With this week"s launch of Project Orion, Sun CEO Scott McNealy is calling for nothing short of anthropologic change in how organizations deploy and pay for IT systems. At the heart of Sun strategy is a bundle of integrated software technologies that come with the core hardware platform. And to further up the ante, Sun is charging customers a flat per-employee rate with no access fees for anyone using the software from outside the company. In an interview with CRN Editor-in-Chief Michael Vizard and Senior Editor Elizabeth Montalbano, McNealy as usual makes use of automobile metaphors to explain why the industry needs to change.
CRN: Given current practices around the procurement of IT and all the companies that have a vested interest in the existing process, why do you think customers will gravitate to Project Orion?
McNealy: We are only riding what is a wave of inevitability. We haven"t invented anything new, it"s not innovative. It"s just brain-dead obvious that this is how we have to move.
CRN: Essentially, are you are saying that the traditional technology integration business is now forever altered?
McNealy: There"s still going to be boundary systems. We have to move to a higher level of abstraction. There"s going to be a lot of application and content integration with the Orion stack, it"s just you have to move to that level. Instead of putting the piston ring around the piston and putting that into the engine block and connecting that, we"re talking about getting a fleet of these things all to work together and be in the right places at the right time. It"s just a whole different level of integration help they can offer the customer.