Technology complexity is reaching a business-choking level as companies are compelled to confront a bewildering array of products, versions, and vendors - all of which clamour for attention on different schedules.
These schedules have nothing to do with when the company is ready for upgrades or enhancements, but rather revolve around the product development cycle. And an additional challenge is posed in terms of whether the new version of this will work with the old version of that.
CIOs grapple with these uncomfortable issues every day. Adding to the woes of tracking software components, which include but are not limited to operating systems, portals, app servers, directories, identity systems, security, mail, streaming media, security, calendars and clustering, is labyrinthine licensing models that can be per CPU, per entry, per mailbox, per stream or per node. And all of that is subject to total unpredictability as myriad vendors follow different schedules that the CIO must chart.
Sun Microsystems is setting out to change this situation. We're recognising that, as an industry, we can't keep throwing products at our customers and leaving it up to them to see if they can make it all work. It's time to bring some order to the chaos.
Part of this is delivering software that has been tested the way our customers use it: not just unit testing, but system testing in real-world scenarios.
So, Sun has kicked off a new initiative - Project Orion - which takes a radical new approach to the design, development and delivery of software -- an approach which takes on an holistic view of the vendor, partner and customer software lifecycle.
In order to address the traditionally random nature of software delivery, Sun is moving all its offerings onto a regular release schedule, with each component having to meet stringent criteria before entering the market.
It's a proven model - we're applying the lessons learned from our Solaris operating environment, which has been on a quarterly release schedule for the past five years. We've discovered that our customers appreciate the predictability of the model, so the same approach is being applied to all our server-side products.
This software system will standardise on a set of common components, establish a predictable baseline for extending complementary functionality, and utilise uniform procedures for installation and other common functions.
Our customers will no longer need to be concerned with software version malalignment and compatibility issues. If it's in the software system, it works together - period. The goal of Project Orion is to create an open, multivendor software system, providing partners and technology vendors alike with a reference for extending and integrating additional software.
As an integral part of the software release cycle, the software system will be "hardened" prior to release by testing specific customer scenarios that will raise the level of production-ready quality.
It doesn't matter whether partners wish to take advantage of the same benefits our clients receive from a predictable and reliable software system, or wish to include their own products on the software release schedule: all are welcome to join and drive complexity and cost out of today's software infrastructure.
Project Orion will eliminate a lot of guesswork. Customers will be able to try any or all components of the software system free, then buy using either traditional pricing or a subscription model with predictable periodic payments.
In the future, Sun intends introducing "metered" payment plans for even greater flexibility.
With Project Orion, we're raising the bar for the whole software industry. Some may prefer to create complexity so they can make money managing the chaos. But we believe it's wrong that companies today have to spend 80% of their technology budgets on maintenance and only 20% extending their capabilities.
Imagine what they could do if those percentages were reversed.
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