Sun Shines On The Net

This guy has been blogging for quite a while, and I suspect that he has a pretty deep understanding of the dynamics of the digital infrastructure we call the Internet.

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Sun chief: Consumers, not IT, driving markets

 
Sun is holding an Emerging Markets Summit on its Menlo Park, CA campus. CEO Jonathan Schwartz kicked off the event with this statement: "The Internet is the most powerful social utility the world has ever seen."

“A gravitational shift in influence is underway, from enterprises to consumers,” he explained. “It is an epoch shift that we are trying to amplify and leverage in our business.” It’s also a shift to emerging markets, which over the next few decades will be larger than the existing established market

Sun’s goal is to provide the “technology utility” solutions to deliver the consuming public services across the Internet.

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The focus of that conference is emerging markets, so of course the statement carries that context.  I think we can safely assume that aside from consuming, there will be people who use it to educate and grow awareness amongst themselves and the groups they create and populate regarding all manner of issues and subjects.

I often argue that the major changes are yet to come, and am on record as stating I believe that for the last thirty years the focus (in IT and latterly the Web) has been on the technology, but that for the next thirty it's likely that the focus will increasingly be on sociology (with respect to consumption and commerce, education, political awareness and activism, etc.).  Other people have said variations of the same thing, so I am not claiming any originality here.

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Update:  I read the whole article, and I keep thinking about this bit excerpted from the article's conclusion.  It's unusual to see a CEO-level person who is consistent about thinking long-term.

Sun is building up its relationships with governments that favor open source. “When we have dialogs with governments, all of the sudden we are talking the same language. Governments have figured out that technology has become a social utility. You don’t want to be locked into proprietary technology and they want to have the next Google come out of their nations,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz is taking the long view at a time when speed and volume of growth are what get rewarded. “At the end of the day, we are attempting to focus in the next wave of developers, students, research and economic development so we can best position Sun for growth in next decade, not in next quarter or few weeks,” Schwartz said.

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