I got an email from Amazon this morning announcing a simple storage service for developers. Indeed, it is simple. One may read, write, and delete objects from 1 byte to 5GB and pay $0.15/GB/Month for storage and $0.20/GB/Month for transfer. No minimum charge, no startup fees. Security and simplicity are key tenets of the new service. One has to wonder what the adoption will be and how trusting folks will be when parking objects here. Nevertheless, I remain impressed with the simplicity and cost of the new Amazon offering.

When I think about Sun’s network services, this is a prime example of where I believe we should be going. We have $1/CPU/Hour on the grid. What next from Sun? What next from Amazon? What next from Google? It’s an interesting world out there and will only become more interesting as network services deploy and are pulled together in mashups.

After a brief hiatus, my blogging is now going back into swing. You may notice we have new digs; having moved from an internal to Sun only blog to an external blog.

In February, Sun had a large event called the Sun Analyst Summit. During that event, I had the opportunity to chat with a fellow named James Governor from the firm RedMonk. James had a simple hypothesis: Sun doesn’t talk nearly enough about our services and how they help our customers. James went on to suggest that blogging is a very good way to do this communication.

I thought, “Well heck, I blog. Internally. Why not go public?” Consequently, one of my colleagues who was also involved in the conversation with James, Jay Littlepage started his blog. The combination inspired me to move outside the cozy confines of the firewall and start to post in these environs.

Some of my prior entries have been moved to this venue and I’ll post more on a day by day, week by week basis. Hope folks find something useful here…..stay tuned.

If you haven’t seen YouTube, you’re missing a great community – both in terms of content and technical capability. It’s at heart, a video content sharing site.

Here’s a short video of the making of YouTube from the people who founded PayPal:

Is that cool or what? Oh, you don’t like that? What about this?

Now, here’s the thing, look at what you can do if you’re a developer…

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – THIS is what I want CNS to bring to Sun overall – in terms of community and technical innovation. The content matters, the business model matters, the technology matters, the people matter.

As you return from break (if you were on break…,) please take a moment to think about how we can Create Customer Value and Sell Sun using this type of model. Simple, clean, and valuable. That’s the biggest challenge we face collectively, making it easy for our community and our customers.

Well, here we are before the holiday break….a topic that’s been high on my list of things to communicate is reflected in the title, c11n vs. c9n.

By now, you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about. That’s fair. We’ve got s12y (serviceability) as a clue. Now I know my CNS folks don’t relish word games, so let’s get down to it.

c9n is cooperation. What exactly is cooperation? It is “the act of operating jointly.” This implies that we’ll interact, but are still separate in our structure and approach.

c11n is collaboration. What exactly is collaboration? It is “the act of working jointly.” This implies each party has skin in the game and will be harmed if the outcome of the act of collaboration is not successful. In an earlier blog I talked about tribalism – collaboration is the opposite of that.

So the point of this entry is this:

• Cooperation is good, collaboration is better.
• Collaboration across CNS and Sun is expected. We’ve got one stock ticker, SUNW. That is the measure of our success. If we don’t collaborate, we are all hurt.
• With that, please have a great holiday season and we’ll see you next year!

Well, I thought I’d be more regular in my blog entries – it’s just one of those things. I’ve asked Peggy to give me a routine nag to ensure that I’m actually producing content for this venue.

In the meantime, I’ve just seen a news article citing Richard Branson’s intent to build a spaceport in the hinterlands of New Mexico. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m at turns anxious to participate and mortified at the idea of commercial space travel. This is the new venture, Virgin Galactic.

Branson, the prolific entreprenuer, saw the Ansari X Prize claimed last year by Burt Rutan and Spaceship One and decided now was a good time to get into the game. More than the space travel aspect of this, I’m intrigued with the risk profile Branson has in approaching his ventures.

SpaceShip One with Mothership

I can say this: in my experience traveling, there is no better cross Atlantic carrier than Virgin Atlantic in Upper Class. They’ve got a massage therapist on board as an example and what seems like 3 flight attendants for each passenger. The seats are beds, the entertainment system is part iPod, part TiVO, and part multi-user game console. If Branson can take a highly unpleasant experience of being trapped in a pressurized aluminum tube for 11 hours hurtingly along at 600mph, then I am really curious about what he’ll do for this emerging industry.

In a CNS-related comment to this, I wonder what we can do to change the experience of our customers from something unpleasant to something unbelieveable. Stay tuned, we’ll show some progress on that front.

One last thing, I think the new SCNN channels are really cool. If you haven’t seen them, you’re missing something. Imagine a time in the not too distant future when our customers can subscribe to any number and combination of RSS feeds to craft the experience they want in working with Sun. That will be pretty cool…