George Paolini

We live in a world of high anxiety. We're concerned about the competition, fearful we'll fall behind the curve, worried that making up lost ground might prove impossible. So we hastily turn to technology, which obligingly always seems to have a solution. Well, at least it says so in the marketing brochure.... But how much are things really changing? Are these advances really so revolutionary? Or are they simply refinements on a few good ideas? We measure progress in the technology industry according to speed, price, weight and ease of use. (Which doesn't explain why, when I go on the road, I now lug around 20 pounds of batteries and transformers for my myriad devices and why I have no idea how to get my Palm Pilot to talk via infrared to my PC.) Every so often, however,... (more)

Ten Years Ago This Month, Java Was 1000 Days Old

Ten years ago this month, Java was 1000 days old. Here we bring an article by the then Vice President of Marketing for Sun's Software Products and Platforms, George Paolini. Ten years on, we thought it might make interesting reading, since even back then Sun's community-focused position was clear: 'The Java platform was grown and evolved by a global community of developers on the World W... (more)

A Sign of the Times

If you had to conjure an image that best serves as a "sign of the times," what might it be? Perhaps a screen shot of a rare Partridge Family album being auctioned off for an incredible sum on e-Bay. Or how about a staged photo op of some of those starched-white-shirt telco and cable guys shaking hands in the latest billion-dollar megamerger. This might be more likely: hip-looking X-gens ... (more)

Innovation Without Disruption

When I was a lad, I tell my kids, life was hard. We had to walk everywhere, for instance. And not only that, we had to carry our own data. On things called floppies. Back then, we had to manually move information from one computer to the next. We did all this work by hand. When modems came along, we were sure we could do away with the floppies. Of course, the first modems I used transmitt... (more)

Web Services: Implications for Business Processes

I love Web services, for all the things they can't do. It's not that I'm a pessimist, prone to look at the glass as half empty. Quite the contrary. Whenever I hear about Web services, I think about all the promises that won't be kept, and to me that looks like an opportunity to fill a void. Web services will undoubtedly create an avalanche of new development opportunities. By standardizin... (more)