Syndicated from a previously public website – Raju Alluri’s public posts at Sun Microsystems
I got an invitation from Marketing to join the Niagara Launch in Bangalore. First I debated whether to spend 3 hours in an event that launches a product that I know a lot of details about already. However, wanted to see how the event is run, rather than for the content of it. Surprisingly, a good amount of content of the launch is very impressive and informative. So it is worth spending those 3 hours there.
The launch is done at Hotel Grand Ashok in Bangalore. It is attended by at least 500 people (I am bad at counting crowds, but the number is my worst case estimate.) The session is hosted by Sun’s Brand Ambassador in India, Perizaad Zorabian. She did an impressive job of running the show smoothly.
Rajesh Rege gave a very good overview of Sun’s current positioning in the open, standards based offering front. He discussed why and how Sun offers choices to customers: choice of hardware, choice of OS/OE, choice of middleware etc. This presentation is very well received.
Jeff O’Neal of SSG tookover from there and did an excellent presentation covering the advantages of Ultrasparc T1 Processor, the concept and advantages of Multi-Core processors in this range, coolthreads technology and how it is used to build the T1000 and T2000 servers. He gave various comparisons of the SPEC benchmarks of these servers against that of other players in the market. Jeff’s articulation of details in a simple manner seemed to impress the gathering very well.
Arnab Roy gave a very good demo of calculating the SWaP metrics and calculating the cost of ownership using SIM datacenter tool. This demo has a strong impact on the audience because they could see the advantages of the T1000/T2000 servers over the products of our competitors. He used the SIM datacenter tool to calculate the Space, Power and Air Conditioning requirements for achieving 150,000 SAPs worth of throughput.
Suresh Kolthay, GM Oracle Direct, articulated details of the extended Sun-Oracle relationship.
The videos shown during the launch are very well shot. They convey the message precisely, yet in a fun way.
During the dinner, I could see people discussing the salient features of these new products. I am sure the launches in other parts of India and world also have resulted in similar positive response from customers.