It has been a big day for Sun Microsystems today, who, after announcing their largest deal ever, now report that General Electric has selected Sun's Java System Identity Manager, "the provisioning component of the Sun Java Enterprise System, [to deploy] across all GE business units and 450,000 users on a global scale." 
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It has been a big day for Sun Microsystems today, who, after announcing their largest deal ever, now report that General Motors has selected Sun's Java System Identity Manager, "the provisioning component of the Sun Java Enterprise System, [to deploy] across all GE business units and 450,000 users on a global scale."
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GE has been Sun's partner for a very long time, especially to showcase all of that Solaris 10 stuff and the supposed move from Linux to Solaris 10. This is not any sort of big win for Sun, but simply some publicity trying to tell us all that something is happening. They'll be giving all of that stuff away to GE anyway.
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In your opinion, how does "identity management" deliver more value to the market?
Identity management?! Oh, you mean logging in when you get to work in the morning?
It would seem to me that "identity management" is mainly useful in the ownership of human assets, much as branding is used to control large farms of cattle.
Can't put it any other way.
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GE is the largest company in the world - it has more employees than Iceland has citizens - and it is an important brand name.
So even if it was true that Sun has no economic benefit, the marketing value of this announcement is significant.
In any case, I'll be looking at the figures in the books, after the next quarterly report.
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GE is the largest company in the world - it has more employees than Iceland has citizens - and it is an important brand name.
It doesn't matter how big the iceberg is, if you're not making money off it you've missed the boat.
So even if it was true that Sun has no economic benefit, the marketing value of this announcement is significant.
Sun's had more than enough marketing. Now it's time to do what normal businesses do - pay for themselves and make money.
In any case, I'll be looking at the figures in the books, after the next quarterly report.
Twenty quarters later.... You just wait until next quarter!
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RE: Pravda is a fascist communist
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Today I was reading the Dr Who novel "The Quantum Archangel" from BBC books. When I got to p.73 I burst out laughing at the following referring to a fictional quantum computer:
"This isn't the same machine. I mean physically it is, but the Q-Solaris operating system and the the software processors have all been changed. Upgraded!"
Quantum Solaris indeed, a bit off topic but well its good for a laugh :-)
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have a look for yourself and stop posting your textual diarrhea...
http://www.ge.com/company/companyinfo/executivebios/board_of_direct...
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No need to be nasty di^H^Hdude...I was just implying that a relationship exists between GE and Sun at the very highest levels, therefore I'm not at all surprised about the announcement. It might even give you a hint about how this world actually works...
Now, maybe McNealy isn't on the GE board today (I did check out the link you provided), but didn't you think it's possible that things might have been different not too long ago.
A simple Google session, and the very first link points to a page with the following sentance: "About 18 months ago, he [McNealy] started work on a succession plan patterned after what he had learned while sitting on the board at GE." Another link has this to say: "Sun CEO Scott McNealy and GE's Jack Welch have become best buddies who mentor each other."
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This is great news for sun, but could potentially be very, very bad for GE. They'll have TCS and Satyam out in Bangalore designe an IE only web interface for the whole system, and impose that on us admins. It will provide 1/4 the functionality of our current AD domain (which in itself is nothing more than a glorified NT4 domain), and 90% of the time most of the vital features won't work.
This is nothing against Sun, I'm sure thier product is very good, better in fact than anything microsoft might shove down our throats; the problem is what they will do with it.
We in GE Energy recently turned over our email system to GE Corporate (the likely party responsible for this deal). They have no idea what the actual needs of their sub businesses are. Remember kids: corporate stands for "Can't Offer Reasonable Performance Or Reliable Access To Email." Just imagine how bad things will get when their pariahs get their feces staind hands all over our user authentication too. Nothing but a bunch of offshore workers, could so easily make a rose smell like a turd.
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I wouldn't blame offshoring or what ever; 99% of the time, when something fails, you can smell an incompentant PHB lurking around somewhere.
Its funny, a PHB will rally around the idea and build up a fan boy base when pushing the idea, but when the shit hits the fan, and money is wasted - they're all to willing to blame the IT staff or any other sacrificial lamb if and when required.
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They don't, if they did they'd probably have half the country in their database of former employees 
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Actually, I do wonder what they use for tracking their former employees. They track every register transaction, you'd think they'd transfer employee transactions and figure out that paying $7-$8 an hour gets you crappy employees who steal from you or quit within 3-6 months.
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Well, considering that GM is in serious trouble, possibly in danger of bankruptcy, with a reported net loss last quarter of $1.1 billion, and a junk bond status that has plunged its stock market value to less than $19 billion, I guess that Sun and GM have chosen to go down together.
Good luck to them.
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"I guess that Sun and GM have chosen to go down together."
Sun is going up. GM, well, GM has some challenges ahead. GM is smart, at least, to not have chosen the perpetual licensing hell that Microsoft would have unleashed. Solaris 10 is free to use, even for a big guy like GM, and they buy the support contracts they need. JES is licensed on a per-employee basis, which is a nice cash infusion for Sun, but it's still cheap relative to Microsoft.
It's interesting that after the early 1990s of el-cheapo Windows NT, Microsoft, today, finds themselves as the most expensive vendor in the market. That means their prices _have_ to drop, which means their ludicrous profits will drop, which means their rediculous cash pile will lessen, which means the end of the Microsoft monopoly. It took only 20 years for FOSS to culminate in open source UNIX (OpenSolaris) to finally provide the level playing field the software industry needs to thrive.
