Sun's CIO Talks Internal Experiences

daria42 writes "This is an interesting interview with Sun's chief information officer Bill Vass, about his experiences as the CIO of one of the world's best-known high-tech company. In particular, Vass talks about corporate blogging (and frustrated lawyers), problems providing IT support to finicky Sun engineers (who sometimes demand Indian help desk support knows kernel details), Sun's programs testing its software internally on employees before it goes out, and how ultimately, his job is like any other CIO's...just with some cool toys."

One Point, One Big Problem

[teiresias]

Although Vass had no knowledge of this, he soon discovered the system in question was in fact the desktop machine of an engineer who had recently left the company. The desktop had been reformatted following his departure, cutting off 600 users who had over the last three years depended on it for network services.

Reminds me of a guy whose leaving our company right now. We're probably not going to delete his homespace since lord knows what will break if the things in there are gone.

It'll take us awhile to get that stuff into a common place. Probably took Sun a lot of time to get that one system back up and running.

Re:Sun is buying Novell!

[Otter]

Honestly, if the SEC outlawed April Fools Day altogether I'd consider it a net win.

Sun lost its Sparc.

[jellomizer]

I would be angry too if I called up technical support and I couldn't get kernel level knowlege. Most administrators know or at least use to know enough about the platform they are admistering to handle most of the problems and then for other things the search the web and blogs, for more help. If this fails them they have a good question for technical support. And having to go threw level 1 then 2 then 3 technical support is just annoying, and a waist of time. Technical support should be able to quicly figure out the complexity of your problem and move you to the aproprate level. If I am adding a user the person who answers the phone should give me to level 1, but if I am configuring the system kernel options then I should be placed on a higher level support.

The dark side is tempting.

[jellomizer]

When you are CIO of a technical company it is tempting be lax with policy and give the employees more access then they should have, it seems like a decent policy, first you save money because the desktops that people use anyways are also the servers so you don't need expensive servers, the technical people can administer their own system, and whatever they are serving.

But being a CIO you need to be a Dick every once in a while and make sure the technical people have the only the access they need to do their work properly. Have the IT department put buisness level servers in the server room and have them properly managed.

While the first way seems quicker and easier and has less personal conflect. The second way is better to manage and reduces of mission critical mistakes. It also allows for proper upgrading for the future.

Sure the employess can do the work themselvs but they rairly consider the big picture and end up with a spread of services which are hard to track and manage. It also creates a situration where an employee cannot be moved to a different position because they have the information that others dont.

Re:One Point, One Big Problem

[chill]

Reminds me of a guy whose leaving our company right now. We're probably not going to delete his homespace since lord knows what will break if the things in there are gone.

This is why workstations should be workstations and servers should be servers. Allowing users in a client-server environment to share resources from their workstations is bad network design/policy. Add a cheap server and give them space, but sharing should be disabled and disallowed on workstations.

-Charles

Re:Curse those darn engineers!!!

[Weaselmancer]

FUDding Troll.

I love posting sarcasm and seeing how it gets received. Sometimes people with a clue see it first and it gets Teh Funnae. And sometimes... not.

Another thing, which part of my post is FUD? The main article blurb speaks about the useless Indian help desk workers. All I did was joke about it.

Sounds like you actually knew the people in question and their abilities so you are the authority to speak on this.

And sometimes Dilbert's boss sounds just like my boss. Why? Because Scott Adams writes well and is funny. Having the PHB sound exactly like my boss makes it funnier.

But the CIO doesn't really get it yet

[mparaz]

His blog is empty [sun.com].

Re:One Point, One Big Problem

[Lumpy]

this problem is typically management's fault. or caused by management.

I am the guy who just replaced one of those engineering guru guys. he has crap EVERYWHERE running critical systems and data collection as well as processing. someone powered off his PC and crashed the billing system.

After digging in his notes and code as well as his old email I discovered that he wanted to do things right, he had a subversion server set up and a development as well as a production server in the server room.

But, management did not allow him to do his job right. I saw endless emails and messages about needing X Y or Z right now! did he finish Z yet? why is Y not in testing? who told you to stop working on X?

it was endless so the poor guy had to half ass everything because management refused to hire him any help, refused to accept realistic deadlines or adjust importance... everything was top super critical!

I was promoted to this position, I was able to find out most of this before accepting the promotion and told them that I work very differently. I use project management, refuse to work on 5 things at the same time as that creates 5 crappy, broken things as well as makes the process 10 times longer. I explained my concerns to the divisional VP that interviewed me and he agreed that that working atmosphere was not acceptable and told me that I have his authority to tell my superiors that they have to sort out priorities themselves and that EVERY new project request will come in at the bottom of the to-do list unless it has been signed off by the VP of operations to deserve to be escalated above everything else.

The origional mess was cause by management. and until someone in management gives a peon engineer or programmer the authority and protection to tell other management "nope, sorry." it will never get any better.

Re:Sun lost its Sparc.

[91degrees]

This isn't AOL new user tech support. This is commercial technical support that professionals use. Most of their callers know the basic admin stuff. They call tech support when they have an actual problem.

Re:not bright

[Decaff]

1)Lowering the price on their machines by 40%. Clearly this is the death rattle. A company operating at a loss is a company which won't be operating for very long.

Sheesh! First Sun is criticised for producting overpriced machines, then criticised for cutting the prices!

2)Sleeping with microsoft.

Er. There was legal action against Microsoft by Sun. Sun won, because Microsoft settled. Part of the deal was that Sun got access to some Microsoft technologies. It's not sleeping with Microsoft - it is beating them.

Yet, if you look at the fsf web page, you can easily see that 'cuddle' (the sun license; god knows why the came up with yet another one) is as far from free software as you can get!

First Sun are criticised for being closed source, then they are criticised when they open source (OSI approved) major software items.

SUN's days are numbered. Time to cash in your stock and cut your losses.

Ah, the regular Slashdot 'SUN is dead' proclamation. The one we have been reading for years. It is now so cliched it is a joke.

Re:Sun is buying Novell!

[AKAImBatman]

It means that Schwartz made a joke, and it had a very real effect on Sun's stock price. Even if Sun really was actually acquiring Novell, the executives have to be very careful about what they say. The wrong thing could be seen as stock manipulation, thus placing the exec in very deep legal trouble.

Half the point of getting an MBA is to learn how to avoid situations with the SEC and other regulatory commissions.

Re:They are starting to look at pricing - Ultra 20

[WidescreenFreak]

I used a Sun IPC!

Yeah, those lunchbox systems were cute. I just recently sold my whopping 50 MHz SPARCstation LX on eBay. Fully loaded with 96 MB of RAM (the maximum), too.

Now people are starting to appreciate the lunchbox format of mini-ITX systems like Shuttle. Once again, Sun was just a bit too far ahead of its time.