Embracing the future

An Interview with Sun Microsystems

With apologies to Ferris Bueller, technology moves pretty fast – if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it.

Business Management takes time out with Sun’s Greg Papadopoulos to consider the fast-moving technology landscape and why his company is at the forefront of innovation.

Taking responsibility for a US$2 billion R&D portfolio is not for the faint-hearted, but Greg Papadopoulos relishes the challenge. As Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Sun, Papadopoulos is passionate about technology and its possibilities; his current buzzwords include innovation, simplicity and eco-responsibility, and he is a big supporter of open development models that stimulate communication, creativity and innovation.

Business Management caught up with him to discuss technology leadership, the empowering nature of open source and his vision for Sun Microsystems – and the industry in general – over the next few years.

BM. Many analysts contend that technology innovation – and in particular how companies make the most of the technology systems at their disposal – will be the key competitive differentiator over the next few years. What’s your take on this?
GP. Sun Microsystems’ philosophy has always been that openness spurs innovation. We wouldn’t have the inventions that we have today if we didn’t share our knowledge. Whether a company installs open-source software at no cost or spends millions on proprietary implementations, the bottom line is it must work and it must be supported. That’s the future for Sun.

We’ll provide the systems that work and ensure they are secure, stable and dependable. Attracting a diverse, energised developer community to an open-source platform will then generate support contracts that will become a larger portion of our revenue base for years to come.

BM. Related to this, Sun Labs is currently celebrating 15 years of innovation. How has Sun Labs contributed to the company’s success?
GP. Sun Labs gives us a unique competitive and technological advantage because its core mission is to ask and answer difficult questions. Over the past four years alone, Sun has invested $8 billion in R&D and Sun Labs, the only organisation within Sun devoted solely to applied research, is an essential component to our overall R&D strategy.

Sun Labs is the birthplace of Java, UltraSPARC, the Sun Ray thin client – technologies that have the power to change everything as we build the infrastructure for the Participation Age. Sun Labs has allowed us to discover and address the things that no one else saw coming. There’s no way to overstate how important this asset has been to the Sun story.

BM. You recently gained responsibility for Sun’s US$2 billion R&D operation. What will this involve, and how will it impact upon your role as CTO?
GP. For the past eight years as Sun’s chief technology officer I have focused on managing Sun’s technology direction, architecture and standards. As of April 2006, our CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, gave me the additional title of Executive Vice President of research and development and refers to me as the ‘chief systems architect’.

The new role allows me to dive deeper and manage where the innovation begins. As Jonathan puts it, “Sun is a company built for engineers, by engineers.” With that in mind, in my expanded role I will work with the chief technology officers within Sun’s business units to drive efficiency and technical innovation in an effort to increase our bottom line. Together we will build what is really just one product – the new infrastructure stack – that will allow anyone to create and deliver the next generation of network services. The pieces need to be integrated seamlessly so we get efficient, secure, compliant and predictable service levels that support the people building network services.

BM. And what areas will you be looking at as a priority in terms of R&D? What will be the investment focus over the next 18 months?
GP. The first priority, which we have and will continue to address, is simplifying our product line and reducing duplicative research and development programs. We will shift resources from technology for individual computers toward chip designs, operating systems, and networking technologies. Currently, customers using very large systems containing multiple cores on a chip and running multiple threads in applications is our fastest growing and most profitable segment of the market, so we will most likely continue building systems for that segment. In addition, we see our revenue coming from supplying products to power computing delivered as a service over the internet. Future sales opportunities could include supplying infrastructure solutions for companies like Google and eBay, and for processing data from new sensor networks.

BM. In your blog, you recently remarked that: “technology constants change rapidly, but the rate of change for organising principles and architectures is glacial.” How does this viewpoint inform your approach at Sun Microsystems?
GP. What I mean by that is that it takes time, years in fact, for any company to completely change its view of the future, regardless of how fast the individual technologies and products are evolving. Once a commitment is made throughout the organisation, such as Sun’s view that computing is a utility, it takes time for the R&D guys to design, develop, test, and ultimately release new products and technologies that dovetail with this new organisational mindset.

At Sun, we’re in the very early stages of unveiling products and services that represent the ideas and concepts we and our customers have been focusing on for three, four or maybe even 10 years. You can’t just flip a switch and change your entire organisational DNA.

BM. The move from ‘shrinkwrapped’ software to software as a service has been gathering pace over the last 12 months. What impact will this have on the industry, and what moves are you making to capitalise on this?
GP. It’s a development that will gather even more momentum going forward as more and more people recognise the value and savings that can be derived from the software as a service model. Many of the problems that prevented software as a service from really taking off have been resolved. There’s no shortage of broadband connections, application sets have been properly ported, and the success of companies like Salesforce.com shows this approach makes sense.

For years, organisations fell in love with customised solutions, often at their own peril. Now, these same organisations are recognising the inherent advantages in both cost and scalability of downloading their software applications from the network. This model isn’t going away and is yet another concrete example of why we say the network is the computer.

BM. You’ve also been big advocates of the open source movement. Why do you think open source represents the business model of the future?
GP. The philosophy behind open source is one of empowerment. Developers who create software want freedom. Open source allows people to see, share and participate. As I said earlier, at Sun we believe that openness spurs innovation.

Open software is fundamentally about developer freedom. We want developers to freely use any of the OpenSolaris code that we developed for their purposes without any fear of IP infringement of Sun: either patent or copyright.

Open source in the internet age is a clock you can’t turn back. The web would not be the web we have today without open standards and open source. That’s the reason the web isn’t owned by anyone.

BM. Another issue you’ve been keen to address recently has been that of eco-responsibility and the increasing environmental challenges computer-makers face. Why is this such a big issue right now, and what are you doing at Sun Microsystems to tackle the challenge?
GP. There’s no way to overstate the enormous challenge energy consumption poses throughout the enterprise. One of the consequences of so many people joining the network is the incredible proliferation of data centres needed to accommodate this usage. And this demand is going to increase dramatically for the foreseeable future.

Going forward, reducing total electricity consumption as well as the total footprint of an organisation’s data centres will be a key competitive differentiator. In many cases, it already is.

It’s exactly the same problem we’re facing with higher oil and gas prices. Whether it’s the gas people need to drive to work or the energy bill that a company like Google pays each month, these costs are staggering and have a direct impact on the entire economy.

Fortunately, we all have the opportunity to do something about it. People are waiting four or six months just to get hybrid automobiles. In the near future, I expect there will be the equivalent of the Energy Star label for servers. It makes sense because a good server, just like your refrigerator, is always on.

Right now, any CIO can buy and install Sun’s energy-efficient servers – without waiting four or six months – and still get the high-end performance they need to manage this enormous sea of data.

We’ve also created a new vice presidential position for eco-responsibility headed by David Douglas to execute all of our environmental initiatives – from cooling technologies to clean manufacturing – around the world.

BM. What other developments are you currently getting excited about? And what trends will have the biggest impact on your business over the next 12-18 months?
GP. I’m excited about a lot of developments, including the fact that the public Sun Grid is now live, offering developers and organisations the opportunity to harness supercomputing capacity using an open-source environment.

I’m thrilled that we recently delivered the source code for the Ultra SPARC T1 processor to opensparc.org. We’ve also unveiled Project Darkstar, a breakthrough in massive, multiplayer online gaming – cutting-edge stuff. In fact, if we are receiving any criticism today about our technology strategy, it’s that we are being too aggressive about embracing the future. That’s really exciting.