Monthly Report: 01/16/2002 - 02/15/2002

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

1. SUMMARY

Always ask myself what value I can bring to my customers, and worked diligently and thoughtfully to assist John Wellwood and identified various opportunities at Rogers and AT&T Canada; Followed up the projects at Sun Life Financial with Dave Mason, though there is some uncertainty ahead due to Sun Life’s acquisition of Clarica. Lots of good things are happening at AT&T Canada and Rogers, working smartly to grab short-term opportunities as well as targeting long-term strategic projects. (Only highlight some key activities, many more will be covered in the next month reports.)

Started using VPN to connect to SWAN when at home or at the customer site if necessary, thus improved productivity vs. using sun.net.

2. Accounts Activities (AT&T, Rogers, and Sun Life Financial)

2.1 AT&T Canada

1. Led the effort to influence the infrastructure architects from both system platform and application sites. I met John Vacheresse who is the Sr. Manager of the Infrastructure Design a few times, and am scheduling a product and technology update session for his department. It will happened on Feb. 20. I also had a discussion with a Eugen Georgescu (Sr. Architect of Application), talked SunONE, directory services, BillerXpert (Internet Bill Presentment and Payment). AT&T Canada has some long term strategic projects, one of them is order management, right now such applications are running on various platforms such as OS/390, OS/400, Solaris and Windows, there will be on-going consolidation among related business departments.

2. Nice feedback from the process of AT&T’s taking over their data centre from IBM Global Services, they are fairly comfortable at this point. Gary Lee (Sr. UNIX manager) hired two new system administrators in January. To help them better, I assisted them to set up Sun Management Center 3.0 environment, and wanted them to utilize SMC 3.0 to well manage the in-house production environment. At the same time, I met Jonathan Rezek and Andrew Hillier of CiRBA which is Sun’s partner in system management, also introduced them to John and Dave. Apparently CiRBA can play some value-added role to help my customers.

2.2 Rogers

We are making progress at Rogers. Eric Lawrence is Sun Canada’s executive sponsor for Rogers, who comes with a very nice idea of building a kind of “switch” solution for Rogers and it comply with Scott McNealy’s vision of big web-tone switch. It is also my quest to develop a clear blueprint of the whole infrastructure of system platforms and applications, such that I can transform any possible customer activity into an emerging opportunity.

1. Rogers Cable IT: They upgraded OS and database from Solaris 2.6 to 8 and Oracle 7 to Oracle 8.1.7, and this is for the provisioning and customer services platform on E4500s.

2. Rogers Cable Network Shared Services: They are using many E420R/220Rs for the network management (one key software is APRISMA’s Spectrum, which manages network switches, cable modems, and other systems). Most of Sun systems are running on Solaris 2.6, some are Solaris 7 or 8. I came down to their office frequently, and collected first-hand information to identify right opportunity. Spectrum software has been an open issue for Rogers Cable over the years. Definitely I can proactively do something from our site, not just to protect our installation base, but also to expand our business into HP/Compaq’s arena at Rogers.

3. Rogers Media: any Sun related issues have been resolved, thanks to Barry Keane’s great efforts! No systems or applications are perfect, but the key differentiator is how we treat our fellow customer. 680news and other radio stations are hosted at Q9 network by using E220R and a few Netra T1 AC200s, the content management software is Enprise, the system integrator is BlueSpark, the application server is iPlanet, and the order fulfillment is through InfoStream, many parties were involved. The customer is very pleased with Sun’s prompt response and coordination efforts. This also brings us another great opportunity of how to consolidate 50~60 web sites at Rogers Media.

2.3 Sun Life Financial

Though there is some uncertainty at Sun Life, with Dave Mason, we are trying to nail down any possible opportunities.

1. Updated Gord Cook (UNIX Manager) new features on Solaris 8 and also informed him the coming storage announcement. It was to prepare for the Oracle project.

2. Assisted them when they were testing Solaris 8 and Forte Developer tools.

3. For the call centre project, we competed head-to-head against IBM. Since there is lead-time issue of V880, we proposed F3800 with decent discount.

4. With Dave and Barry Keane, we had a regular meeting with Gord Cook. Clarified the difference between V880 and F3800, Linux announcement, etc.

3. TRAINING SUMMARY

3.1 Sun Performance Management training at Markham: great training, excellent instructor: Jim Gould.

4. MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES

5. PLAN FOR THE UPCOMING MONTH

5.1 Keep up the momentum at Rogers and AT&T Canada: various update sessions at AT&T Canada and Rogers, chase all possible opportunities as the FY02 is coming to the end.

5.2 Follow up the projects at Sun Life.