Helping Everyone Become An IT Innovator

from the lend-me-your-ears dept

Tue, Dec 1st 2009 6:30am — Michael Ho

As many of our readers already know, we've been producing several topical conversations on a variety of subjects via the Insight Community, and we'd like to introduce our newly sponsored site, IT Innovation, brought to you by Sun Microsystems and Intel. (You may have missed the subtle new 'IT Innovation' link added to the top of our page.) First and foremost, the goal of this effort for us here at Techdirt is to create interesting and useful content for our readers in the realm of server hardware and datacenter management.

We'll be covering trends in datacenters and skills for IT managers -- and asking the Insight Community for its input on generating relevant insights for future conversations. And as with any natural conversation, we're not 100% sure where the topics will lead because the ideas will develop and evolve as we discuss them. But we'll start with current trends, as well as far off predictions, advice and tips for IT managers, business tools, and try to delve deeper into the subjects that resonate with the community participants. If you're already a member of the Insight Community, you can contribute your thoughts on the datacenter upgrade process. If you're not already a member, you can join now.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: datacenter, insight community, insights, it, server
Companies: intel, sun microsystems

13 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 1 Dec 2009 @ 9:10am

Let me try this again:

it reads like a sales page disguised as a blog.
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Anonimoos Cowahd, 1 Dec 2009 @ 9:29am

It would be nice if we could jump back and forth between sections from the article. Coming here from the regular section means I can only go back in the "IT innovation" post tree, even if I only wanted to read back into Techdirt itself.
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Richard Corsale, 1 Dec 2009 @ 9:32am

I would really like to talk about Sun's plans for Java now that Oracle is in the driver seat.

Remember- when they were simply a part of the Java Community Process they repeatedly scolded Sun for not liberating Java and withholding the compatibility kit from projects that they didn't like (Such as Apache Harmony).. Now that they call the shots are they going to right this wrong, or take a "weeeeellllll we said that when we weren't in control of the monopoly (the monopoly is actually centered around the Java trade mark)"?
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Mike Masnick (profile), 1 Dec 2009 @ 9:41am

Re:
It would be nice if we could jump back and forth between sections from the article. Coming here from the regular section means I can only go back in the "IT innovation" post tree, even if I only wanted to read back into Techdirt itself.

There are tabs at the top for both sites. If you have any ideas on ways to make it clearer, though, please let us know!
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John Strickland, 1 Dec 2009 @ 11:15am

Sun is sponsoring? With what money?
I saw their hardware crash in value over the past 5 years. Their decision to exclude VARs from business cost everyone money. I never knew they could be a team player?

And aren't they just waiting to be bought by someone who just wants their patents and java?
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 1 Dec 2009 @ 2:11pm

Re:
"Disguised as a blog" is as meaningless as "disguised as HTML".
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Dec 2009 @ 2:38pm

Re: Re:
Not at all. Disguised as a blog means that instead of a full page ad talking about their stuff, the articles guide you into a discussion about their stuff. In the end, the goal is the same, to sell Sun's stuff. It's just couching it in a nice friendly format that makes you forget it's an ad.

Congrats to Mike on this one, if you guys bite on this one then he really does have you guys wrapped around his finger.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 1 Dec 2009 @ 3:06pm

Re: Re: Re:
Not at all. Disguised as a blog means that instead of a full page ad talking about their stuff, the articles guide you into a discussion about their stuff.

The content of the blog is not controlled by Sun or Intel -- as should be obvious to anyone who took the time to actually read the content. They are sponsoring the launch of the site, and as part of the sponsorship there is plenty of content in the side sponsorship bar related to their products, which is basically what a sponsorship entails.

Assuming that they then have control over the content, when that is clearly not the case is silly.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2009 @ 5:27am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
Sorry Mike, but it isn't at all clear. The layout of the pages, the content of the pages overall suggest that the site is about Sun and Intel, not anything else. The list of "featured products" down the right hand side sort of makes it clear where this all stands.

What is clear in your own mind isn't clear in presentation, thus the lack of comments on any threads here.
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Josh Reynolds, 3 Dec 2009 @ 2:28pm

Re: Sun is sponsoring? With what money?
John,

Thank you for your comments. I'm not sure what you mean by "hardware crashing in value" but I believe you'll agree that Sun continues to deliver value to its customers with technological innovations that directly impact a customers business. A CMT based SPARC T5240 server delivers more performance than many of the highest performance systems of 5 years ago at a fraction of the cost. That is not a crash in customer value, but an increase in the performance delivered per dollar. Certainly this impacts the residual value of 5 year old systems FROM ALL MANUFACTURERS of computer equipment.

And, by continuing to invest in Solaris and expand its role as a virtualization and storage platform, Sun provides standards-based solutions with better ability to scale with system performance than most OSs. In addition, Oracle has publically stated that it will increase this investment in Solaris after the Sun acquisition is completed.* Sun has also focused on expanding the value we are delivering to our customers by offering a broad range of servers based on Intel Xeon processors.

I'd like to better understand your comment around "excluding VARs from business". I've worked directly with Sun VARs for the past 5 years and over that time we've substantially increased the importance of VARs to Sun's business. If there's a specific issue related to Sun's VAR relationship that you'd like to discuss, I'd be more than glad to help resolve it. Contact me on Twitter at JoshRey or by email at Joshua.Reynolds@Sun.com.

Josh Reynolds
North America MidMarket Manager
Sun Microsystems

* http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/documents/webcontent/038563.pdf
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Michael McConnell (profile), 3 Dec 2009 @ 6:31pm

Re:
Hi Richard,

I am an employee of Sun and unfortunately we cannot say much about the future of various products and the choices that Oracle will make once the deal is closed.

What I can do is point you to where you can find more info. Below is a link to a statement from Oracle about various product lines. There is quite a bit in there about Java.

http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/documents/webcontent/038563.pdf

Thanks for being a part of IT Innovation.
Mac
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2009 @ 5:41pm

I have an idea, and it’s not patentable. Is it possible to take a program written in code from one language, and English, and translate it to code written in another language, say Spanish, even though it’s the same programming language? So it can be like C++ in English and someone can hit translate and it’ll translate to the same exact C++ code in Spanish so others can work on it and even perhaps input their own comments in that language? Well, I'm sure its possible but what are the dynamics of doing so, is it easy, hard, expensive, useful, useless, etc...?
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want to see innovation, 7 Dec 2009 @ 1:21pm

DROP COPYRIGHTS TO 5 YEARS
DROP COPYRIGHTS TO 5 YEARS
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