CSC World: What innovations has the partnership brought to Sun’s IT environment?

Worrall: Thinking back to some of our original hopes and desires for the relationship and the contract, there are some things that have really come to fruition. One is best practices. I think one of the innovations that CSC has brought to the table very successfully has been the process focus and some of their intellectual property around service management. How to manage a globally diverse workforce, with the India connection, for example. At the same time, managing to meet all of our service level requirements.

One example of that is our quarter-end and year-end close processes. Before the outsourcing, those were always a pretty anxious time for the IT staff. But what CSC was able to do was to leverage best practices from across their customer installed base, as well as the coverage model that their global workforce brings to the table. CSC was really able to get us through the quarter-end and year-end processing with fewer concerns, escalations and issues than we had ever seen before. The best practices that they’ve brought to the table really made that happen.

CSC also provides a lot of out-of-the-box thinking in terms of how to address and support a true 24x7 multinational company and its requirements in these very critical times.

CSC World: Do you think the similarities between Sun and CSC’s corporate cultures have contributed to the success of this relationship?

Worrall: Yes and no. Actually, I don’t think the corporate cultures are as similar as we might
suggest. CSC comes from a fairly traditional environment. I think the people who came from CSC to the Sun account were surprised at the culture that we have here. But I actually think that less than their similarity, their dissimilarity is a benefit.

What I mean by that is we at Sun have a flexible work environment and the fact that people are allowed to bring their dogs to work, that sort of thing, was a bit of a shock to some CSC people. But on the contrary, what CSC brought to the table was the proven rigor, discipline and process focus that isn’t always a strength of ours. So I think it’s in their dissimilarities actually that those teams have brought the best of the best. Sun brings with it this very innovative culture, very willing to take risks and try new things and move quickly. Whereas CSC, on the other hand, brings this proven track record of process and quality, as well as industry focus. So marrying those two has really paid off.

CSC World: Can you talk about some of the interesting technologies Sun is developing?

Worrall: There are a few interesting technologies that CSC at large ought to keep an eye on. One is certainly the identity management space.

Sun continues to be a leader in that area and we are doing a lot in the go-to-market space with identity management. More recently is the movement to eco-friendly computing. Our new server line is certainly the most eco-friendly on the planet and has been recognized by the power provider here in California with the first energy rebates ever provided to computer hardware. So we’re pretty excited about that.

Also, Project Blackbox is a pretty typical Sun product. Sort of out of the box, if you pardon the pun, by moving compute power into a sealed shipping container that can run virtually anywhere on the planet. We’re getting a lot of interest from companies who have the unenviable task of having to deploy high-end compute servers to very difficult locations around the world as well as more tradi¬tional customers who have run out of traditional data center space. So there are a number of interesting technologies Sun is developing that can be applied in a variety of ways to address some of CSC’s customers’ pressing needs.

So there are a number of interesting technologies Sun is developing that can be applied in a variety
of ways to address some of CSC’s customers’ pressing needs.

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