Now that MySQL is part of Sun Microsystems, I occasionally get invited to present our overall strategy to customers at the Sun Executive Briefing Center. Like everything else at Sun, it's usually referred to by it's TLA (three letter acronym) as the EBC. Last week, I arrived a bit early to briefing of a Fortune 500 manufacturing company.
Andy Bechtolsheim, Sun co-founder, was in the middle of explaining on the white board some of Sun's plans regarding storage. I can't give away the details (who could keep up?) but it was an amazing display of depth and breadth. Here's a guy who's equally at home discussing how to optimize out 3 nano-seconds in the CPU execution path and then talking about how to use Flash memory and ZFS to create storage devices that are orders of magnitude faster and more efficient than traditional magnetic medea.
It was Olympic level acrobatics for geeks and we all had front row seats. And even though we didn't understand half of it, Andy was very patient in explaining it and showing how Sun is disrupting the market. Not in an arrogant way, but in a matter-of-fact, humble "this is the reason I am on the planet" kind of way. Needless to say the customer was impressed.
And I was impressed that a guy like Andy Bechtolsheim would take the time to explain what he's working on to customers and get their input. That's impressive. Andy is definitely one of Sun's secret weapons.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on June 18, 2008 06:58 AM
