Acquiring Hewlett Packard's Legacy

I love the humor and mischief in Sun. It's one of the things that drew me here long before I joined the company, and one of the things I really appreciate about our culture. But frankly, it's one of the things that's gotten close to being rinsed away by years of cost cutting. So I'd like to officially declare, herewith, a rebirth of fun at Sun. Good, cheap, drive the other guys up a wall, fun. And to that end... You may have read about a very interesting art project. Some enterprising artists decided to mix technology and art, to create likenesses of technology industry titans, attach a Java phone to the sculptures, and set them free to find their way home. The project relied upon the kindness of strangers. Public spirited individuals that contributed to the return of the artwork to its rightful destination would leave their email address on the back of the artwork, and receive a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the sculptures. The Java phone enabled the sculptures to be tracked via a service operator, Accutracking, and via Google maps. You can read about the technical details here, and track animated maps of each piece's progress. Now, not everyone thought this was a cool idea. When presented with the opportunity to purchase the likeness of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, it having made the trek from the printer ink section of a San Jose Office Depot, our friends at HP elected not to honor their founders. So out of respect for HP's legacy, the fine folks in Sun's marketing team decided to acquire the artwork. Bill and Dave are absolute legends, held in the deepest respect by all of us at Sun. We were honored at the opportunity. So we bought them, and their garage, for $6,000. Lock, stock and Java phone. And what better way of demonstrating the strength of our partnership than with a picture: With nearly 25% of Solaris downloads requested on to HP's servers, we know their customers really want the partnership, and we're happy to oblige. To warn you in advance, Bill and Dave have both indicated a strong interest in learning more about Sun and the Solaris platform, so stay tuned. We're putting together a global tour. Maybe even some new t-shirts.

Date: August 18, 2006
Category: Main

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