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In my role, I have the opportunity to spend a lot of time with people running companies of all shapes and sizes. Some of these companies offer things like phone service, while others aim to make the world's information available through the Internet. The CEOs and CIOs at these outfits, as you would expect, don't rattle easily.

But talk to them about the realities of the next two years and you'll hear the term "cautiously optimistic" a lot. Translation: I'm giddy with anticipation but there are lots of things that keep me up at night.

The good news: 350 million people are expected to come online in the next two years because the Internet is making it cheaper and easier to interact and share things — from pictures to textbooks — around the globe.

The bad news: 350 million people are expected to come online in the next two years in the face of skyrocketing energy costs.

These points come to a head in the data center, that not-so-miniature metropolis of server computers that process network transactions.

When you need to accommodate a new online population larger than the size of the United States, it's pretty clear you'll need to build more data centers to support them. But when it costs $2,000 each year to power and cool each square foot of space, justifying the cost of another 30,000 square foot data center becomes pretty hard.

Power Down, Performance Up

But the fun part of my job is letting these people know that by using technologies already on the market, companies can dramatically reduce energy consumption while sustaining — and even dramatically increasing — the capabilities of their information systems.

Since first saying "The Network is the Computer," we understood there would be a lot of people on the network. And we understood that companies would need network infrastructure technology that was powerful and cost-effective but still allowed them to be flexible. So several years ago, we invested heavily in R&D that would deliver on this philosophy. Even when our revenues went down, we focused on the next generation of products. You're seeing the results

We're coming on strong with some of the most progressive products in the marketplace today. Our new line of Sun Fire x64 servers , for example, are 50 percent faster and use one-third the power of competitors' systems. That's like pitting a Ferrari against a Pinto — only our Ferrari gets 40 miles per gallon and costs half as much as the Accord. (And thanks to our design team, it looks great too!)

Customers with a 1000-CPU data center using the new Sun Fire x64 servers can save around $500,000 in power and cooling annually. Now that's a price-performance value proposition that will help customers make more money.

We're not stopping there. Our other servers are getting the treatment too. The brand new UltraSPARC IV+ processor doubles performance for the same energy usage and physical footprint.

On the horizon, and coming very soon, we have the Niagara chip. Niagara is our next-generation multi-thread chip optimized for applications and network-facing workloads — it's able to take on 32 tasks at once. That's four times better than what's on the market now — all while using less energy (57 watts) than the average light bulb.

The solutions to our problems don't all begin and end with the data center. Significant savings can also be had on the user end of the network. And I'm not just talking about energy and technology. I'm also talking about savings from empowering people.

First, here's a quirky historical fact. Before the automobile, when horses ruled the roadways, New York City had to remove 10,000 tons of manure each day. History is repeating itself in the PC era.

Stopping the PC Pile-up

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 50 million computers get dumped each year. They're piling up three times faster than other household trash. Recycling can only deal with this problem after it has been created. To solve the problem, there needs to be a better approach that mirrors our relationship with technology, and the rapid pace of change.

Look at it this way. Thirty percent of the world's population has a cell phone and by 2012, 16 billion devices are projected to connect to the network. These numbers emphatically show that the PC doesn't have a monopoly on network access. So why do businesses and people limit their thinking to a computing model that requires a PC to gain network access?

The alternative is a simple desktop appliance, also known as a thin client. A thin client doesn't have a microprocessor, disk drive, or cooling fan and uses just 15 watts of electricity — 24 counting the server it's connected to. The typical office PC uses about 300 watts of electricity.

Desktop appliances are indistinguishable from using a PC. Thanks to high-speed networks, the server delivers all the same functions, from spreadsheet to web browser and everything in between, instantly. But when these low-power devices aren't being used, the resources on the server go to other tasks instead of going to waste.

At Sun, our use of Sun Ray thin clients instead of PCs has reduced our power consumption by nearly 9 times, saving us an estimated $25 million in energy and systems cost last year alone. And when we want to add capabilities, we don't have to toss the Sun Ray into the landfill. We upgrade the server and the upgrades flow out to each employee's Sun Ray worldwide.

There's a side benefit to all of this: Sun employees don't have to lug around a PC or be tied to their office. They can log in and work wherever there's a network connection and a thin client. This allows over half of our 38,000 employees to work remotely and at multiple locations. No more lost time commuting. Less money spent on gas and less air pollution. Less stress and happier employees.

So when a CEO or CIO talks to me about their "cautious optimism," I remind them that when you're talking about 350 million more people on the network, conventional wisdom does not apply. There's nothing conventional about the scale of interaction and participation that these millions of people will bring to the network — and what that means to any given business. But I remind them in this new reality, innovating to do more with less will help win the day. And Sun is here to help.