Foreword to 10th Anniversary Volume

by William R. "Bert" Sutherland,
Director Emeritus, Sun Microsystems Laboratories

I am honored by the request to provide comments for the Sun Labs 10 year anniversary report. My time as the Director of Sun Labs from 1992 to 1998 was the highlight of my research management career and certainly an enjoyable, exciting, and thrilling experience.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. has been a terrific supporter of its research laboratory, and I am proud of the manner in which the lab has benefited its patron company. When we started Sun Labs in 1990, Scott McNealy, our CEO, said "I know about research labs - they are black holes for money. Stay small at 100 staff until you prove worthwhile." Looking back over the past ten years, Sun's "black hole" shone brightly, producing and delivering much of value for the company. By the end of this first decade, Scott indicated his approval by allowing the lab to grow from its constrained beginnings.

The small sampling of papers and reports assembled here can celebrate only a portion of the lab's technical contributions to the company. For example, in some years with only 3-5% of Sun's technologists, Sun Labs produced 30% or more of Sun's new patents. I encourage readers to explore the Lab's technical output on the web at http://research.sun.com/techrep/ to get a more complete view of its technical accomplishments.

However, technology, while the nominal raison d'être for a technical research lab, is by no means its only contribution to a sponsoring company. Leaving technical retrospective to others, I would like to review some of the non-technical ways in which Sun Labs contributed during its first decade and provide some personal perspective on some subtle values contributed to Sun.

A lab's innovation and creativity derives from its people! Full stop, end of story! Well, not quite end of story. New ideas and technology created in the lab must be put into use by other employees throughout the company, which points out the role of Sun Labs as a "teaching institution" for its company -- teaching whatever is new so that the new can become familiar, old, and used widely. Isn't it interesting that patent language refers to "teaching the invention" newly disclosed? Of course, a direct way to move the know-how is to reassign the head that contains it, and staff transfers from Sun Labs into the company have been a successful way of disseminating technology. Sun Labs has placed nearly as many former members as alumnae in the company as its current staff count. Regular lab Open House events have been well attended and permitted many Sun people to see, experience, and perhaps even appreciate firsthand what the lab has accomplished.

An important contribution to the dynamism of Sun Labs has been the summer interns and faculty visitors who have spent time here. We have even had a number of November to February "winter summer interns" from Australia who magically appeared for the southern hemisphere's summer vacation. International visiting professors from Spain, South Africa, Korea, Canada, and Britain, to mention only some, have added outside perspective and technical depth to Sun Labs' activities.

I am particularly proud of those Sun Labs' alumnae who were able as lab members, both to refine their technology abilities and to develop leadership and management skill. Many of these people have moved into the company in technical leadership positions, and they demonstrate the success of the lab as a development ground for technical managers.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Two social and recreational aspects of this first decade are worth recounting. The ongoing Friday afternoon "Bash" in Mountain View has been an important social institution that brings together lab staff, other Sun employees, and visitors for discussion, fellowship, and food weekly. Jeanie Treichel and the support staff have for many years made the Bash a pleasant, stimulating, and well attended event. At an early Bash, the incomparable "Water Fight" was conceived and instigated as a Sun Labs' challenge to the then SunSoft division. Several weeks of preparation helped cement the initial lab staff into a coherent team under "General Rosing", our then lab director -- a team dedicated to soaking the opposing "General Zander" of SunSoft and dousing the head referee Scott McNealy in the lake between the opposing buildings. The video is still fun to watch. Until sheer numbers recently interfered, lab alumnae and their families were always invited to the winter parties and summer picnics as a way of keeping personal ties strong and avoiding lab isolation and insularity.

From its very beginning, Sun Labs has had an important outpost in Sun's Boston area engineering community. "Labs East" provides a presence in the Boston educational and technical communities, broadens the accessible pool of talent, and permits additional coupling to Sun's employees and business activities. The staff of Labs East has made many important technical contributions to Sun. As Sun expands into a global company, the recent opening of another Labs outpost in Grenoble, France, further broadens the capabilities, opportunities, and potential impact of Sun Labs.

The past decade also brought Sun Labs two unfortunate staff losses: Charles Molnar and Geoff Wyant passed away in this first decade. For me the loss of such splendid colleagues remains a continuing sadness of my time at Sun Labs.

Finally, let me close with a few personal hopes and expectations for Sun Labs' next decade. The staff is clearly talented and dedicated. Staying close to Sun's customers and employees can be a rich source of interesting problems begging for new technical solutions. New technology starts out as strange and challenging to the old order of activities and habits. Success comes when the new idea spreads from its original single source in one person's mind to become familiar and used by a large multitude of minds. The Java(TM) programming language started small in only a very few minds and has become an international success because it is understood and used by millions worldwide. All of Sun Labs' successes have seen new understanding develop in many people. The lab staff has a dual job: to create some interesting new technology along with the curriculum needed to see the newness understood and used by many.

Let me end with a quote from Warren Weaver, my high-school commencement speaker: "The past is prologue!"

Building on its first ten years, I see Sun Labs moving forward into a bright, relevant, and productive future for Sun!