Bill Vass of Sun Microsystems fuses the best of two worlds: his decades of experience in both the private and public sectors. Since becoming president and chief operation officer of Sun Microsystems Federal a year and a half ago, Vass has put his rich pool of experience to use. Sun is one of the biggest contributors to the open source community “” and Vass aims to keep it that way. In the following Q&A Vass discusses some surprising facts about Sun Microsystems. He also fills you in one of his favorite toys “” a 1976 industrial bulldozer “” and how he put it to use (don’t try this at home, folks).
How big is the Sun Microsystems“™ federal business, if you were to break that out?
Bill Vass: We don“™t usually break that out. We have about 800 employees and are one of the fastest growing business units within Sun Microsystems. In addition, more and more of our customers are focused on open source and recognize the security and cost benefits “” both administrative and power “” of open source technologies.