Eclipse at Sun
January 19, 2007
UPDATE: Matt is talking about Sun’s Startup Essentials Program. We gave up on Sun in April of 2006. Looks like Matt is giving up on them now.
I met Simon Phipps’s from Sun at SXSW and we talked about getting SimpleTicket to run on their new Sun Fire T2000 server (it only runs on Linux now). I had requested a free server after reading Jonathan’s blog describing the free server program. I filled out the online request form found here. I had not heard anything for a long time and mentioned this to Simon. Finally, I got a call from Sun’s customer service department to explain why we would not be getting a server to test. Evidently I clicked a radio button on the signup page indicating our application was not running on Solaris 10 - this automatically causes you to be rejected from the program.
I explained to the customer service person that we wanted to see if we could port it to Solaris 10 - i.e. that was why we were going to test the Sun Fire T2000. (thinking in my head duh…) She told me I would need to resubmit my application and this time indicate that we were currently running SimpleTicket on Solaris to get the server. I told her that I did not want to start the process over again, couldn’t she just explain the issue and push my order through? Evidently she cannot.
My point? Sun has a great idea to get guys like me to get our people to play with Solaris - i.e. free server. I am willing to make my IT guys give it a shot, but Sun’s own customer service department spends the time and money to call me to tell me why they are not sending the servers. If you are going to call everyone who has requested a server and tell them they cannot have it, go ahead and give the people calling the power to fix errors or misunderstandings and fullfill the orders. I know Simon and Jonathan want me to have the server - I also know that other folks within Sun do not. Seems like the other side is winning.
