Well, it’s finally closed. We announced our intention to acquire Aduva February 28, 2006 and as of Tuesday, March 28 the deal closed. Welcome Aduva customers, partners, and employees! We’re delighted to have you in the Sun Microsystems family.

You might ask, “why would Sun purchase Aduva?” A good question with a very simple answer, we loved their technology. We can now combine what we’ve already put into the marketplace in Sun Update Connection with more coverage of platforms (myriad Linux distributions & platforms plus some legacy Solaris) and more features (baselines, active dependancy management, simulation, staging, aggregation, and rollback.)

If you’re an existing Aduva customer, this is great news for you as we’ll carry on the fantastic technology and approach with all the resource of Sun behind it. We invite you to contact us to give you detail behind our transition and plans.

Stay tuned, because a new Sun + Aduva service will be available this calendar year.

Today I write from Logan airport before I step on the plane to come home. Aside from a killer flu that I seem to have contracted, a very good trip. This was an opportunity to talk to many of our customers about availability in the SunUp Network. If you’re a Sun customer, I recommend this event highly as it’s your opportunity to provide direct input into our products and services.

Today, I demoed My Sun Connection, Sun Update Connection, and a few new goodies not yet announced (think power, asset, and better linkage with expertise.) We got a great reception on these from the customers in attendance, can’t wait to share them with you…..

In the beginning of February, I bought a new vehicle – a GMC Sierra pickup. You may ask yourself, “why would a tech guy buy a truck?” And that would be a fair question.

The answer is I’ve been driving trucks my entire life, having grown up in the state of Ohio in and around farms. In California, I’ve discovered that having a truck is incredibly valuable, from routine hauling of items (my wife’s latest garage sale/auction score) to the mundane (trash to the dump) to the fun (dog and surf board/kayak) to the beach.

One of the reasons I chose this truck rather than say the traditional Ford F150 was because I wanted to see how OnStar worked when you live with it day to day. It’s one thing to see a demo, it’s another thing to actually attempt to use the service day in and day out. (BTW, I got a GREAT overall deal on the truck too, the “other” reason I chose it…) I’m delighted that OnStar is also a Sun customer, so much the better to make our customers successful.

For those of you who don’t know what OnStar is, it’s a telemetry and communications package built-in to vehicles that enable a number of services like remote diagnostics, presence, alarms, and communications services. As a subscriber, you can choose from one of two services, Safe & Secure or Connections & Directions.

I really admire the OnStar marketing and demand generation team, they’ve made this a household brand and the on-air testimonials work. Evidence, my spouse, who could care less about cars or technologies, said “Oh, great, OnStar, now someone will know if we crash and help.” I nearly dropped my drink when she said that.

The point to this post is this, when you think about the Sun Connection, I’d like to take everything that is good in my OnStar experience and translate that to Sun’s technologies. We’re already enroute, Sun Connection is now embedded in Solaris 10 and beyond. This provides great coverage of our software and hardware, but, there are more products coming with Sun Connection embedded. We’ve got a great service in the market with Sun Update Connection and more to come. It’s an exciting time to be working in this space, I absolutely can not wait to talk about some of our new services soon to appear. (Hint: Get a My Sun Connection account now, they’ll appear in the Fresh Tools tab far in advance of release.)

Yesterday PayPal announced a new capability that will enable users to send payment to a recipient using a text message. Pretty darned cool. Guess they’ve built the new “pay phone.” Let’s hope it’s secure!

Well, I’ve always been a little confused about my preference for hands. For example, I bat left-handed and throw right-handed. I can write with either hand, but preferred my left hand earlier in life and over time have migrated to nearly all right handed writing, but it still “feels” awkward from time to time.

This article seems to provide more insight into why and how hand preference happens. Don’t know how many confused people like me there are out there, but if you’re one or know one, the article might provide interesting information.

Now, if we could just get notebooks, scissors, and other common implements to be hand agnostic, it would be a better world!