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Posted: Wed, October 18, 2006
Trudy Norris Grey, Sun Microsystems - the ITWales Interviewby Sali Earls For many years, Sun was well known to IT staff and systems administrators, as a provider for the company servers. Now Sun is company that describes itself as "the innovative leader in servers, services and systems", aiming to offer solutions for all IT headaches from business software, to servers, to massive computing power; and working with organisations of all sizes from micro businesses to governments. Trudy Norris Grey took on the role of President & Managing Director, Sun Microsystems, UK & Ireland in early 2005. Born and educated in Swansea, Trudy is also a member of a group of industry leaders advising the government on its environmental policies. She spoke to Sali Earls about Open Source software, the potential of Grid Computing, and the technology related environmental responsibilities of all businesses. Open Source office packages such as Open Office and Star Office address the issue of vital software provision for individuals and small companies that they may not otherwise be able to afford. Bill Gates commented that Open Office is 10 years behind Microsoft Office. How do you think the products compare? The products compare really well. Most people and organisations simply do not need all the features and functions that come with MS Office products and certainly find the price tag difficult to swallow. We have schools, local authorities and businesses all using Star Office who find they can do everything they want to do for a fraction of the cost. What you also have to consider is the phenomenal rate at which Open Source software develops, it is a collaboration between literally millions of software developers, from many different backgrounds around the world, which is bringing new and exciting applications to market in a fraction of the time that a single large organisation could ever hope to achieve. The way in which software is developed in Open Source applications also means that only genuinely meaningful functionality is delivered into the final production release. Open Office has been released as Open Source Software, so developers and users can amend the source code and share best practice. Has this model been successful for Sun Microsystems, and do you have plans to apply this to other products?
A further benefit of this strategy is that it lowers the barriers to adoption, enabling the development and innovation of new software products. Sun is keen to continue this trend and will look to release other applications and tools to the open source community as and when it makes sense to do so, based on product and market readiness. Sun is investing in the emerging technology of Grid Computing. At the moment this is a technology that many businesses do not understand. Where do you think Grid will take the industry, and how can businesses of all sizes benefit from the increased computing power it promises? The way to understand the benefits of Grid computing is to look at the way you're using computing power. Most businesses find they need vast amounts of computer power, but only at certain times. The rest of the time, resources are under utilised. Compounding this problem is the increased dependence on processor intensive computing (for example for customer billing), which is now filling every square inch of a businesses data centre imposing a substantial burden on the physical space you need to house your data centre and the sheer energy expense that goes hand in hand with this. In simple terms, using Grid Computing, you can "plug into" an agile, reliable, cost-effective infrastructure that allows you to offload computer power and applications with optimal security. Sun's Grid utility computing can help businesses increase their data centre capacity, better manage project and usage volatility, and reduce their risk by paying only for the compute resources they actually consume. The offering provides businesses with predictable costs that actually match the use of their computing resources - a cost-effective alternative to having large up-front capital expenses and keeping assets on the books. In short, Sun's Grid Computing offering helps businesses reduce complexity, better utilize their overbuilt infrastructures, and optimise their IT resources. It's well documented that IT can have a negative impact on the environment, and Sun promote sustainable computing through compliance of the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive. What would you recommend small businesses do to make sustainable computing a cost effective business priority? Companies today are under increasing pressure from their own customers, employees and government to function in a more eco-friendly manner. During my discussions with our customers, regardless of their size, it has become clear that there is a desire to address these issues. They know that they cannot continue to function in a way that is detrimental to our environment and potentially face penalties for doing so - and so the Eco-Sustainability Initiative was born. Sun is now enabling clients to address their environmental issues at the same time as improving their bottom line. You don't have to be a multi-national organisation to put some of these steps into practice either - you can be a business of any size. The first step is for a business to understand what effect their IT habits have on the environment, and then that they can have the improved performance that they need to remain profitable at the same time as reducing power consumption, costs and environmental waste - now what organisation would not want this! I have found that it is all in the way that you translate our technology to the client. Clients do not want to talk bits and bites nor threads and processors. They want to talk efficiencies, cost savings, benefits - both business benefits and environmental benefits. Without getting too technical, let me use Sun's latest desktop device, Sun Ray 2, as an example. I have taken this fantastically engineered piece of equipment and used it to meet a business need, communicating how it consumes 95% less energy, takes 25 times less raw materials to manufacture and lasts 5-7 times longer than similar computing devices. These are the types of statistics our customers are interested in. Such efficiencies can save customers millions in energy and cooling costs, power consumption and space usage. I am absolutely committed to helping our clients address the sustainability of their businesses whilst helping them make smarter, more energy-conscious decisions, I have achieved this by communicating and demonstrating that being energy savvy is not just good for the environment, it is good for business too! What technologies will businesses be depending on in five years time, and ten years time? The Sun-Google 'Open Source' model, of making software available free fits today's world, where open forums such as MySpace make new kinds of communication and collaboration possible. There's an understanding in the marketplace, not just in technology, that gone are the days where companies have to own the whole business chain, from R&D to customer services. In the longer term, businesses will be very used to the idea of purchasing compute power and functionality as a service, very much like purchasing electricity or gas, and the lock in to massive, installed base, capital expenditure will be over, as businesses move there technology requirement into operational expenditure which is as flexible as the business needs. Is the future of Sun Microsystems in hardware or software? The future of Sun Microsystems is in meeting actual business need with innovative technologies, we're a systems company and that means that we can bring together the software, the hardware, the network and services layers, to form a coherent and compelling platform for the future of network computing, in your datacenter or in your pocket. For further information visit uk.sun.com. Send a comment about this article to editor@itwales.com. |
Releasing our software products to the open source community allows us to tap into the
wealth of skills, talent and experiences that transcends geographic, cultural and time boundaries. What this
means for Sun and our customers is nothing short of a major expansion of our own development teams. This realises new and even more radical innovations into the products, more quickly, so our
customers can take advantage of these in their own environments.|
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