Sun Microsystems

16.August.2005 - Sun Vice President Dan Berg recently took time out to discuss his new role as CTO of Sun Services, the inevitability of grid computing, and why Sun is leading this transformation in IT.

Dan Berg, Vice President and CTO, Sun Services

Question: What are you most excited about in your new role as CTO of Sun Services?

Dan Berg (Dan): I am most excited about being part of the transformation taking place in Sun Services; this means a couple of different things to me. One aspect of this shift involves Sun's move to a more service-focused company.

Recently at the JavaOne Conference, we offered a free desktop with a range of software to customers who signed up for a three-year service contract. This is a small example but it shows how we are changing. This example also highlights the opportunities we are presented with. It gives Sun new ways to get connected to our customers and present them with a better computing experience: how we sell and market to them, how we get connected and leverage usage data, how we use telemetry to be proactive and close the loop.

Q: How would you sum up the technical strategy for Sun Services?

Dan: The technical strategy for Sun Services is focused on delivering "IT as a Service." We are driving ourselves and our customers to transform their data centers from being "places" to being "services." It pushes people to think about how they receive value from the collection of hardware and software they have. The technical end state in my mind is utility computing, or grid. In this case, everything is delivered as a service--the power, cooling, hardware, software, administration, network, etc. The real value is then the true service that a customer receives.

Sun Services is focused on this transformation via the use of technology and solid engineering--not necessarily by constantly scaling up the number of resources we may need. That is not to say that we are removing people from the equation, we are just up-leveling the capabilities of our services resources to take advantage of our innovative culture to drive increased value for our customers.

Specifically, we are leveraging technology that helps us stay better connected to our customers and their related environments. This telemetry or metadata is then used in conjunction with our advanced analytics to extract efficiencies and value that we can take to the customer. We close the loop in new ways that keep us in a closer partnership then ever before with our customers.

Click here to find out how Berg sees grid computing changing the IT landscape.