Simon’s Blog

We’re in the process of buying some computer hardware to build a high-performance, scalable computer system to enable some complex (read CPU-intensive), fully-automated analyses of large volumes (think hundreds of terabytes) of high-definition digital video. For this system, my first choice of operating system is Solaris x86. We’re planning on managing the system by using Sun N1 Service Provisioning System and Sun Grid Engine. We’re developing all the video analysis software for this system in Java, and using Netbeans as our IDE.

So - we’re using a lot of Sun software technology here; and thanks to Jonathan Schwartz’s leadership, all this software is now free. Fantastic. Really fantastic. So, I’d really love to support Sun for helping our business, by purchasing the hardware to run our software from Sun. Jonathan has written a lot about how Sun has changed and is now interested both in competing on price, and also in working with startups.

However, there has been some recent discussion in the blogosphere suggesting that Sun may not really have changed after all (see Matt’s (Mr Wordpress) blog (and a second post), Jonathan’s blog, and Scoble’s blog)

I want to give Sun my money to buy around twenty to forty servers. They’ve done the hard part - they made me want to buy their products. I’ve done the hard part - the cash is in the bank, waiting to make the purchase. All I ask is that Sun is competitive on price, and are responsive as regards getting quotes to me, for the equipment that I want to buy. I’ll keep you posted…

Update 1. Friday, 26 Jan, 16:45 UK time: Well, Sun certainly seems well on the way to getting the responsiveness bit nailed [I hope] - thanks go to Jonathan Schwartz and to Dan Miller. I’m impressed. Just the competitive bit to go!

Update 2. Tuesday, 30 Jan, 16.30 UK time: Meeting set up with Sun for tomorrow afternoon.

Update 3. Wednesday, 31 Jan, 17.45 UK time: I just came out of the meeting with Sun, with some Sun attendance by telephone. It was a useful meeting. I believe we’re now all on the same page in terms of what our requirements are: the precise hardware specification; and how quickly we want to get this done [i.e. yesterday!]. Just the commercial terms to go…

Update 4. Tuesday, 6 Feb, 9.10am, UK time. Still no sign of a quote. Kind of disappointing. I tried to give a couple of gentle shakes of the tree yesterday: one at the bottom ; and one at the top. Let’s see if anything falls out…

Update 5. Tuesday, 6 Feb, 16.15, UK time. I’ve spoken with Sun. I think we have a deal that all parties are happy with. I’ve OK’ed things in principle from our end, and it needs to be signed off by a couple of people at the Sun end.

Update 6. Thursday, 8 Feb, 16.00 UK time. Everything agreed at the Sun end. The formal quote to follow. Assuming the written quote matches what we’ve discussed verbally, we will have a deal.

Update 7. Tuesday, 13 Feb, 11.00 UK time. We have a quote that looks right… and so we have a deal! Finally! I will blog the details of the configuration we have ended up at later on.

Update 8. See how this all worked out in the end…

Update 9.  The hardware has now arrived…