Justin's Blog

Lets Talk........ about Eco DataCentres

This morning Mark Munroe, Director of Sustainability Computing for Sun Microsystems Incorporated gave a great talk over Breakfast about Eco DataCentres.  Amongst other things, Mark talked about the benefits of making your office staff flexible. In Brisbane, Sun has around 45 staff.  5 of them have an assigned office or workstation in our City Office, around 10 are classified as "work from home" and the remaining 30 share about 20 workstations in the city office.

To the 100+ people that attended this morning, I promised to publish the presentation. The link is below.  Some of the Web sites that I particulary liked were:

• Sun.com/blueprints - Eco DataCentre White Paper

• openeco.org - a community of organistions sharing information about how they have made their datacentres more efficient. 

Today's presentation - https://www.conveneit.com/secure/sun/letstalk_aug_08/eval.asp?ID=371

More on Sun & Eco -http://www.sun.com/solutions/eco_innovation.

Posted at 10:22AM Aug 15, 2008 by Justin Glen in Personal  |  Comments[0]

Pay University Fees (HECS) Upfront or Invest and pay at the end?

My daughter is planning to attend University next year to do a double degree which will take 5 years. I'd like to pay her tuition fees for her - called Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) in Australia.  I have to decide whether I should pay them each year in advance or wait till the end of the course and pay them.  If I get a 20% discount by paying the fees up-front, why would I pay them at the end of the course and miss out on the up-front discount?

Well, I'm considering putting the same annual contribution into an investment - probably shares - and sell them when she finishes University for a profit and use the profit to pay off her HECS debt.  It sounds a little complicated and risky but after doing the maths it seems like a reasonable proposition.

The annual tuition fee is A$8,000 for the course she is considering. If I pay it up-front, I get a 20% discount, that is $6,400. Over 5 years, that is $32,000.

Alternatively, I could borrow $71,111 which has an Interest-Only repayment of the same $6,400 per annum at a 9% bank interest rate. After 5 years, I will have paid out the same $32,000 and the debt is still $71,111.

Because the fees are not paid upfront, the Government pays them through the Australian Tax Office on her behalf (without the 20% discount) and indexes the outstanding debt each June by the annual inflation rate. So, at the end of 5 years, she will owe the Government $8,000 times 5 years plus indexing for inflation (currently at 4.5% in Australia) totaling $43,766.

When she starts Uni, I take the $71,111 and buy shares in SFY which represents the top 50 companies trading on the Australian Stock Exchange. SFY is trading at $47 each at the moment for example so I would end up with 1,702 shares if I did this now. The beauty of SFY is that if the share price of one of the 50 companies takes a dive, it is wiped from the Top50 and another company share takes its place.

 If I put the shares in her name, she will get the dividends, currently running at $1.83 per share or $3,115 every 6 months for the parcel that I would buy.  That works out to be around $6,200 per annum. I'm ignoring the tax implications because they will be small as she will not be earning any other money.

Assuming that the Top50 index fund improves in value by 9% per annum - the same amount that the bank is charging me for interest, then the share investment will be worth $109,413 at the end of 5 years. Pay off the bank loan of $71,111 and that leaves about $38,302 of profit. She will loose a little of this in capital gains tax.

But she still has the $43,766 debt with the Tax Office.  Thankfully, when you pay your debt in a lump sum rather than gradually, the Tax Office gives you a 10% bonus. Hence, the $38,302 becomes $42,558 leaving a debt of only $1,208 at the end.

That is not bad when you consider she has earned dividends throughout the 5 years and there is a chance that the investment may improve by more than 9%.  Of course, there is a risk that the shares will drop in value but the longer the investment runs, the less likely they are to drop in value. 

So, that is why I'm considering paying the debt at the end.  Even if we are no better off at the end, this would be an interesting investment lesson for both of us.

Posted at 05:31PM Aug 11, 2008 by Justin Glen in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Open Source Software Job Opportunities are heating up

I checked seek.com today for job vacancies specifying particular types of technologies and was delighted to see the relatively high number of job offers for IT professionals with Open Source qualifications, particularly compared to qualifications for other well known proprietry products.  It seems that the number of opportunities in the Open Source software space is rising. 

Number of Job opportunities that specify open source software in Australia:

• Solaris 516
• Linux 1603
• mySQL 527
  
• Java 2,685

This compares well and sometimes greater than the number of jobs that specify knowledge in proprietry software

• AIX 260
• HP-UX 119
• Windows 4,290
  
• MS SQL 650
• DB2 297
• Oracle 2,905
• DB2 297
  
• Websphere 537
  

Posted at 03:02PM Aug 05, 2008 by Justin Glen in Sun  |  Comments[1]

Sun Ray offer for Educational Institutions in Australia and New Zealand

Qualified Education Institutions that purchases 25 desktops will receive a server at no charge.  Recommended Education End User Price A$19,618 for 25 desktops.

BUNDLE INCLUDES
25 x Sun Ray 2
25 Keyboards
25 19" Monitors
25 Smart Cards
35 VDI 1.0 user licence (10 extra for expansion) including 1-year subscription to upgrades
X4150 Server with 16GB Memory

BUNDLE EXCLUDES
Installation & Implementation
Telephone Support for Software
VMWare Licences if necessary
Windows Licences

WARRANTY
X4150 Server. 3 years on-site next business day
Sun Ray 2. 3 years return to Sun
19" Monitor. 3 years return to Sun

TERMS AND CONDITIONS
1. Approved for orders up to 30 May 2008
2. Orders will only be accepted through an authorised Education Partner.

Contact Douglas Tamer for more information. +61 2 9844 5357. Douglas.Tamer@sun.com

Posted at 05:33PM Mar 04, 2008 by Justin Glen in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Sun's Campus Ambassador Program

Updated 8 August 2008

Sun Microsystems Australia and New Zealand is currently seeking applications from Student Developers to join Sun's World-Wide Campas Ambassador Program. A limited number of positions are available in this region. Only one student per University will be selected. Applications expire at the end of October 2008.

Resumes should be sent to Ganesh.Hiregoudar@Sun.COM with a copy to gary.serda@sun.com and kevin.mayo@sun.com by the end of October 2008. A referral from the Head of School at your University will help.

Positions are part-time, around 5 hours per week to commence as soon as possible through to the end of June 2008.

Job Summary

The Sun Academic Developer Program is all about sharing and participation. That's why Sun is recruiting for a student intern to ensure that Academic Developers (students, faculty & researchers) at the University take advantage of the latest innovative and Open technologies such as Java, Open Solaris, Open SPARC and NetBeans. We invite you to join the global community of Sun Campus Ambassadors. The Sun Campus Ambassador will build communities around Sun's free and open source platforms (OpenSolaris, Open SPARC and Java) and developer tools among Academic Developers (students, faculty and researchers) at the University.  The Sun Campus Ambassador is expected to become proficient on Sun's open technologies, including OpenSolaris, Java, Netbeans, and Sun Studio. Sun will provide extensive training on each of these technologies.

Job Description

Sun is looking for graduate or senior level students with a strong background in software development/programming to work part time to:

• Lead the Sun open source developer community on your campus
• Run Sun Technology demo sessions on your campus
• Promote Sun training events on your campus
• Promote Sun's platforms and development tools to professors and researchers
  

The Sun Campus Ambassador must have a strong background in software development/programming. The Campus Ambassador must have excellent communication skills and should be comfortable serving as a public speaker. In addition, the Campus Ambassador must be self-motivated, highly organized and be able to work independently. Familiarity with NetBeans, Sun Studio, mySQL and/or the Solaris Operating System are desirable.

Every Campus Ambassador will be provided with a special award at their commencement. 

Further Background

Sun's Campus Ambassadors are facilitating the adoption of open source technologies on campus, as well as fostering community and innovation. These technologies and open source projects include the Solaris 10 OS; Java technology-based systems; community projects such as the OpenSolaris project and OpenSPARC technology project; and the NetBeans integrated development environment (IDE) and Sun Studio software tools.

Sun provides the Campus Ambassadors with free training and support; in turn, ambassadors help student developers take advantage of Sun's robust portfolio of high-value, no-cost resources, such as free web-based training, free developer tools, open source technologies and communities, and easily accessible technical support via forums and communities. In selecting candidates for the Campus Ambassador program, Sun is choosing from among the most original and innovative young minds on campus today.

Anil Gulecha, a Campus Ambassador from India, invented a way for Solaris to be booted off a USB drive. One of Sun's Canadian Campus Ambassadors, Martin Morissette, led a team of students who built a Java technology-powered submarine, called Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, that dazzled judges at the prestigious International Autonomous Underwater Competition sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Sun is also turning to its Campus Ambassador community in order to provide business and academic decision makers valuable insight into needs and expectations for university IT infrastructures. In a recent survey of Sun Campus Ambassadors, students expressed high expectations for e-learning resources, wireless access and open source tools – insight that may shape IT decisions, purchasing and the market itself. Several sessions at WWERC will address these issues, and Sun's Hal Stern, senior vice president of systems engineering, will host a panel of students who will share their IT challenges, triumphs, expectations and frustrations. "The people at Sun are a great mentors and the internship opportunity helps enhance students' careers," said Fahad Hussain, Sun Campus Ambassador at San Jose State University. "Sun works closely with the universities to equip students with advanced skills, hands-on experience with leading-edge, open source technologies, and the confidence to create new technologies.

Not only does Sun offer training and support, the dialogue goes both ways. Sun is interested in hearing what we really need to get the most from our IT education and be ready to make a difference in the business world." To help meet student demand for open content and technologies, Sun's Campus Ambassadors are facilitating the adoption of open source technologies on campus. These technologies and open source projects include the Solaris 10 OS, Java technology-based systems, community projects such as the OpenSolaris project and OpenSPARC technology project; and the NetBeans integrated development environment (IDE). During FY07, the program met with huge success, with more than 180 Campus Ambassadors in more than 30 countries. This financial year, we intend to expand the program even more.

Posted at 05:24PM Aug 29, 2007 by Justin Glen in Sun  |  Comments[4]