Monthly Report: 01/15/2001 - 02/15/2001
Name: Honglin Su, Technology Account Specialist, Central Region

1. SUMMARY

Penetrating deeply into the customer like AT&T, exploring exciting opportunities inside the customer, a very busy month.

2. Accounts Activities

• AT&T Canada and AT&T Global Network Service

There are a lot of things happen at AT&T. With Ken, we are working toward 4 different divisions at this moment:

1. Enterprise Platform Operations, which is in AT&T’s head office at Wellington Street. We are ready to start the lunch-and-learn session from March 1^st, the topics cover the Server product line, Sun Cluster 3.0, Storage, Solaris 8, UltraSPARC III, Cobalt and so on. Meanwhile, I will also spend time with this group as their Sun resource starting from one day per week, in this way, we can clearly know what is going on at AT&T, help the customer and thus bring more Sun business into AT&T. For the on-going network management project, our support gained a very favorable feedback, expect to replace existing HP (4 HP server, OpenView NNM 5.01) with Sun E250 and E220R.

2. Advanced Data Center at Mississauga. We am targeting at building long-term relationship between Sun and AT&T. There is an immediate request for firewall gateways from this group; we are facing competition from IBM. IBM NetFinity with Linux has price advantage over our workgroup server in terms of the similar hardware configurations. Working with Ken, we sent a request through Dealdesk. Meanwhile, I was trying to help them understand the big picture of the firewall architecture and bring the right server to meet their requirement.

3. NetCom, which is responsible for Internet and E-Business service within the organization. Here we leveraged NetFusion’s expertise and resource to lead the customer into the direction of our thin-client SunRay solution.

4. AT&T Global Network Service, which is close to our office and just across the Highway 7. Quickly responded their technical concerns such as how to deploy servers from testing and staging into a production environment.

• Rogers

Did research on the third-party solutions such as LightBridge’s Fraudbuster and Amdocs/Solect, which are widely used at Rogers Wireless for the applications of billing, customer relationship management, etc. However, that’s a big HP deployment. Contacted the above companies, hope to line up with them and see whether Rogers could deploy the applications in Sun’s platform instead of HP.

• Sun Life Financial

Worked into the UNIX group, understood their immediate needs and solved any outstanding issues such as the firmware upgrade on L1000 tape library. Also met the director of operating environment of the Sun Life Financial Services, I am trying to get the whole IT picture of this organization, since UNIX group is only a small part in its IT force, even smaller than the Spectrum Investments, however, IT staff here in Toronto are the decision makers or influencers of the Sun Life world wide. With Dave, we got to work deeper in this account.

Together with Dave Mason, we had a good meeting with VP and director of Emerging Technologies, which has been built recently to develop a "strategy" plan for the next 3 years. They have now approached three key vendor partners, IBM, Sun and Compaq to come to the table with what we can offer to assist in three areas at which they are to look:

1. Server Consolidation

2. Storage Strategies

3. Windows 2000 Data-center roll out, (not really a Sun piece but they would like to know of any experiences we have had in dealing with Windows 2K)

The scope of what they are looking for includes all of North America, there US and Canada sites. There are about 600 servers, split between Canada and the US, of the 600 approximately 10% are UNIX Servers.

We are going to engage SunPS and see how we can develop the opportunity. 

· Spectrum Investments

After discussing for a couple of months, it’s time to move forward with the E5000 components upgrade and T3. Basically, Spectrum is going to upgrade their existing E5000 (4 x 250 MHz CPU) to 8 x 400MHz and 8GB, which will be connected with new T3ES. I had meeting and phone call with the customer and the VAR (NetFusion) back and forth a few times, clarified any technical questions. It would be expected to generate 600K+ revenue for Sun.

3. TRAINING SUMMARY

• Forte training (better understanding of Forte product line)
• PWC partner meeting at PriceWaterhouseCooper, learn something about their solution in Telco space.
• On-line Serengeti training and TOI by Peter, it was very valuable.
• Novell Network Directory Service training at Novell, which was sponsored by Sun Cooperation with a E220R to demo NDS on Solaris. I assisted Novell engineer and set up such a environment at Novell before the training.

4. MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES

• JETS (Java Equipment Tracking System) is ready to use. I have set up the user id for each SE, and hope to receive some comments.
• Met Vic, the new loaner pool administrator, help him be familiar with the environment.

5. PLAN FOR THE UPCOMING MONTH

• Kick off the lunch-and-learn program at AT&T. Attend their regular meeting of system planning and be their Sun resource (one day a week), will assist them upgrade the old Solaris 2.5.1 or before to 2.6/7.
• With SunPS, we will work a plan or proposal on IT Strategy for Sun Life’s emerging technology department.
• Training on Serengeti.