world's first computer software company as noted by Wikipedia. I was not smart enough to go over to Sun in 1984 :-)

  Sun was founded in 1982 with Sun standing for Stanford University Network (SUN).

  In 1986, I was an SE for SDC and technical lead for a HUGE and extremely challenging opportunity for High Performance Workstations opportunity where Sun Microsystems was the digital workstation and Masscomp was the analog workstation of choice. At the end of 1986 and long after the completion of the bid and benchmarks, I started talking to Sun Microsystems about working there. I started on May 4th, 1987.

  Betsy hired me and was a great manager and leader. My mentor was Neil Groundwater who was clearly the smartest person in computers that I had ever met. In the summer of 1987 we found out we won the HPW business that has since been worth at least $2 BILLION to Sun Microsystems over the years - yes that is B as in BILLION. Steve Ferry was THE Sales Rep on this opportunity and to this day is far and away the best Sales Rep I have ever seen/worked with and a great friend to this day.
  

I already thanked Scott, Bill, Andy, Vinod and John previously, but you can check it again here.

For everyone else, there are way too many people to thank from fellow employees to customers to partners and most importantly - family and friends.

Most importantly, I must thank my beautiful wife - Julie - for all her support through thick and thin.

If you are interested in following Dave Edstrom's blog, my private blog is at:

Dave Edstrom's private blog

I will definitely keep blogging on software, technology, life and of course Corvettes :-)

You can also reach me here via LinkedIn:

My private email is edstromvette@yahoo.com

I would be a liar if I did NOT state that I am bummed that Sun Microsystems had to end this way. As the often quoted old poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. (1807–1892) goes:

"Of all sad songs of tongue and and pen, the saddest are these, what might have been....."

Stay in touch, take care and remember the three things that I, Dave Edstrom Sun employee #3705, always tells people:

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

MTConnect HUGE Success At IMTS 2008

MTConnect at IMTS 2008 was a HUGE SUCCESS. Above is the sign describing the approach to MTConnect based on open, royalty-free standards.

IMTS is an amazing show to attend. As the good folks at AMT like to say, machine tools are the "things that make the things". What you see above is an engine block that is approximately 16 FEET in length and made with a machine tool. Machine tools are just one example of the manufacturing technology that is shown at ITMS.

Above is Dr. Dave Patterson (second from the left) and three members of the AMT Board of Directors watching the MTConnect video at the MTConnect display at the Emerging Technology Center.

Above Dr. Armando Fox and Dr. Dave Patterson discuss MTConnect during the private executive tour.

Andy Dugenske of Georgia Institute of Technology, sent me this photo when we were watching one of the MTConnect videos when I happened to be on the video stating that "MTConnect will be a revolution and not an evolution in the manufacturing technology sector".

Above was the most popular screen at the MTConnect area at the Emerging Technology Center where you could select one of the 25 companies listed and get real time data on what the machine tool was dolng at the exact second. A great example of how easy MTConnect can be to implement is the lower right LNS selection. LNS asked if they could be part of MTConnect on a Tuesday evening. Will Sobel, Consultant and Adjunct Professor at UCB pointed them at the MTConnect homepage where the MTConnect SDK lives. They spent that evening writing the adapter. The next morning Will Sobel went to their display and had them up and running in less than a 1/2 an hour.

Above John Turner of GE FANUC shows of GE FANUC's MTConnect GE FANUC PC8 (that is a black box that makes it extremely easy to plug multiple types of machine tools on one side and ethernet ports on the other) to Dr. Dave Patterson of UCB. We believe it was the PC8 first MTConnect sale EVER and it happened at IMTS 2008.

Above is the close up of GE FANUC's PC8 MTConnect device.

MTConnect and specifically AMT is sponsoring an MTConnect Student Competition where the winner(s) will receive a trip to Milan, Italy to attend EMO MILANO!

You can see that all of us are extremely happy that MTConnect was such a huge success. From left to right, Dave Edstrom, Dr. Armando Fox of UCB, Dr. Dave Patterson of UCB, Dr. Dave Dornfield of UCB, Will Sobel, Consultant and Adjunct Professor of UCB, Andy Dugenske of Georgia Institute of Technology and Athulan Vijayaraghavan, Ph.D. student at UCB. This is the most fun and most technically satisfying experience I have had in my 30 years in the computer industry....

Honoring Dr. David A. Patterson MTConnect Dinner in Chicago

Above is the invitation to Dr. David A. Patterson's Dinner in Chicago honoring Dave for his tremendous contributions to MTConnect.

Above, Armando is making a point to Dave Patterson while I concentrate on feeding my face :-)

Above John Byrd is presenting Dave Patterson with a special MTConnect gift.

Above is Dr. Dave Patterson, Will Sobel (Consultant and Adjunct Professor at UCB, John Byrd (President of AMT), Dr. Armando Fox of UCB, Dave Edstrom and Paul Warndorf (CTO of AMT) after Dave Patterson's Dinner.

MTConnect at IMTS was a HUGE success and the dinner was fantastic. Leaders in the manufacturing industry also attended this dinner in Chicago.

Coming up -- specifics on the huge success of MTConnect at IMTS in Chicago.....

MTConnect in Manufacturing Business Technology Magazine

Manufacturing Business Technology discusses Sun and MTConnect. Below are the first few paragraphs:

Sun Microsystems joins the MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTAG) to further define the open communication protocol standard it helped create for the manufacturing technology industry a year ago.

MTConnect is an open manufacturing technology standard that uses Internet communications technologies as its basis to allow manufacturing technology vendors and customers to safely and easily communicate.

"Sun Microsystems has a long history of working with the industry and academia to create and promote open technology standards that drive genuine innovation,” says Dave Edstrom, Chief Technologist of the Americas Software Practice for Sun Microsystems. “Open source and open standards are the keys to unlocking manufacturing innovation and efficiency around the world, particularly in growing emerging markets."

The rest of the article can be found here.

Best Month Of My Entire Life - 25th Anniversary

My wife Julie and I celebrated our 25th Wedding Anniversary

by spending a month in Europe. NO EMAIL OR VOICE MAIL :-)

We flew First Class and our three sons - John, Michael and Tim flew Business
Class. The retail cost would have been almost $50,000. THANK YOU United
Airlines - I used 480,000 miles from my Frequent Flyer account.

Best month of my life. EVERY DAY WAS SUNNY TO PARTLY
SUNNY! No rain during any of the days for an entire month.

The Complete Itinerary is at the end of these set of photos.

John 20, me old, Michael 17 and Tim 14.

Above is my oldest son John wearing an OpenOffice.org t-shirt on top
of the leaning tower of Pisa.

Tim on a donkey riding up the long trail in beautiful Santorino.

Above is the picture of my family and my parents (aka Slim and Weasie) on the wrap
around porch we had in our Royal Carribean Brilliance of the Seas Royal Family Suite (biggest suite on the whole ship :-)

John, Tim and Michael at the Coliseum.

There were three nights where it was black tie on the ship.
We rented tuxes so we were not carrying them all around Europe.

I rented a Ferrari 360 Modena (400HP, V12) and took it on the same Monaco
Gran Prix F1 Circuit.

We had GREAT sunsets every single night on the cruise.

ITINERARY

June 23rd fly out from Dulles to Zurich

June 24-28: Jesolo, Italy (outside of Venice), Hotel
Mediterraneo pronounced YaySolo We went to Venice and saw
'The Bridge of Sighs' now I know Robin Trower did not come
up with this name for his famous album :-) Great food and
the only place you should ever order pizza.

June 28-July 1: Munich, Germany, Mercure Hotel Munchen

We went on a three hour tour of Munich. Highlights for me was the Science and
Technology Museum in Munich. The Hofbrau House is always a highlight :-) My
wife did not buy my rationalization that I was *only* drinking two beers at
night. I guess when each beer is a litre, that is different :-)

July 1: Zurich, Switzerland; Hotel Continental Zurich is a beautiful city and
we took a train to Luzern which is the most beautiful city on planet earth. We
will go back there to spend much more time. Tim jumped off a 20 foot platform
into Lake Luzerne.

July 2: Overnight train to Barcelona
We have first class cabins with dinner and breakfast on the train.
Eurail is the only way to travel in Europe. We met a very nice family
from Texas that was heading to the same Mediterranean Cruise we were
going on.

July 3: Barcelona, Spain:
Thanks to my father, we stayed at an amazing hotel called The
Circulo. Barcelona has lots of great Tapas restaurants and very
interesting architectures such as never finish church.

July 4: Board Ship, Brilliance of the Seas
We had the largest suite on the entire ship - The Roya Family Suite.
It was huge, multi-bedroom, huge living room with a wrap around porch
with our private concierge.

July 5: Nice, France Julie and the boys went to the beach and I investigated
sports cars. Highlight for me was renting a Ferrari Modena 360 and taking it
on the same circuit as Monte Carlo F1 Gran Prix.

July 6: Pisa/Florence, Italy
We had private tour of both cities. The history of Pisa and Florence
is amazing. We were the first ones up on the Leaning Tower of Pisa
and I bet the first "Open Office" photo on top the tower :-)

July 7: Rome, Italy Rome is a City that is the must category of life.

July 9: Mykonos, Greece There were 60knot winds the morning we
were to leave the ship, so we did not visit Mykonos.

July 10: Kusadas, Turkey Too many things to highlight, I will update later.

July 11: Santorini, Greece A very beautiful city on a steep cliff.

July 12: Athens, Greece BEST food of entire month.
Too many things to highlight, I will update later.

July 14: Naples Too many things to highlight, I will update later.

July 16: Barcelona, Spain, Circulo

July 17: Overnight train to Zurich

July 18: Zurich, Switzerland; Hotel Continental
We visited Luzerne again.

July 19: Return Home

Career Advice on the Back of a Business Card....

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? "

If you would like to see the results of Dr. Smith's queries and/or provide your career advice that would go on the back of a business card, then please go to this site.:

Dr. Roger Smith's Advice on Back of a Business Card Site

I think it is very cool that Dr. Smith is doing this because the type of advice that I saw others provide are priceless!

My personal response was the following:

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.

If I know them well or their parents well, then I add the final piece of advice:

5) Never, EVER, sleep with someone who has MORE problems than you do.

3.5 Million Manufacturing Jobs Lost since 2001

I just heard an amazing statistic that since 2001, 3.5 MILLION manufacturing jobs have been lost in the United States! This is where standards such as MTConnect really matter for the United States. We must increase the productivity for the manufacturing technology industry and MTConnect is the absolute first step because until manufacturing technology systems can speak the same language, the industry will continue to languish. The great news is that, as you see below, MTConnect is doing tremendously well thanks the the huge success of IMTS 2008.

The most important group in any standards effort are the customers. The customers are absolutely starting to demand MTConnect. Below are the MTConnect Participants who are the thought leaders in manufacturing technology and are changing the world in a very positive way by embracing open and royalty-free standards (the list below is as of September 26th, 2008) that came from the MTConnect homepage.

MT Connect Technical Advisory Group: Members Assembly & Test Worldwide, Inc. Digital Technology Laboratory Corporation FANUC Robotics America, Inc. GE Aviation GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, Inc. The Gleason Works I/Gear Software, Inc. LMAS, UC Berkeley MAG Industrial Automation Systems National Institute of Standards and Technology Mazak Corporation Parlect, Inc. Remmele Engineering, Inc. Bosch Rexroth Corporation Sun Microsystems, Inc. TechSolve, Inc. MT Connect Technical Advisory Group: Observers Hurco Companies, Inc. Okuma America Corporation Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc. MT Connect Contributors/Implementers Agie Charmilles CNC Engineering CAMTEK Division of Vero CNC Engineering Drake Esprit Flow International GibbsCAM Haas Automation, Inc. Hardinge, Inc. Huffman Corporation Infimatic LNS America, Inc. Milltronics Manufacturing Corporation Mori Seiki, Inc. NUM Omax THINC Partners Refresh Your Memory Star-SU Sunnen

Bragging on my middle son Michael's academic achievments :-)

Bragging on my middle son Michael's academic achievments :-)

My middle son Michael Edstrom graduated with a 3.95 GPA from Broad Run High School in Ashburn, VA last month. Michael will be joining his brother, John, at Virginia Tech next year. Michael was in the top 10 percent of his class. The top ten percent was from a 3.94 to a 4.46 average. It was a class of champions, as brought out by this article:

"Dr. Ed Markley is not one given to hyperbole.

In 13 years as Broad Run High School's principal -- and 27 years as a principal overall he's not been one to heap on meaningless praise.

That's what made what he said to the 342 members of the Class of 2009 on Saturday, June 20th, particularly meaningful. This is probably the most outstanding graduating class that we've ever had.

First of all, you're great people, almost to a person. I couldn't ask for better kids.

Markley then recounted how this class led a school that received consecutive Governor's Awards for academic excellence, won four state athletic championships this year alone as well as producing a state champion in debate and earning $1.6 million in scholarships. By any measure, he said, this class was exceptional."

Broad Run's 2009 valedictorian was Nam Nguyen with a grade point average (GPA) of 4.46. The salutatorian was Corinne Lepe with a GPA of 4.39.

The top 10 percent of the class, with GPA's ranging from 3.93 to 4.46 included:

• Laurie Adams
• Justin Alexander
• Gi-Tae Baik
• Robert Bobbitt
• Allison Bogle
• Vanessa Bornholdt
• Nicole Bruno
• Catherine Casares
• Monica Chiu
• Michael Edstrom
• Nancy Ellsworth
• Kathryn Finney
• Jessica Foster
• Kelly Friedmann
• Hubaida Fuseini
• Michelle Gabro
• Elizabeth Geary
• Kelly Giltner
• Jacqueline Glass
• Kaleigh Ham
• Katherine Hayden
• Devon Hudson
• Cortney Jiggetts
• Christine Jordan
• Diana Kao
• Mari Kent
• Rohan Kothakapu
• Nicole Lavella
• Han Lin
• Julie MacDonald
• Wesley Malychev
• David Mann
• Jean Manuel-Tayag
• Scott Miles
• Mary Mitesser
• Alyson Mullee
• Patrick Murphy
• Jenny Nguyen
• Thang Nguyen
• Shannon Northcott
• Stephanie Parker
• Eric Pasztor
• Marissa Petty
• Michael Pokrass
• Ashley Pruett
• Michael Schweikert
• Erik Shamloo
• Sravan Tumuluri
• Christopher Tydings
• Megan Waterman
• Bradley Whitwell
• Ashley Williams
• Jaewon Yang
• Eric Zoepfl

It was truly an amazing group of kids. For the list of the top ten percent, see here.

Posted at 10:25AM Jul 09, 2009 by edstromvette in Personal | Edit | Comments[0] | Permalink

Sun is #13 in Top 100 Best Places to Work in IT for 2009

This is very cool recognition:

Sun is number 13 in Computerworld's list of the "100 Best Places to Work in IT 2009".

Having been here at Sun for over 22 years, I absolutely believe it. I wonder where we were ranked during the dotcom heyday? If you know, please leave a comment here on my blog....

Thanks and Goodbye Evie....

My Aunt Evie passed away on Friday January 16th, 2009 in her home in Zumbrota, Minnesota.

Evelyn Gloria Irene Husbyn was born March 10, 1929, in Minneola Township, Goodhue County. She grew up on the family farm, attended country school, and graduated from Zumbrota High School in 1947. On Jan. 17, 1948, she married Stanley "Tat" Thompson in Zumbrota.

Below is Evie and me at my sister's Ph.D. graduation at George Mason University in 2006. Evie is the lady in the white hair second from the left.

They owned their own businesses and were extremely successful. I remember working at their Skelly Gas Station in Zumbrota, Minnesota with my cousin Richard Franklin while our Grandpa (Melvin Thompson) would oversee our duties. My Grandpa would give discounts to all customers when they filled up their cars or trucks, but it was a total to mystery to me on his percentage discount logic. When I asked Tat and Evie on what math logic that Grandpa was using they just laughed. They told me, "Dave, Pa does not have any logic, he simply makes it up as he goes." Neither Tat nor Evie would tell my Grandpa to stop, because they knew that it made Grandpa feel good to give the people of Zumbrota a discount on their gas.

Tat and Evie epitomized the smart, caring and cool couple.

Tat and Evie always had the coolest cars. There was a time in 1970 when Tat owned a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T that had 7.2 litre engine at 375hp, 0-60 in 6 seconds, 0-100 in 13.3 seconds and top speed of 150mph. That year and model car was voted the best muscle car of all time. Evie had a 1970 Ford Torino Cobra Jet that had the 429 cubic inch engine with 370hp, 0-60 in 6 seconds and was Motor Trend's Car of the Year in 1970. Tat and Evie's love of cars, trucks and motorcycles (Tat owned Harley-Davidson's long before it was fashionable to do so) really created a love of cars, trucks and motorcycles in everyone's lives they touched. One of my life goals was to have a car faster than anything that Tat or Evie owned. Finally, at age 42, I bought a Corvette that as faster than anything Tat or Evie owned. But, Tat and Evie had more cool in their little fingers than I have in my whole body :-) You can not buy cool.

My family moved around lot growing up. When Tat and Evie would come visit us, the excitement level was palpable. Tat always had a big wad of cash in his pocket. No one on planet earth knew more jokes or stories than Tat Thompson. What always amazed me about Evie is that no matter how many times she heard Tat tell a story, Evie would always laugh out loud like it was the first time. One time when Tat and Evie came to visit I was in the process of buying a 1972 240Z and need to pay cash to the owner so I had $2,100 on me. After Tat and Evie were there for awhile, I said to Tat, "Tat, I don't have any clue on how much money I have in my wallet right now, but I will bet you $100 that I have more than you do." Tat said, "well, I don't want to bet you, but let's find out." Tat had about $700 or so. After I got to about $1,000 Evie just started laughing. It was like that MasterCard commercial - pricelesss.

Evie was extremely smart in dealing with people and had a level of common sense that was unmatched. Evie's mother, Ida, was the same way. I remember when I was 18, I was giving Ida a hard time because she had (literally) $3,000 in a freezer in Tat and Evie's cellar. When I told her that she was not making any interest by doing that, she simply responded with two sentences that put me in my place and I am reminded of that conversation today.

Ida asked me, "Dave, let me ask you one question. If you went to the bank to get your money and that bank was closed down and you lost all of your money, how long will you remember that day?" With our economy in the toilet and getting worse, I think of Ida's advice often....

Evie will be greatly missed among all who knew and loved her....