Why Are We Doing This?

Carl Cargill, Director of Standardization, Sun Microsystems

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2001)

While driving to work recently in early morning rush-hour traffic on US101 near Menlo Park, I had time to look at the billboards touting the wares of the Silicon Valley's computer manufacturers. Suddenly, I saw a billboard asserting that a major IT provider was open, and that this openness was a necessary ingredient in its customer-satisfaction philosophy. After I regained control of my car - it's hard to perform a victory dance correctly in bumper-to-bumper traffic - I thought of the state of standards when I first began in the field nearly two decades ago. No one would have mentioned standards as a key element of strategy, let alone have advertised this fact on a billboard. A little while later, however, I began to think about what this sign meant and what it implied. The implications of this "new attitude" are both good and bad.