Don't let the Sun go down

OPEN THOUGHT

While we wait for the resolution of the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems, I would like to spare a thought for the fall of the last technology company out there and for some of the fond memories I have of Sun. No, they will not leave us, but I also doubt they will ever be the same again once Oracle's PR team have put their executives through proper media training.

I always relish the opportunity to jump at exclusive Sun interviews for the fact that they are so unpredictable and oh so fun. I remember one interview with former Sun country manager Andrew Lim on its new BlackBox Data Centre in a container solution. Yes, we started on BlackBox and how a data centre in a box would be perfect for disaster recovery and rapid set up in places which had otherwise run-out of space - the BlackBox could be configured, parked in a car park and hooked up with power and water to provide instant computing power, but somehow I recall that the headline that came out was a strong piece on Open Source and why the Thai government should endorse open source as a national policy.

Another Sun event that sticks out in memory was when I went to a seaside resort to meet up with their vice-president for Financial Services, a chap called Lawerence Scott. Yes, the brief was supposed to be about Sun's (boring) solutions for the financial services industry but all I remember was how we kept talking about Rock, Pebble and Boulder and massively multicore architecture. Yes, their VP for boring money matters was so much of a geek that he couldn't help himself from discussing all these unlaunched next generation CPUs and their architecture; how the Ultrasparc Niagara's architecture was good architecture but only needed a bit more speed in its arithmetic logic units and a whole load of other exciting stuff that was not exactly on the official agenda of the day.

I am sure that such liberties, even by a vice-president, would not be allowed at Oracle.

The last time I interviewed Oracle Thailand's boss Natasak before he was promoted to head of Asean, he made the cardinal sin of quoting some IDC figures without asking prior permission from the analysts. The country PR manager butted in, explained that in order to quote an IDC figure, they had to ask permission from IDC in advance and asked all the journalists to please strike that quote from the record to prevent anyone getting into trouble. Never mind that the number was on the front page of Oracle.com anyway as I later found out, but apparently country managers cannot say anything that is not pre-approved. Which sort of destroys the value of an interview in the first place.

Other companies change over time. Microsoft under Andrew McBean was such a fun place. Every time anyone with half a fancy position to his namecard flew into Bangkok, Microsoft Thailand would reach out and offer a high-level interview, be it on the trend for smartphones (not that Windows Mobile was in a market dominant position long enough to set the trend) to interviews on e-Government, education and healthcare. Half the time it was a general industry thought provoking piece not that well structured from a PR point of view, but it was real journalism that required a lot of thought on my part, not cut and paste reporting. Under her current country manager, Microsoft is all consumer with none of this "how we are going to change the world" talk any more. Effective, focused and probably a good deal better in terms of return on investment figures when it comes to their PR budget, definitely. But fun? No.

The worst case of media control I have seen in my career was from the other one-time suitor of Sun, IBM. A few years ago I was at their Knowledge is Power event in Phuket, got there earlier than my media ball-and-chain (or PR person) and after registration, donning my brightly coloured media badge, I wandered around and asked a passing-by IBMer where I was supposed to have lunch.

"Sorry, I'm not authorised to talk to media and analysts," came the answer.

While I can understand that it would be one thing for a junior officer to give a quote on the company's performance to media or analysts, simply asking where lunch was served was hardly a matter to cause their stock prices to rise or fall. The poor guy looked terrified as he quickly sped away, not to be seen conversing with media.

IBM has a strict policy that employees cannot talk to media without a PR being present. Sometimes this can be silly such as when I ask for lunch, other times it verges on making me feel sorry for the poor guy. Recently at an ICT Ministry non-event (the event was so boring and a waste of time as usual) in the lobby I saw their government programmes executive with a group of industry people talking. As I passed and paid my respects I was drawn into the conversation, only to note that the hitherto chatty IBMer was totally silent while I was in earshot and sharing with the industry big-shots my ideas on what needed to be done to save the industry.

Yes, he was doing his job, following the rules. I felt sorry for him. Yet in similar very Thai industry situations I remember Sun's Dr Thanachart Numnonda continuing on regardless and not always on politically correct subjects. But more importantly I felt sorry for the trend that belittles journalism and seems to think of us only as reporters.

Using my journalistic charms and turning the tables on unsuspecting public relations people, I have discovered that most of the boring companies have this rule of whitelists and blacklists when it comes to a new article appearing in print.

The rule is simple, if any word on the blacklist appears, the PR manager has to lob a report up one level above the spokesperson to their boss. If the report does not include all the keywords on the whitelist, a similar report has to be filed.

"Why would they want to speak to you if there's little to gain and so much to lose?" one unsuspecting PR manager from one of Sun's former suitors once told me. True, from their point of view as someone focused on getting safe column-inches rather than looking at the big picture of the sector and country as a whole.

So as the Sun sets, let me pay homage to the last great tech company with silicon in their veins and a massive multicore Rock SPARC chip in their head. Sun was great in that it was a fun place to be around; to work; to attend conferences. Its Java developer days was more of a T-shirt and sneakers kind of hero-worship rave party than a black suit and tie IBM or classy socialite Oracle event. Everyone of a generation learned Java and graduated with a sense of goodwill to this great house of fun. Sun was open, it gave everything away for free and for a while this worked. It bought in the best and brightest in the industry who could not see themselves working in a straightjacket and suit elsewhere. But ultimately in the cruel light of modern day economics, goodwill does not pay.

Yes, there will be many more mavericks, the young upstarts who will do anything and everything including getting almost arrested to make a news headline, such as Salesforce.com staging a mock mass protest in Singapore against Oracle, but even they will soon grow up and become potty trained, sorry, I mean PR-trained. Sun was the last giant that remained, like Peter Pan, the boy who would never grow up. Maybe if we all clap loud enough, Sun will not die and change. Faeries die only when not enough people believe in them.