Monthly Report: 10/16/2001 - 11/15/2001

Name: Honglin Su, Technology Account Specialist, Central Ontario Region

1. SUMMARY

Actively chase every opportunity at AT&T Canada and Rogers Communication, make sure that we provide the solution to those funded projects, even though they are small ones; at the same time, educate the customer with SunONE architecture and product roadmap, plan for any potential projects in the coming months. Such consistent support brings pieces of Sun gear, upgrades, or small systems, in October alone, created around 867K revenue for Sun from AT&T Canada and Rogers.

2. Accounts Activities (AT&T and Rogers)

2.1 Rogers @Home network infrastructure repatriation bid

Contributed to the team effort for the bid. Though the outcome was bitter for us at the time being, the team work spirit and the leadership demonstrated by the management encouraged me a lot. We still need to conduct business with Rogers for any future opportunities, I also spent time to analyze our solution and configuration, and prepared a detailed spreadsheet with breakdown items for John and help him better understand alternatives: if we use UltraSPARC-III based solution, what cost, how many racks, etc.

2.2 Rogers Cable IT

Introduced V880 and SF280R to the Cable IT team, which is responsible for daily IT operation support. Compared the SF280R with the old E220R/E420R, which they have been using. A couple of SF280Rs have been ordered.

2.3 Firewall servers at AT&T Global Network Services

The Global Network Services of AT&T has a strong firewall and security practice. In the past, they have deployed a few low-end servers such as Ultra 10s as the firewall gateway. Discussed the availability of Checkpoint Firewall-1 software on Solaris 8 and our new Netra server (T1 AC200). The customer wanted to evaluate the Netra T1 AC200 order to roll out the project, but we didn’t have T1 AC200 in our loaner pool at the very time, managed to persuaded the customer (single SPARC architecture across product lines) to order 4 x T1 for the project’s immediate need, and they did!!!

2.4 Network Management project at AT&T Canada

It’s another funded project at AT&T Canada. The customer was intended to manage the network equipments by using Cisco Works (RWAN 1.1). Over last few months, we have been working with the operation planning group to bring all OS versions to Solaris 8, yet it is a long on-going process. Solaris 8 was considered at the very first time, unfortunately, the customer found that RWAN 1.1 is not officially supported under Solaris 8 by Cisco. Thanks to Ron Marshall, he talked with people at Cisco while he was in California, and got the time frame of RWAN 1.1 to run on Solaris 8. After further discussion with the project manager (Madalin Popa), the customer proceeded with E220R and Solaris 2.6, and plans to upgrade to Solaris 8 when RWAN 1.1 ready on Solaris 8 in Q1CY02.

2.5 Volume server roadmap update at AT&T IES:

AT&T IES is the ISP division of AT&T Canada, volume servers are nice fit into this organization. Thanks Chuck, the roadmap information was very informative and help the customer better plan FY2002 budget. Learned the customer’s specific needs on those volume servers: e.g. 64-bit PCI slots: since most PCI expansion cards they would use would be 64-bit, so the current netra platform is not acceptable for them, and sent the feedback back to the product managers.

2.6 Netra t1 reboot issue at AT&T IES

It’s the time to come to a conclusion for this Netra t1 problem: all of their business hosting Netra t1's have been rebooting for no apparent reason, this started when the Nimda virus hit, and those t1s are running virtual web servers that were being scanned by infected IIS systems. AT&T Canada doesn’t have a service contract with the enterprise service, they believe that they have strong Solaris/Sun expertise and simply replace Sun hardware if a problem arises. It appears that their strategy doesn’t help in this case. As a bridge between the customer and Solaris kernel support group, identified that the bug in question showed a Data Access MMU miss trap, followed by a level 14 interrupt. Once again, it shows our commitment to the customer, however, it brings the service a topic to the table. We get to leverage the enterprise service to help the customer increase their service level.

2.7 Rogers Cable gateway system

Met the manager Albert Chan, and discussed the possibility to migrate the current PC-based system to UNIX platform. The cable gateway system acts as a protocol hub between the super system (mainframe) to other individual systems such as billing, provisioning, and customer care systems.

2. 8 Rogers VOD RFP

Another Rogers RFP came to the street; it’s the video on demand (VOD). Ken Kembry led the initiative. Participated the major meeting and con-calls, ready for any needs just in case. We don’t have a complete VOD solution yet, and will have to work with partners such as N2BB, Videopropulsion and so on.

2.9 Misc. Technical Support

Contributed to this RFP efforts initiated by Gilberto for Ontario government, delivered my part of system management on time;

Answered questions from Rogers Cable IT on how to migrate C++ 4.2 to Forte 6;

Requested Sun Management Center 3.0 evaluation license for Rogers Wireless;

Helped Francois Noel of Rogers Wireless plan a backup strategy with tape library L60, and prepare for the storage discussion;

Investigated Jumpstart on Solaris 8 for AT&T IES;

etc.

3. TRAINING SUMMARY

3.1 Successfully passed the competency test of StarCat and Darktari. The on-line learning is a great way to enhance our expertise, and it is convenient and time effective.

3.2 Attended Sun Developer Day event on Oct. 16, which focused on SunONE, Java, and XML;

3.3 Listened to Server Consolidation webinar;

3.4 Attended one day training on StarCat and Darktari training on Oct. 18;

3.5 Attended the Starcat launch on Nov. 14;

3.6 Attended iPlanet Wireless session on Nov. 15.

4. MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES

4.1 Manned the booth at Royal Bank Emerging Technology Show on Oct. 30 and SunONE Symposium on Nov. 6;

4.2 Answered infoline question on serial port of Netra servers;

5. PLAN FOR THE UPCOMING MONTH

5.1 Account review meeting on Nov. 29;

5.2 Sun Cluster 3.0 training at Markham/Woodbine from Dec. 3 to Dec. 7; continue self-study by online learning on Storage especially 9900;

5.3 Rogers Wireless storage opportunity: mirrored 750GB, expandable to 1TB, the discussion is on Nov. 21, get to nail down this deal;

5.4 Reschedule the meeting with the customers and new service rep. Maureen Ziccardi, who has replaced Mary Courtney due to recent reorganization.

5.5 SunPS engagement: it was stalled due to different understanding at the management levels of AT&T Canada: Robert Emard, VP of the service delivery, which set the tone for the PS engagement from the strategic perspective: among 300 servers, he should target 50 or less, focus a family of applications, show the benefit of the server consolidation. While for the Sr. UNIX manager Gary Lee, he would rather take a tactic approach, e.g. which application to pick, how many actual servers to work, etc. John Wellwood is currently working with Gary, trying to make a good balance such that SunPS can start the initial assessment, which would produce more sales opportunity for us.

5.6 Follow up Rogers Cable Gateway system and Cable IT projects and other small projects at AT&T Canada;