Since its seminal “The Network Is the Computer” days in the early 1980s to its current resurgence, Sun Microsystems has been one of the tech industry’s foremost innovators. With its history of thought-leading solutions, Sun has also been a leader in enterprise computing. Among the company’s recent innovations are a mobile data center in a shipping container called Project Blackbox and the environmentally friendly Eco Innovation Initiative.

With more than 25 years in the tech industry, Sun CIO Bob Worrall has enjoyed a front row seat to the ongoing innovation. Sun and Worrall rely heavily on CSC’s industry knowledge and expertise to help drive advancements within Sun’s IT environment as part of a close partnership that includes outsourcing support as well as collaboration on go-to-market initiatives.

In 2005, Sun signed a comprehensive global IT applications manage¬ment agreement with CSC that included a swift transfer of resources to offshore locations. Earlier this year, Sun extended the relationship to include support of a massive business reengineering effort. Worrall recently talked about how the partnership has helped Sun stay ahead of the pack.

CSC World: What are some of the key benefits Sun has gained by outsourcing to CSC?

Worrall: First and foremost, our No. 1 objective when we entered into the agreement was to save costs, and we’ve certainly achieved that. Second on our list of priorities was to improve the flexibility of the IT response here inside the company. By that, I mean being able to dial-up and dial-down to bring on additional resources as business dictates, and we’ve achieved that as well. We’ve been fortunate in the contract we have with CSC that we also have a lot of different levers we can pull.

CSC World: Can you provide an example of this improved flexibility?

Worrall: Sun’s business model is perhaps not as predictable as some of CSC’s traditional clients, especially those in the federal space. Over the years, we’ve required lots of quick turnaround on projects. It’s not unusual for us to get funding approval for a new project halfway into the fiscal year and for the business to require us to start working on the project within weeks. So that speed is certainly part of what’s needed inside the company.

What CSC has helped us achieve is to be able to turn that crank more quickly in a number of projects from CRM to other areas where we’ve been faced with a new business requirement. We’ve been able to turn to CSC and have them staff up that initiative relatively quickly to complete the initiative on time and on budget, then, as needed, to ramp down again. So that flexibility has been very important to us and continues to be going forward.

CSC World: What about the go-to-market objectives that are part of the partnership?

Worrall: Our partnership also allows us to jointly pursue some interesting market opportunities. Whether it be potential opportunities in the financial services space or other markets CSC plays into, or conversely, leveraging some of Sun’s new technologies in existing accounts, CSC has the dedicated staff to drive these opportunities very well. Likewise, Sun has the staff to identify and drive these initiatives as well. I think we’re in a good position to chase some interesting things in the market.

CSC World: Do you have a good example of this?

Worrall: Sun has spent 10-plus years deploying, operating and supporting a thin client desktop environment internally. CSC recognized the power and potential of the thin client solution and invested quite a few resources on the CSC side to take the thin client solution and improve on it by wrapping around a lot of practices that deal with some of the security requirements in the federal space. The result is a very secure desktop model for federal government agencies that require additional security. Taking that to market has been very successful and promises to continue being very successful.

Outside of that, there has been some interest on CSC’s part in some of our emerging technologies, be it Project Blackbox or some of the energy-efficient technologies we’re selling. CSC is taking those back to some of their installed base and saying to CIOs who are trying to save money and reduce space in data centers, “Sun has a new inter¬esting technology that you need to take a look at.”

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