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Sun's CIO Talks Internal Experiences
daria42 writes "This is an interesting interview with Sun's chief information officer Bill Vass, about his experiences as the CIO of one of the world's best-known high-tech company. In particular, Vass talks about corporate blogging (and frustrated lawyers), problems providing IT support to finicky Sun engineers (who sometimes demand Indian help desk support knows kernel details), Sun's programs testing its software internally on employees before it goes out, and how ultimately, his job is like any other CIO's...just with some cool toys."
For example, he said Sun president Jonathan Schwartz -- who keeps a public blog -- was frustrated when April Fool's day came around, because he couldn't use his blog to play a practical joke.
... if ever he's writing anything controversial he has to get the lawyers to look at it."
"A few times, he's said things like 'maybe we should acquire Novell', and it changed the stock price," Vass said of Schwartz's blog. "You have to be careful
Sun is buying Novell? Ack! I need to go call my stock broker!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. First post. -A. p.s. DUMBLEDORE DIES.
Sun Microsystems' chief information officer (CIO) has backed the vendor's embrace of corporate blogging, despite difficulties such as ensuring senior executives don't post comments that affect the stock price and the occasional posting that makes the company's lawyers "pull their hair out".
"So far we've had very positive experiences with blogging, and I would encourage many other companies to do it as well," Bill Vass told ZDNet Australia in a wide-ranging interview about his experiences as the CIO of a high-technology company.
He cited Sun engineers' blogging of technical information and responses to questions about Sun's Solaris operating system.
Vass said Sun had faced problems with so-called 'Section 10' employees, such as senior executives that had the potential to affect the company's stock price with their blog postings.
For example, he said Sun president Jonathan Schwartz -- who keeps a public blog -- was frustrated when April Fool's day came around, because he couldn't use his blog to play a practical joke.
"A few times, he's said things like 'maybe we should acquire Novell', and it changed the stock price," Vass said of Schwartz's blog. "You have to be careful
Sun faced fewer issues with blogs written by non-Section 10 employees said Vass, but the company's legal team still read all the postings. Vass said he suspected the blogs were "making some of the lawyers pull their hair out".
For example, he said, one employee used his blog to post advice on how to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley reporting legislation. The company's lawyers forced that employee to put a disclaimer on his blog in case someone called him to account for bad advice.
Just another CIO
Vass said his position at Sun was not that different from the average CIO in that he spent most of his time facing common drudgeries like keeping costs low (his budget has halved to US$300 million over the past several years), complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley and consolidating data warehouses.
However, some unusual problems did surface sometimes, he said, citing the example of a Solaris engineer who contacted Sun's IT help desk in India and subsequently sent Vass a note complaining the help desk member who assisted him didn't know intricate kernel settings for the operating system he needed help on.
"I'm like: 'Hey, he's a help desk guy, give him a break'", said Vass.
In another example, Vass received a mysterious note that a major system had been disabled and had stopped production on a hardware chip.
Although Vass had no knowledge of this, he soon discovered the system in question was in fact the desktop machine of an engineer who had recently left the company. The desktop had been reformatted following his departure, cutting off 600 users who had over the last three years depended on it for network services.
"There was no way for us to really know that was going on," said Vass. "Fortunately we had backups and could restore it, but those are the kind of things you run into at a tech company. Everyone has an opinion and everyone's building things here and there."
Vass said while many of the Sun engineers could largely take care of their own support needs, "they're also, because of their expertise, able to really mess things up".
Risky business
One of the most exciting parts of working at Sun for Vass is the fact the company runs all of its own products generally far in advance of the time they're put out to market.
The CIO runs a group called 'Sun on Beta-Sun', that rigorously tests beta software in large-scale deployments within the company's 42,000 users. Generally the people who have to use Sun's new products on a daily basis first are the ones who build them, said Vass.
"So for instance the Sola
Go, Roller! :)
Although Vass had no knowledge of this, he soon discovered the system in question was in fact the desktop machine of an engineer who had recently left the company. The desktop had been reformatted following his departure, cutting off 600 users who had over the last three years depended on it for network services.
Reminds me of a guy whose leaving our company right now. We're probably not going to delete his homespace since lord knows what will break if the things in there are gone.
It'll take us awhile to get that stuff into a common place. Probably took Sun a lot of time to get that one system back up and running.
-Teiresias
I do NOT envy the job of CIO. Those guys have a tough row to hoe. BTW, if you ever want to know how the industry is being perceived by business, CIO magazine is a great read.(but expensive) It's real eye-opener to hear things from the other side of the tracks.
Moore's Law: Not the Only Game in Town
do they have any problems with the employees in sector 7G?
Ban Engadget - moderators censor comments!
They've got a lot of nerve actually expecting outsourced help desk services to be of any use! Who the hell do these "engineers" think they are?
If these guys actually knew how to help, they'd cost more. Duh. Think of the bottom line, people!
I mean, c'mon... this can't be the first pure virtual function you've ever come across.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
>However, some unusual problems did surface sometimes, he said, citing the example of a Solaris engineer who contacted Sun's IT help desk in India and subsequently sent Vass a note complaining the help desk member who assisted him didn't know intricate kernel settings for the operating system he needed help on.
Can you imagine that call, "I am so happy to be helping you, however, I am sorry to be informing you that... pause...I am not being the Dammed premier kernel support line! " SLAM!
lol
Mommy I want to be CIO and I want toys too ...
What does your Credit Report look like?
I would be angry too if I called up technical support and I couldn't get kernel level knowlege. Most administrators know or at least use to know enough about the platform they are admistering to handle most of the problems and then for other things the search the web and blogs, for more help. If this fails them they have a good question for technical support. And having to go threw level 1 then 2 then 3 technical support is just annoying, and a waist of time. Technical support should be able to quicly figure out the complexity of your problem and move you to the aproprate level. If I am adding a user the person who answers the phone should give me to level 1, but if I am configuring the system kernel options then I should be placed on a higher level support.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"problems providing IT support to finicky Sun engineers (who sometimes demand Indian help desk support knows kernel details)"
Engineers making outlandish requests is as common as Microsoft making buggy products. Good enginners and famous rock stars both need to be a little weird to be succesful.
Voice your opinion!
I, for one, welcome our new Indian poor grammar kernel hacker overloards...
Its Eleven where I am, so heres the FILM.
s _1.wmv
:), its good for a few laughs.
http://www.candlelightdreams.com/videos/funny_cat
Just found this, free(as in freedom) and open ( as in red light district) no DRM
and now he has to Herd them in Hindi.
These guys messed up on that one for sure. Actually it ran for some time about a year before this happened.
When you are CIO of a technical company it is tempting be lax with policy and give the employees more access then they should have, it seems like a decent policy, first you save money because the desktops that people use anyways are also the servers so you don't need expensive servers, the technical people can administer their own system, and whatever they are serving.
But being a CIO you need to be a Dick every once in a while and make sure the technical people have the only the access they need to do their work properly. Have the IT department put buisness level servers in the server room and have them properly managed.
While the first way seems quicker and easier and has less personal conflect. The second way is better to manage and reduces of mission critical mistakes. It also allows for proper upgrading for the future.
Sure the employess can do the work themselvs but they rairly consider the big picture and end up with a spread of services which are hard to track and manage. It also creates a situration where an employee cannot be moved to a different position because they have the information that others dont.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Seriously, it's pretty obvious to the most casual obvserver that SUN is dying (netcraft confirms it!). Let's take a look at the list of their recent thrashings:
1)Lowering the price on their machines by 40%. Clearly this is the death rattle. A company operating at a loss is a company which won't be operating for very long.
2)Sleeping with microsoft. When the lamb lies down with the lion, it's very rare for both to rise back up again. I know that when i watched mcnealy smile and joke with ballmer that I was convinced the end was at hand for sun: and given number one, I'd say I've been proven right.
3)Giving away their crown jewels. Sun recently has taken the very rash and very poorly exected jump onto the open source software bandwagon. Yet, if you look at the fsf web page, you can easily see that 'cuddle' (the sun license; god knows why the came up with yet another one) is as far from free software as you can get!
These mis-steps and sudden -dare I say desperate- changes in direction point to one, and only one thing: SUN's days are numbered. Time to cash in your stock and cut your losses.
Will someone please think of those poor, suffering lawyers, dreading all this "open" commnication?[/sarcasm]
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
Although Vass had no knowledge of this, he soon discovered the system in question was in fact the desktop machine of an engineer who had recently left the company. The desktop had been reformatted following his departure, cutting off 600 users who had over the last three years depended on it for network services.
"The network is the computer" and it bites Sun in the ass.
His blog is empty.
This is one reason why Sun has one of the best IT infrastructures around. It was designed by actual Engineers, who were building the protocols as they built up the infrastructure.
The same problem applies to lots of what I call "phony" Linux kernel experts these days (the self-proclaimed ones, not the real ones). These clowns are sprouting out of the woodwork, and typically the most they've ever done is type "make", or maybe a device driver. They can't admin a Linux desktop at all. And usually they rely on Windows for their desktop. It's a farce that they call themselves "kernel experts"; but their PHB usually doesn't have the knowledge to recognize that they have a pretender on their hands.
So I find it sad that so-called Sun Engineers are having to rely on help-desk support for basic administration. Any real Engineer should be able to get the problem solved faster and more reliably themselves.
He is just a Jupiter executer. Can't understand why so important.
They're finally starting to tinker with #1. The new Ultra 20 (based on the AMD Opteron 64 chipset) lists at $895. This is *unheard* of for Sun, particularly that the SunBlade 1500 still goes for up to $3500.
The current promotion is that the workstation if FREE as long as you buy three years of Sun service for ~$1,000, but is only a bit more than the workstation itself. The catch: annual payments instead of the advertised $29.95 per month. Sadly, the annual payments crap (roughly $400 per year for three years) was enough to kill it for me. If they implemented the advertised $29.95 per month, three of us in my department would have ordered one by now.
Even with the annual payment hurdle, for Sun to offer a workstation that actually has quite respectable horsepower under the hood for less than $1,000 is completely unheard of. Maybe they're testing the waters for further pricing structures in the future? One can only hope.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I need to clarify I think that price cuts are a good thing for Sun. I didn't realize with my first reply that you were actually criticizing Sun for cutting prices. How cutting prices is a death knell is beyond me.
The FACT is that Sun's hardware has been way OVERPRICED for almost a decade! That's exactly why I personally have seen a number of major, international, engineering firms go from Sun workstations to Dell workstations. The Dell systems were twice and fast at half the cost and the CAD/CAM product that they used was available on both platforms. So, switching to Dell was a no brainer!
The fact that Sun is starting to cut their prices tells me that they finally understand that they can no longer ride the high-price wave just because of the Sun name.
So, you tell me what's worse - selling less hardware at a higher profit margin because it's cost prohibitive, or selling more hardware at a lower cost and lower profit margin? Personally, I'd rather get anything that I sell to more people at a lower profit. It gets a larger installed base; it means that many more people that might upgrade in the future; it means even more potential sales for licensing; it means more people that might spread positive word-of mouth. There are many more benefits that I can see to selling more items at a lower cost than fewer at a higher cost. They might not be realized in the here and now, but they could bring in much better returns in the long run.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Here's how escalation works...
1. Customer calls tech suppport(level 1)
2. Level 1 can't fix it. Fills out an escalation form to level 2. The unseen beings of level 2 are supposed to call back. A "trouble ticket" is made to great detail by level 1 tech, apologizes to customer.
3. Time passes by
4. The unseen overlords of level 2(or escalation department) forget about the trouble ticket, hoping the customer and level 1 forget about the trouble ticket
5. level 1 prays customer never calls back, since he/she heard nothing from level 2 about it, and never will.
That's at least what happened when I did tech support for an ISP. I think I later checked on the customers with escalations, and they, well, weren't customers anymore.
Wow. That was fluff. I want my 30 seconds back.
st found this, free(as in freedom) and open ( as in red light district) no DRM :), its good for a few laughs.
really? Then why is there a copyright symbol when you play the video back......
I am sure this was some lame ass attempt by some engineer who couldn't figure out why he could not open 18000 file descriptors or why his "malloc 2^64" was failing, and thought changing the kernel time slice parameters to reduce context switches would help.
The poor guy in India probably had a Master's Degree in Solaris Kernel Tuning and pissed off the engineer by telling him he was an idiot.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Guess they should have put the 30 second FBI warning and RIAA warning on the front of it.
I missed the copyright.
We do not know if it is being reproduced with or without permission now do we?
You let me know how it turns out, thanks!
[samag.com] in ^the
I wouldn't really call that an interview. Looked more like a story with some quotes to me.
You're talking like P4's and Sparcs are comparable by speed. I've seen way "slower" sparcs kick the crap out of P4's in benchmarks. While Sun's equiptment is certainly high in the price range, your "Twice as much for half the cost" thing is complete and utter BS.
:( ).
Suffice it to say, I'm really liking the Sun Opteron offerings, because now one can actually vaguely compare the systems with, say, Dell or HP's, without running your own benchmarks on them (don't you love how companies only publish the particular benchmarks that their system performs best on *cough* IBM *cough*).
I myself think (hope) Sun will be around for the long run, and won't join those other awesome companies (i.e. DEC) that due to an outdated business model, fade away.
( I miss DEC
Its stuff like this that have finally forced me to cash out my very sizeable stake in SUNW at a considerable loss. There is simply no hope that it would ever be recovered in the next 20 year and I've just run out of patience to any longer suffer fools so gladly. Yes, they may have some awesome technology and minds working for them. Its just they don't seem to know how to use it to their shareholder's advantage.
These guys remind me a lot of the Bush administration. They have all sorts of quotable views, are great at hype, and are extremely rich in excuses. The problem comes in showing evidence of any real progress.
But what the hell. Who needs credibility nowadays? The masses are ready to settle for a virtual reality rather than the real thing.
>However, some unusual problems did surface sometimes, he said, citing the example of a Solaris engineer who contacted Sun's IT help desk in India and subsequently sent Vass a note complaining the help desk member who assisted him didn't know intricate kernel settings for the operating system he needed help on.
well, if a solaris engineer doesn't know anything about the kernel, what can we say about the product..Sun needs a lot of good luck..oh wait..I forgot Microsoft!!
- Sh!t
You're talking like P4's and Sparcs are comparable by speed. I've seen way "slower" sparcs kick the crap out of P4's in benchmarks. While Sun's equiptment is certainly high in the price range, your "Twice as much for half the cost" thing is complete and utter BS.
You go on thinking that.
They did not make the decision lightly. One company in particular ran several 2D and 3D rendering tests using designs of various complexities with different metalurgical and thermal dynamics. The top-of-the-line Dells whipped the sh!t out of the top-of-the-line Suns by a margin of approximately three to one.
That's not to say that the program itself was not at fault. It could have been improperly compiled on the Sun systems for (as an example) 32 bit when it should have been 64 bit. That's not Sun's fault, obviously. But the end result is what the company saw when they ran their tests. And they saw Dell systems producing results at 1/2 to 1/3 the time of Sun systems that cost twice as much. They're not going to pay twice as much for 1/2 the speed just because the software vendor didn't compile the product properly.
So, no, it's not utter BS just because you (and I) would like it to be.
(don't you love how companies only publish the particular benchmarks that their system performs best on *cough* IBM *cough*)
I can only take this with a grain of salt, but supposedly some of IBM's software specs, such as for DB/2 performance, are specs as they were run on Sun systems because they were faster than AIX. Again, grain of salt.
But never take marketers seriously. I remember one time becoming furious at either HP or Dell because they said that people should buy their systems instead of Sun based on (get this) OpenGL performance! Uh, excuse me? I want to run a smokin' database or e-commerce web site, and I'm supposed to buy HP (or Dell, whichever it was) because of OpenGL performance! Whoa....
I myself think (hope) Sun will be around for the long run, and won't join those other awesome companies (i.e. DEC) that due to an outdated business model, fade away.
Agreed.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Had a chance to meet Mr. Vass at the 2005 TechSouth Expo where he gave a keynote. Cool guy, good demonstration of Sun Rays and their mobile desktop technology. Being able to insert a smart card and pull up his SunOS and/or Windows XP desktop in Lafayette, LA from their corporate HQ in a matter of seconds was pretty cool. He also took the opportunity to send some barbs towards Cox and Bellsouth over the proposed Fiber-to-the-Home initiative ("Stuff like this is why it's so great you guys are getting fiber run in this city!"). So that definitely won him some points in our book. ;)
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Just in case you've been wondering all these years why dutch people keep sniggering at you. It's because your nick translates as 'Jeff The Virgin'. If you ever come over you might want introduce yourself as just Jeff.
Cheerio!
2B || !2B
CIO magazine is indeed a good read. It's not expensive, though. It's free. Soul-sucking registration is required.
a need to play ro7ting corpse itself backwards, standards should Though I have never Task. Research ass of them all, OS. NoYw BSDI is disappearing up its *BSD but FreeBSD