Finally! SPARC gets a mention in the news!

OK, I’ll admit that I’m more sensitive to this than most, since in my last job I was a specialist in the SPARC microprocessor architecture.

Today, Oracle actually mentioned SPARC in an ad in the Wall Street Journal.

This might not seem like much, but it’s a huge change. There hasn’t been any marketing mention from Sun about SPARC systems in nearly a year (the newest SPARC server, the SPARC Enterprise T5440, was introduced in October of 2008).

While my little team travelled the Americas telling anyone who would listen why SPARC was still important, the Sun executives simply stopped mentioning SPARC, instead talking up the x64 products which are, let’s face it, almost identical to everybody else’s x64 products.

Even Jonathan Schwartz hasn’t blogged about SPARC in over two years!

Then, my whole SPARC team got torn apart, and most of us were laid off in May in preparation to sell Sun to IBM.

But IBM isn’t buying Sun. Oracle is (probably). And while Sun hasn’t mentioned SPARC in advertising in a year, suddenly Oracle has.

Makes me feel good.

Sun Ad from 15 Oct 2009 WSJ