Source

Seth Godin recently wrote a blog post titled: Beware of the CEO blog. He writes:

“It’s apparently the newest thing. I just got off the phone with one CEO who’s itching to start, and read an email from another who just did.

Here’s the problem. Blogs work when they are based on:
Candor
Urgency
Timeliness
Pithiness and
Controversy

(maybe Utility if you want six).

 Does this sound like a CEO to you?

Short and sweet, folks: If you can’t be at least four of the five things listed above, please don’t bother. People have a choice (4.5 million choices, in fact) and nobody is going to read your blog, link to your blog or quote your blog unless there’s something in it for them.”

This kind of statement is warranted given the role and demands of a CEO and it’s clear that a lot of CEO blogs are for the most part ghost written by someone in the marketing department or a third party ghost writer. Let’s face it: most CEOs don’t have the time nor patience to write  blog posts on a consistent basis. While the demand for more CEOs and senior executives to join and engage in the online conversation, they have greater pressures at hand: growing the business, meeting or exceeding profitability for their shareholders and managing the overall business goals and objectives for the company. There are some exceptions to the rule – a few high profile CEOs who have been blogging for an extended period of time, most notable among them, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com and Guy Kawasaki, founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures, among many others.  These CEOs among others are utilizing Web 2.0 technologies, social networking, and social media to push their agenda, educate the market, and use their blogs as a platform to highlight industry trends, challenges, and bring insight by combining personal experience and industry expertise. Why? Simply put, they understand the need to adopt new ways of communicating with the online communities beyond their internal groups such as employees and shareholders.   

My personal experience with launching our own blog and our CEO’s blog brings me to this topic. I believe that executives down to employees should take a top down approach when it comes to blogging and if a company decides to take this on, it needs to be implemented with the right strategy and plan in place.  Our CEO Pat Clawson is a great example of how he leverages the blogging platform to communicate a clear message on the industry trends and challenges but how certain issues impact the market as a whole.  It’s not just about engaging but educating as well.  Here is an example of what not to do in a CEO blog in a CEO blog – McAfee CEO David DeWalt’s blog of using the platform to promote the company and its products and services.  People aren’t interested in coming to your blog to read more about your company and your products, they want to learn and gain insight into your expertise and knowledge about what’s going on in the industry and how it will be impacted.  While this isn’t the worst example of a bad CEO blog, this is just one to demonstrate some common mistakes CEOs make when it comes to blogging.

Getting back to the point, out of curiosity I took this question to several CEOs and executives who are active on  Twitter and blogging and posed the question: Should CEOs blog? Why or why not? This blog is to shed some light for those who are looking to start or already have established a blog, what are some of the dos and don’ts?  This will be a rolling series to provide different perspectives on this topic – first of which begins with my Q&A with Guy Kawaski who was named as one of the top CEO bloggers to provide his perspective. At the end of this series, I will provide an outline of key steps to achieving a successful CEO blog and dos and don’ts.

Q&A with Guy Kawasaki:

Do you think CEOs should or shouldn’t blog and why?

It’s hard to provide a definitive answer to this because there are several key factors at play. First, is the company publicly traded? If it is, then the CEO must be very careful to limit the information in the blog—so much so, that the blog may be rendered boring. Second, can the CEO write well? If not, is she or he willing to use a ghost writer? Third, does the CEO truly have something significant to say? This is a “duhism,” but not enough CEOs as themselves this question.

How important is it for CEOs to blog?

On a scale of 1-10 where 10 = “you’ll get fired if you don’t do this,” blogging is about a 4 or 5. Fundamentally, a CEO is paid to lead, and that’s what she or he should focus on. Blogging can be an aspect of leading (specifically, communicating), but it is by no means to that end. It’s not an end in itself.

Should you get other senior management to blog? Why or why not?

The same questions apply to the CEO as senior management.

Do you think blogging by a CEO has a positive or negative impact to their overall brand?

The best case is that the CEO’s blog is mildly interesting. The worst case is that the CEO’s blog is deadly boring. The worst case is much more likely. What the CEO should truly do is ensure the creation of great product or services so that OTHER people blog about the company.

What other ways can it benefit the Company and its overall business objective?

CEOs should focus Twitter versus a blog.  What CEOs should do is tweet, not blog. Or have a ghost tweet as her or him. Blogging requires a carefully crafted, legally and HR cleared essay that shows intelligence and insight on at least a weekly basis. Good luck. Tweeting requires a good link to something that the CEO (or ghost) finds interesting. These tweets should point to articles, blogs, etc that the CEO thinks his or her audience would find interesting. This is a lot easier to do and a lot safer too.

Top 5 dos and don’ts for senior management and CEOs when it comes to blogging?

Sponsor a company blog as opposed to a blog or blogs tied to specific people because the overall purpose is to communicate with the company’s customers, provide tips and tech support, and engender loyalty. Good examples of this type of blog are here..

Can bad blogging kill your brand? Any examples?

Kawasaki says: “If blogging killed your brand, you had a pretty weak brand already, and it probably deserved to die.”

President Barack Obama sets a great example on how he uses social working and Web 2.0 technologies to educate and forward his agenda. He is considered an Internet marketing maven who has used platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace to market his message across to millions of individuals.

First and foremost, I believe CEOs should ask themselves whether they have the right ideas, content, and dedication to create and share their content/message with the world. Second, what is the overall objective?  As Godin mentioned in his blog, there are key components to launching and maintaining a successful blog that others will want to read and follow. If you don’t meet the criteria, then it might not be your cup of tea. But rest assure, if it’s not you, the CEO blogging, be sure to get your company behind a corporate blog to create a competitive advantage.

While it sounds like a “me too” approach, the way we communicate has significantly changed. My belief is that CEOs should definitely blog and every company should have a blog because it’s not about the return on investment (ROI), but about the return on influence within your industry. By adding your voice through a blog, you’re putting a face to the company and humanizing your brand, not to mention elevating your thought leadership. And, if you don’t have the time to blog, get a ghost writer to meet with you on a weekly basis, brainstorm on some key topics, and voice your opinion and why people should care. While the option of using a ghostwriter might not be ideal, as long as they can take YOUR message to your blog, it’s a step forward in moving the needle and getting your company front and center in the market. The article on cbsnews.com Why Most CEOs Who Blog – Blog Badly sums it up nicely: keep your posts short, clear, educational and most of all, compelling. Don’t become the poster child for “Why CEOs shouldn’t blog” but take a leadership role and drive a message that can change the market perception, interests the readers (journalists, buyers, bloggers, etc.).

My blog: How to Achieve Return on Influence Through Corporate Blogs

David Meerman Scott: The Future of PR: should your CEO blog?

Jeremiah Owyang: The Many Challenges of a CEO Blog

Guy Kawasaki is a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web.  Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. You can read completed coverage of blogging at http://blogging.alltop.com/.

Be on the lookout for Part II in Should CEOs blog. This one takes the perspective on why CEOs should stick to internal blogging with Chris Hewitt.

Building on the trend of Apple, Nokia and others – Sun makes the move into a independent Appstore deployment. As Apple has shown that it is a viable business model, it only makes sense – end-users like to shop around, and are willing to pay for smaller apps. As Google Android starting to make its way into mobile phones, and Nokia “opened” up Symbian – the end-user community developer trend will create a business eco-system worth spending some research on. The project is codenamed Vector but will likely be called “Java Store” after its official launch.

Here is some quotes from Jonathan Schwartz by way of Washington Post.

“Candidate applications will be submitted via a simple web site, evaluated by Sun for safety and content, then presented under free or fee terms to the broad Java audience via our update mechanism. Over time, developers will bid for position on our storefront, and the relationships won’t be exclusive (as they have been for search). As with other app stores, Sun will charge for distribution – but unlike other app stores, whose audiences are tiny, measured in the millions or tens of millions, ours will have what we estimate to be approximately a billion users. That’s clearly a lot of traffic, and will position the Java App Store as having just about the world’s largest audience.”

“The store will be for all Java devices. Initially, the PC desktop will get the most attention from developers and customers, but there’s plenty of Java-enabled phones and developers will be pleased to have another distribution channel, especially one with the power of Sun behind it.”

Read the full article here. Read Jonathan Schwartz blog entry here.

Other bloggers covering this topic include: OStatic, Mobile Marketing Watch, Mobile Blogs, IndicThreads.

If you look at the filing, you will see latest public information about the merger:

• Credit Suisse conducted a Discounted Cash Flow Analysis and concluded “Sun’s common stock of (i) $8.12 to $10.10 on a sum-of-the-parts basis (comprised of implied reference range values per share of Sun’s common stock of $4.80 to $6.43 for Sun’s software business and $1.64 to $2.00 for Sun’s hardware business, plus $1.67 for Sun’s net cash), and (ii) $8.06 to $9.41 on a consolidated basis, as compared to the merger consideration in the proposed merger of $9.50 per share of company common stock.” This analysis is based on “discount rates ranging from 10.50% to 13.00% based on Sun’s estimated weighted average cost of capital.”
• “On March 12, 2009, Oracle sent a letter to [Sun's] board proposing the acquisition by Oracle of certain of [Sun] software assets, a minority equity investment by Oracle in our common stock and entering into certain strategic relationships.” This shows that Oracle’s initial offer focused only on “certain of [Sun's] software assets”.
• If you look down the list, you will notice a table showing top executives’ severance package.
  • Jonathan Schwartz: $12,005,607
  • Scott McNealy: $9,534,022
• The filing also includes a table of major stock holders.
  • Scott G. McNealy currently holds 14,566,433 common shares. At $9.5 a share, he will receive $138,381,113.5 excluding the severance package, before taxes.
  • Jonathan I. Schwartz currently holds 536,109 common shares and he will receive $5,093,035.5 excluding the severance package, before taxes.

Oracle had announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Sun. Sun being an abbreviation of Stanford University Network, the company which funded the initial setup of the current internet conglomerate Google, has made me think a lot about acquisition.

What will happen to MySQL?

What will happen to OpenOffice?

What will happen to employee freedom?

Will Open Source, once said to rule the world, have future? we have to revitalise our thoughts on it!

Where is Novell now? Where is Sun now?

The profit margins when made lesser, the companies wont stand in long run. But the higher rated one may face difficulties for short terms but not for long terms. but those firms should have a firm position to face a long run economically.

My idea may be different ar weird…or my insight on these mergers may sound very indifferent…but my ultimate idea is what made these companies fail? the only good thing is we will be able to get some sound managers in due time! who really know what recession and its impacts makes to an organisation!

The very good thing about the deal is the customers will be getting much sophisticated services on some mission critical computing systems and enterprise softwares.

From investors point of view, theres a growing competer for IBM. IBM may be leading the service industry but it will be facing a strong competition from HP-EDS, Oracle-Sun because it haven’t done any such big deals so far!!!

But who knows…Oracle may acquire Apple in future…If Larry’s friend Steve agrees…eventhough theres no logic behind my words…just imagine how it will be when ORACLE-APPLE merge??? you know what? Larry and Steve are good friends…Wikipedia says!

Microsoft and IBM may have many zeroes in their financial statements..but why are they hesitating to offer few more cents per share?

I have to do MBA to analyze all these cases…now i just can only blog my views when Moon and Stars will follow the SUN?

I have bookmarked Jonathans blog a couple of years ago…but didn’t followed it for few months now…

I still remember the case Sun and NetApps fought for…

Read directly from Jonathan Schwartz here…

Take a look at Melanie Craft’s website here

 Technorati tags : oracle buys sun ibm java acquires orcl larry ellison jonathan schwartz cartoon technology humor wsj oracle buys sun

Add to del.icio.us | Digg it!  | StumbleUpon

The WSJ reports that Oracle has bought Sun for $7.4 billion,  after Sun’s negotiations with IBM fell through last week.

Previously : Cartoon : IBM to buy Sun ?

Update :

Sun’s come a long way – from being a workstation startup seeded @ Stanford University (SUN = Stanford University Network) to almost buying Apple to being bought over by an enterprise software company.

It’s quite sad to see the Sun logo go. Designed by Stanford professor Vaughan Pratt, the Sun logo is , IMHO, one of the most intricately beautiful corporate logos ever made.

 
The cartoon ‘Oracle buys Sun’ by Jai Iyer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. (You’re free to use/distribute it as long as you give the author credit.)

Comments section at the top of the post. 

It appears this morning that Oracle plans to enter the computer hardware market by buying Sun Microsystems for more than $7 billion. This deal came quickly after Sun’s talks with IBM fell apart last week.

From Reuters:

The announcement on Monday surprised many Oracle watchers, who believed the company can boost profitability at Sun’s software businesses but were unsure if it can be as successful with Sun’s hardware unit amid stiff competition against IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc and new entrant Cisco Systems Inc.

“It’s an out-of-the-box, left-field type of a deal because Oracle is buying a predominantly hardware business,” said Jefferies & Co analyst Ross MacMillan. “The push-pull of the deal is the uncertainty of the hardware business with the earnings accretion of the software business.”

From the Wall Street Journal:

Oracle, which has been snapping up smaller software companies for several years, agreed to pay $9.50 a share for Sun. The companies valued the transaction at about $5.6 billion, excluding Sun’s cash and debt. As of Dec. 28, Sun had about $2.6 billion in cash and short-term investments and about $700 million in long-term debt.

Sun, whose server systems have long been sold along with Oracle’s database software, was widely believed to need a bigger partner as it competes with giants such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. Another much larger company, Cisco Systems Inc., also recently entered the server business.

The Sun deal helps elevate Oracle into those ranks, giving the company the ability to sell hardware as well as more fully exploit some important Sun software–notably the popular Java programming technology and Sun’s Solaris operating systems.

Updated: Late last night, The New York Times reported that IBM’s (s ibm) rumored $7 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems (s JAVA) is off. The doubts about the deal were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal said that Sun’s board was divided on the wisdom of this deal.

A faction led by CEO Jonathan Schwartz wants to sell the company, while a rival band led by former CEO and Co-founder Scott McNealy doesn’t want to sell. IBM is offering between $9.10 and $9.40 a share, according to the WSJ report. The Times report said that IBM had initially offered $9.55 a share, but later shaved off the offer. Why?

I.B.M. scrutinized the “change of control” contracts with Sun executives, senior engineers and managers. I.B.M. felt that the payments to senior employees were higher and extended more broadly across the company than it had anticipated. I.B.M. pointed to the change of control contracts as one reason it was reducing its offer price.

For some Sun board members, a sticking point was that IBM could totally walk away from the deal because it has too much optionality, the Journal said.

Regardless, this is yet another sad wrinkle on the face of what was once Silicon Valley’s brightest innovator. As expected, naysayers and Wall Street analysts are out in full force saying this is the worst kind of news for Sun.

Having covered Sun for a long time as a reporter, I agree that Sun has its problems. But are the problems so deep that it should just be handed over to a rival? I don’t think so. And while Sun has fallen on tough times, it continues to be a bastion of engineering excellence.

Stacey believes that the two companies, if combined, could have become serious players in cloud computing. In March this year, Sun announced plans to offer its own cloud services, and that is a good place for Sun to start. In my view, IBM was getting quite a bargain with Sun, though I think a company like Cisco Systems (s CSCO) would be a better buyer for Sun, because it can shake up Sun’s academic culture.

Another idea came to me after reading Software AG Deputy CTO Mike Miko Matsumara’s blog, who thinks that with this deal collapsing, we might see the return of Sun  Co-founder, Scott McNealy. Whether that happens or not, the company should also pursue an option of going private.

The four Sun co-founders — Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla and Andy Bechtolsheim — swing enough clout in the Valley to help put together a rescue package. Given how easily Palm (s PALM) has been able to raise additional funding, I don’t think Sun will have trouble raising the capital. Bad as it is — down 10.7 percent from fiscal 2008 — Sun will post revenues of just over $12 billion. And it still has a few billion dollars in cash.

CEO Schwartz represents a company creating innovative technology. It makes sense Sun Microsystems is a leader in blogging.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a company that promotes network services and connections by providing shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Well known brands include the Java technology platform and the Solaris operating system. Sun Microsystems supports network interactions and technology solutions for everyday consumer and business use.

A leader in social media, CEO of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz has blogged as CEO since 2006. As one of the first Fortune 500 companies to start a CEO blog, Schwartz has represented the transition to corporate blogging. He uses a conversational tone, while discussing topics directly related to his company. Schwartz posts about Sun, the future of Sun, and the technology industry. The transparency and authenticity Schwartz uses in his blog presents Schwartz as a credible and relevant source for his audience. In 2006, The Washington Post ran an article on Sun’s CEO blog. Schwartz’s blog is translated into many different languages and is an effective communication medium to connect with all of Sun’s stakeholders.  Schwartz could talk about personal issues occasionally to present more of a personality, but his blog is still the most popular of all the Sun blogs. Schwartz does not respond directly to comments, but he reads all of them. He directs the comments to the appropriate department. He forms relationships through what he provides to his audience. He also will comment and write on other blogs.

Sun Microsystems employees are encouraged to write blogs, which are then linked to the main blog website. The communications department does not manage the blogs, possibly because there are so many, but guidelines on public discourse are explained for employee bloggers. The main idea in these guidelines is common sense. If there is a question of legality, Sun requests the employees ask a higher authority. Sun mentions the importance of quality and to think about the consequences of your actions before publishing.

Schwartz discusses in a video interview about how he uses his blog as a medium to communicate with employees and other stakeholders. He talks about the importance of maintaining a direct and honest personality. In the video, pay attention to how blogs help Schwartz deal with the challenges of life as a CEO.

The success of Sun’s CEO and employee blogs is due to the amount of energy that goes into the blogs. The fact that all these employees make time to provide relevant and authentic information regularly improves the brand image of Sun Microsystems. As more companies are following in the footsteps of Sun Microsystems, it will be interesting to see how Sun will continue to update their social media communications strategy.

Reuters blogger Alexei Oreskovic asks:

What do you do if your company is reported to be involved in an $8 billion acquisition and you’re already scheduled to give a big speech?

If you’re Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, you honor the commitment and then make a swift exit.

Full coverage of the speech from “the pony-tailed CEO” is here. 

For those who do not know what Sun Microsystems does you can check out their about section on their website.

Here are a few videos I found to be of interest:

The first half of the video has the senior director of global communications for Sun Microsystems explaining why Schwartz started to blog publicly. She explains how Schwartz felt that if people were passionate about their job they would comment and blog about it.

This video has Jonathan Schwartz talking about participation with networks. He call this the Participation Age, he talks about the importance of interactivity and content rich sites, with images and embedded video.

Jonathan Schwartz’s on his blog has this video that talks about what Sun as a company wants. He wants openness with his customers.

Video from Jonathan\’s Blog

Corporate Blogging Best Practices article has small case studies on corporations with blogs, and Sun Microsystems was said to have successful internal and external blogs. The article explained that their internal blog is used as an informational tool for the employees, researchers and developers. These blogs can be found publicly through an aggregation called Planet Sun. These blogs are not managed by the communications department and the employees are encourage to write about anything. The only policies are to not tell a secret, use common sense and if there is uncertainty, ask a manager. However, Suns most popular blog is ‘Jonathan’s Blog’ written by Jonathon Schwartz the CEO and president of Sun. Why his blog so well known? He was one of the first Fortune 500 companies to start a blog. He frequently posts openly about Sun as a company and their ideas, and discusses his view on the technology industry. He gets between around 50,000 visits or more a month and each post has many comments from shareholders. Schwartz started blogging in 2004 and wanted to use his blogs to reach out to his consumers, and believes if people are passionate about their company they will/ should blog, and share ideas. Jonathon Schwartz has an article in the Harvard Business Review called If You Want to Lead, Blog he talks about how CEOs or executives needing to blog. He gives points on how to to start a blog. Knowing a companies strategies and guidelines for a blog was a main point he stressed along with, openness, honesty, and authenticity. He also believes the biggest advantage to blogs is the ability to participate in communities that are relevant to the company.

Strategies:
Sun wants employees to be involved in the blogging process of connecting to its stakeholders and expressing their ideas

Sun does not have a strict policy on blogging and no communication department overseas what is written. Even though employees are encouraged to blog this also helps to not shy away from posting.

Having a CEO who actually is posting his own opinions and thoughts brings trust to a company and shows the public how involved and devoted they are to the company. Also they become more transparent to their consumers.

Sources:
Corporate Blogging Best Practices

Blogging:Bubble or Big Deal

Blogging: a new play in your marketing game plan

Emerald Article

Lesenswerter Kurz-Essay von Sun-CEO Jonathan Schwartz über die Vorzüge, die Freiheit mit sich bringt:

From our vantage point, the spirit of “Live free or die” defines the future for all software, not just operating systems. Traditional proprietary software models, like traditional newspaper businesses, will slow as customers move to the cloud. Governments across the world, spurring economic activity with stimulus programs are already mandating or promoting open source software as a means of driving progress. Live free or die is a spirit spreading choice, technical independence and innovation – the revolution is well underway.

What are you doing to help your customers with their economic problems?

We are preconfigured for the downturn. If you think about the discretionary expenses that go into operating a data center, first and foremost there’s the physical plant itself — the physical space, the power consumption, the HVAC. So all the work that we do around energy efficiency and on getting optimal performance — it’s because the environment ends up being a huge operating expense for our customers. And to the extent that we can help them lower their environmental impact, we’re also lowering the economic impact on their businesses. That’s clearly Job 1.

The second element of discretionary expense is software licensing, and probably the single biggest license that customers have to buy is [for] proprietary databases. Second on that list are proprietary application servers and an application infrastructure. I just was with a customer who didn’t recognize that he had roughly 2,000 developers working with MySQL because it wasn’t a purchase standard [in his organization] — but it had become the de facto [database] standard. He didn’t recognize that he could get that level of productivity [from an open-source database].

The same is true for the application server marketplace. OpenSolaris — now that it is multivendor and multiplatform and the source is available, those environments where you don’t need support don’t have to pay for it. And then we enable customers that want to subscribe in production environments to pay for the supported version.

With the economic downturn, do you really expect customers in the near term to, say, swap out an Oracle database and replace it with MySQL? Unquestionably. Now, that doesn’t mean they are leaving Oracle — Oracle is a fantastic company, and they’ve built a fantastic database. But there is no longer one-size-fits-all in the enterprise database marketplace.

In your blog, you talked about aggressively expanding your customer base. How does the new four-socket Sparc Enterprise T5440 help you do that? It’s a little unlikely that this server is going to be the first system that a new customer buys from Sun. I don’t want to close off that option, [but] it’s more likely that they pick up a one-socket Niagara system. Just on price point, you seldom spend $50,000 to $100,000 on your first server, and that’s the price range that these [new] systems start at.

Niagara as a whole, though, gives us access to a market that really is representative of a unique problem space. We don’t see IBM with [its System p line] at all in the Niagara space. What brings new customers to Sun is differentiation and innovation. [They] want to be 50% faster, or 50% more energy-efficient, or half the size. Those things, when added up across really large data centers, mean real money to real customers.

Sun fosters a reputation as a disruptive company, from a technology standpoint. But what will it mean to be disruptive going forward? You want to be careful. You want to be disruptive to the industry; you don’t want to be disruptive to your customers. I’ll give you a great example of the kind of disruption that the market is going to see from Sun in the next 12 months. We have been very aggressively promoting OpenSolaris in the marketplace, and there are a lot of storage vendors that have been really excited to embrace open-source operating systems — so long as they stay on servers.

As you have seen with Thumper — a 48TB storage platform based on the ZFS file system — we’re planning on taking Solaris and extending all the skills and knowledge and ecosystem that we built in our server business to our storage business. That now means open-source platforms will be at the heart of open storage as it evolves as a market category, and we plan on being a leader there. That’s very disruptive to the competition.

What role does FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt — play in the server market these days? I’m asking this because Linux advocates don’t seem to miss an opportunity to explain why that operating system will crush Solaris at some point. How do you counter that? We don’t pay a lot of attention to that; we pay a lot of attention to customers. We are very well aligned with the Linux community. We’re not the enemy of one another — and I know there are folks who get emotional about that now and then. But our focus is going after the proprietary vendors that are causing our customers a lot of grief and a lot of pain. And the more we focus on solving those customers’ problems, the more they embrace open source.

Some people think that the current economic problems will accelerate the adoption of software-as-a-service technologies. What are your thoughts on that, and how are your products going to line up to support SaaS? Customers under stress are open to change. And that is what I see from every customer I’ve spoken to, especially [lately]. That means they are open to change in moving away from proprietary software vendors and proprietary storage vendors, more open to moving to software as a service, more open to moving to free software — and that, again, creates opportunity for Sun. I think the doors are going to be more open in the next year than they have ever been.

Where is this innovation going to come from? The fear is that investment dollars will dry up. Innovation rarely arises in a bubble. Someone clever once said that necessity is the mother of all invention, so believe me, people are becoming a lot more innovative as I speak. Why? Because they have to. If your budget just got cut 50%, I promise you, everything is on the table. There is no better time to start a company than right now. It may be tough to find funding, but there is no better time to go look at the parade of legacy technologies that need to be replaced and the extraordinary interest from customers in entertaining new ideas.

If that’s true, are you considering any changes in where your research dollars are being spent? In general, we’re looking at ways to increase R&D. That doesn’t mean across everything. It means to double down on those parts of the market that really represent clear revenue return. Coming back to the T5440 — although [the Niagara platform] is more than a billion-dollar business, you have to remember that [work on] the first silicon began in 2001. R&D takes patience, discipline and rigor. We’re not going to make changes within the quarter or within the next six months that are just going to be episodic or ephemeral changes because there was a downturn.

As is her habit, the Beloved is listening to Jonathan Schwartz’s Christmas show on WNYC-FM, where his guests include Mandy Patinkin, Charles Osgood, Jay Leonhart, Steve LaSpina, Harry Allen, John Pizzarelli, Tony Monte, and Gene Bertoncini.  When the chatter comes to a graceful halt, Jonathan offers high-quality seasonal music, including tenor saxophonist Harry’s romp through “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” 

The Beloved, quite properly, was delighted with Harry’s performance.  But she asked me, “Do jazz musicians really enjoy playing such silly songs?” 

“Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” is well-established in the American cultural landscape, ubiquitous, even.  I used to roll my eyes whenever it was played.  However, when I found out that it had been composed by J. Fred Coots, composer of “You Go To My Head” and “For All We Know,” I was able to feel more kindly towards the song.  Somehow it appealed to me that Coots should have made a fortune on this musical shred — enabling him to live comfortably and write far better songs.   

I answered the Beloved’s question by invoking the Sage of Corsicana, Texas, Hot Lips Page, who, when asked a similar question, reputedly said, “The material is immaterial.”  And Django Reinhardt, who surely knew something about improvisation, asked for the simplest theme from “Tiger Rag” as material to improvise on at a jam session. 

Like alchemists, jazz musicians inhabit a miraculous universe, turning junk into gold, often enjoying the vapidity of a piece of music because its three-chord structure allows them to improvise freely while the F, G7, and C are endlessly returning.  Think of the twelve-bar blues as the perfect example.  The freedom to create as one wishes — what a blessing!

But back to seasonal matters.  Between now and Christmas, I am always tempted to equip myself with a pair of earplugs when I go out in public.  I would be thrilled to hear Bing’s “White Christmas” once a day, but “The Little Drummer Boy” performed with funk underpinnings raises my blood pressure alarmingly.  So I propose two aesthetic alternatives for the season.

One is the best, most jubilant jazz Christmas CD I have ever heard: Mark Shane (and his X-mas All-Stars, including Jon-Erik Kellso) on the Nagel-Heyer label, WHAT WOULD SANTA SAY?  It’s a CD I enjoy all through the year.    

The other piece of music is accessible online, as I found to my delight.  It’s a 1944 record made for the Savoy label, featuring the delightfully accomplished pianist Johnny Guarneri and the irreplaceable bassist Slam Stewart.  A truly irrepressible pair! 

The song — apparently improvised impromptu in the studio – is called SANTA’S SECRET, a jolly evocation of Fats Waller, who had died less than a year before.  It answers the pressing question, “What makes Santa so jolly?”  Whether Johnny and Slam were Tall when they recorded this I leave to scholars more erudite than myself. 

If you visit http://www.musicalfruitcake.com (which bills itself as offering the worst Christmas songs ever recorded — a position I don’t hold) and search for “Guarneri,” all should be revealed.  The link is genuinely troublesome, but it is alive and worth pursuing.      

In this holiday season and beyond, I hope that you are as happy as Johnny and Slam seem to be on that record.  And that you get to display your very own alchemical wizardries, even if you don’t play an instrument.

Jonathan Schwartz has been broadcasting on WNYC-FM (New York City’s NPR station) for a long time now, offering remarkable music and deeply informed commentary.    Every Saturday and Sunday from 12-4, Jonathan plays a large variety of moving and intriguing music – Fred Astaire, Ruby Braff, Becky Kilgore, Tony Bennett and many others.   

Jonathan’s program also appears on Sirius satellite radio and his WNYC shows can be heard online, but I am listening live as I write this. 

Unlike other radio personalities who delve deeply into American popular song and jazz, Jonathan is more interested in presenting the music than a barrage of archival data.  And his program isn’t a museum, for he plays recordings by young performers who keep traditions vigorous. 

When I first heard his WNYC program, years ago, my musical range was deep but narrow.  I knew as much as I could about 1938 Billie Holiday, about the partnership of Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden, about the sounds of Jo Jones and George Wettling.  I loved Bing Crosby.  But I was an impatient listener, fidgeting until Jonathan played a song or a musician of whom I approved. 

And I didn’t understand Jonathan’s deep fascination with Frank Sinatra.  Sinatra was everywhere in my childhood and adolescence, and he seemed one-dimensional, someone trying to be hip for the young’uns and a sad tough guy for the people who watched the Ed Sullivan Show.  Louis was always Louis, no matter what he sang or played.  Sinatra seemed so busy selling repackaged versions of himself.  When “Ol’ Blue Eyes” came back, it meant nothing to me — had he ever been away?  The performances I saw on television seemed consciously mannered: “Look how deeply I feel,” he seemed to be saying, which I did not find convincing.   

But I am writing this to say that even our most cherished artistic convictions need to be reinspected now and again, to see if they are valid.  Or if they ever were.  The Beloved listens to Jonathan’s WNYC program faithfully, so I have heard him more often and more regularly than ever before.

More than a year ago, Jonathan played a Sinatra recording I had never heard, from the Capitol sessions with the Hollywood String Quartet, which appered on vinyl and CD as CLOSE TO YOU.  The song was a collaboration of Gordon Jenkins and Johnny Mercer, “P.S., I Love You.”  I had heard Billie Holiday’s sweet-sour Verve version — but Sinatra’s singing, tender, unaffected, wistful — brought tears to my eyes.  The next day, I bought the CD and still think of it as supremely romantic music, superbly realized.  That singer in the Capitol studio didn’t care whether he struck the best I-don’t-care pose for the photographers.  He was inside the music, selling nothing but conveying everything. 

I was suspicious.  I looked into the mirror while shaving.  Was I turning into a Sinatra-phile, one of those people who reveled in every note their hero had sung?  I already had enough musical obsessions, thank you.  So I kept close watch on myself and played CLOSE TO YOU in the car, thinking that it was one atypical occasion when Sinatra had allowed himself to merge with the music. 

But it happened again when Jonathan played another Capitol Sinatra, the arrangement by Gordon Jenkins.  Perhaps it was ”Where Are You?”  And, against my more suspicious self, I was staggered by the depth of feeling in that record.  I bought it and played it.  And then there was the slightly angry “Oh, You Crazy Moon,” from THE MOONLIGHT SINATRA.  And the tragically world-weary Sinatra of “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry.”

So this is to say, “Thank you!” to Jonathan Schwartz for enriching my musical and emotional experience.  I now think it is possible to play a great Sinatra recording alongside one of the Billie Holiday Verves and to hear that both singers are — in their own way – considering the mysteries of the human heart. 

Some readers might be thinking, “Isn’t this a jazz blog?  Sinatra wasn’t a jazz singer!”  Those categories don’t matter when the art moves us.  As he was in mourning for his life, drinking cognac, Lester Young  played those mournful Sinatra records over and over.  “Frankie-boy,” Pres called him.  If Sinatra moved Lester Young, who knew everything about elation and despair, that’s good enough for me.  I am sorry that it took me this long to find the inward-looking Sinatra, but I am deeply indebted to Jonathan Schwartz for making it happen.

Over the past forty years, I’ve spent many rewarding hours in front of the radio, listening to jazz.  My mother loved WPAT, a New Jersey easy listening station where the programmers had good taste and a real affection for Bobby Hackett.  Later, John S. Wilson played an hour of jazz once a week on WQXR.  Then, WRVR, with Ed Beach, Max Cole, and other luminaries; WBGO (thankfully still going strong with their jazz programming and “Jazz From the Archives,” often hosted by Dan Morgenstern).  There’s WKCR — with Phil Schaap, of course, but also Sid Gribetz, Ben Young, and others. Rich Conaty, of “The Big Broadcast” on WFUV and Jonathan Schwartz on WNYC still offer up the good noise.  Once in a while, I could even hear Humphrey Lyttelton on BBC shortwave.  And I am sure I have left someone out.

Thanks to Dave Weiner at Hofstra, who hosted his own “Swing Years,” I took my own leap into college radio, circa 1982.  I invented an hour-long show, “Rarities,” where I could play Thirties blue-label Deccas; consider the career of Lou McGarity, and amuse myself for a splendidly small audience.

Perhaps ten years ago, tuning around the bottom end of the FM dial, where the non-commercial radio stations huddle together for shelter, I heard an assortment of jazz records being played — no announcements, no explanation, and apparently no order.  I would turn to this station when I was ready to go to sleep, but (in that state of fuzzy half-awareness, so oddly precious) I noticed that some of their randomness seemed planned.  They would be offering the same groupings of music at the same time each night — for instance, an Arbors CD featuring Dan Barrett and Becky Kilgore.  Then the light bulb — admittedly one of low wattage — went on.  They had organized everything alphabetically by title: “I Thought About You,” “I Wished On The Moon,” “It’s Funny to Everyone But Me.”  Now, whenever I turn to the “Songs” listing on my iPod, I think of that anonymous radio station.

However, jazz on the radio is hardly proliferating now.  But some people have discovered that they can get around the costly necessities of a “real” radio station by means of the internet.  The OKOM people were perhaps the first to do this.

Now, I’ve learned that “PURE JAZZ RADIO” is coming on January 1, 2009.  Rich Keith, who also lives on this island, has let me know that his project will be to play jazz classics 24/7 with time for Frank Sinatra on Sundays.  Visit his site http://www.purejazzradio.com for more information. 

Some days I look at the pile of CDs next to the computer that have to be listened to so that I can review them, and those I’ve just bought, and think the heretical thought, “Is it possible you have too much music here?”  But even in those moments, a new jazz radio station devoted to jazz (!) is an enterprise worth investigating.  Good luck, Rich!

Sun Microsystems said earlier today that it would cut its workforce by as much as 18% in an attempt to realign its operations to deal with the economic downturn that has contributed to sagging sales. Sun stated that it is not planning any sale and argues the cuts are needed to keep Sun competitive in a depressed economy that has also affected other Silicon Valley companies, including Intel and Cisco Systems.

From the Associated Press:

The economic downturn might be pushing Sun Microsystems Inc., one of the storied names in computing, to the brink of extinction.

The company’s servers and software helped stimulate the Internet boom, and its engineering acumen is revered. But Sun never fully recovered from the previous financial crisis — the dot-com meltdown — and it has been steamrolled by big shifts in the way businesses buy their back-end computers.

Now Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun plans to slash up to 6,000 jobs, or 18 percent of its global work force, as it scrambles to cut costs to offset a devastating slump in sales of its high-end servers. Sales of those machines fell 27 percent in the latest quarter as banks and other big customers went under or couldn’t get loans to buy the servers.

“These are hard but necessary changes,” Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s chief executive, said in an interview Friday as he disclosed the cuts. They sent Sun shares up 4 cents, or 1 percent, to close at $4.12.

Sun also said its software chief, Rich Green, has resigned, as the company splits its software division into three new business groups.

One will handle Sun’s Java programming language — a key ingredient for many Web sites — and open-source database offerings. Open-source software is free software for which Sun sells support services. Another will be responsible for Sun’s Solaris operating system, which is used to run servers. The third will focus on developing programs for “cloud computing” services delivered over the Internet.

Sun’s extreme restructuring is what many investors were calling for. It follows three other rounds of big layoffs in the past three years in which nearly 7,000 jobs were axed. Analysts say it gives Sun breathing room to improve its margins and try to return to profitability.

It might not ultimately be enough, though, to preserve Sun as the company is currently structured if losses keep mounting, renewing speculation about a possible spinoff or sale. Fujitsu Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. or Dell Inc. are all potential suitors.

[qi:011] Sun Microsystems (s java) today announced that it is going to cut between 15 and 18 percent of its work force. That’s somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 jobs. The company plans to cut its annual costs by between $600 million and $800 million. It blamed the cuts on the global economic downturn. But I think that like many other companies, Sun is using the downturn as an excuse for what were pre-existing problems, foretold by its stock price, which seems to be in an unending swoon. The cuts also come with the rearrangement of executive responsibilities, prompting Larry Dignan to write: “Sun is a company mired in what seems like a never-ending transition.”

Here are some of the changes:

* Anil Gadre, currently Chief Marketing Officer, will now head up the Application Platform Software business, which would include Java, MySQL and other such stuff.
* John Fowler will now lead Systems Platforms, which includes some of its new storage and analytics products.
* Dave Douglas will head up company’s Cloud Computing & Developer Platforms units, including the Network.com efforts.

Will these help? I am sure they can’t hurt. Or as someone recently said — leaky oil tankers take a long time to sink, so there is enough time to patch stuff up.

CEO Jonathan Schwartz says company still looking at cost cuts

The worldwide economic slowdown has been hard on Sun Microsystems. First-quarter sales fell 7.1 percent and the company swung from a profit last year to a loss of $1.7 billion, which included a charge.

Business with U.S. financial firms was particularly devastated. Sales fell 20 percent.

So what it a struggling computer company to do? In Sun’s case, nothing it could spell out to Wall Street analysts on a conference call Thursday.

“We understand we’re going to have to balance our costs for the new reality,” said CEO Jonathan Schwartz. But the details? Sun wouldn’t say.

Sun has long been hesitant to pull the trigger on layoffs. During the dot.com downturn beginning in 2001, the company resisted deep cuts into staff and expenses at a time when other firms shed jobs like a retriever loses hair in the summer.

The strategy may make nice with employees, but it hasn’t produced the best business results.

Compare Sun to another high-tech giant that released quarterly earnings on Thursday: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. TSMC took decisive action. The world’s largest chip foundry said third-quarter sales were hurt by the economic slowdown and that fourth-quarter revenue would be weak as well.

The global semiconductor market should decline 5 percent to 9 percent next year, the company said, offering a dour outlook.

As a result, TSMC slashed 2009 capital spending by 20 percent from the $1.8 billion spending planned this year – reacting quickly to the crisis.

Yes, the environment is challenging, and customers are “pushing off large scale system purchases,” as Schwartz noted. But what are you going to do about it?

We’ll get back to you, was Sun’s answer.

Sitting here, listening to Jonathan Schwartz’ Saturday Show and sipping your uncle’s coffee: that is, any coffee properly touched by a fine spirit, in this case Laphroaig single malt Scotch Whiskey, smoky but it works. (mmm, now that’s a coffee, dadgummit!.)

To the point: Have you ever considered how the perfection of any single event? A shot, for example.

When a shot is fired, a web of circumstances is created that can never be created again or lied about in perpetuity. This gun must have shot it. This person must have pulled the trigger. The wind must have been precisely of this speed and direction. It must have been this time on the clock. To trace the occurrence, all we have to do is fall somewhere on the web. The power of this perfection is even to allow us to be imperfect: we don’t need to discover all of the circumstances to discover the event. [We couldn't do that even if we wanted to.] The inherent power of those connected truths is what such phenomena as CSI and ShotSpotter are all about, the imperfect tracing of circumstances that lead us to the shot and the shooter.

Physics only discovered this in 1687 with Newton’s Third Law of Motion: Whenever a particle A exerts a force on another particle B, B simultaneously exerts a force on A with the same magnitude in the opposite direction. The strong form of the law further postulates that these two forces act along the same line. This law is often simplified into the sentence “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

King Ahab, even while disguised as an ordinary solider, discovered it long before Newton, finding his death exactly where Naboth died. Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, set Naboth up to be killed for not giving up his vineyard at Ahab’s request. He wanted it because …it was near his house and he wanted to plant a garden of herbs. (What kind of warped imminent domain is that??). That act brought judgment from God, spoken by Elijah: I Kings 21:19 – And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.

I don’t remotely pretend to offer prophesy or its fulfillment, but rather just the apparent evidence of newtonian law and biblical method. Just on observation, it looks like we in the United States, at this very moment, are living the verge of a major comeuppance…

What goes around comes around

Your uncle’s coffee.