There is a difference between jumping ship and making an orderly transfer from one ship to another. I tend to think of jumping ship as something one does when it is sinking. I’m not jumping ship.
For the last 6 years at PolyServe, and 10 years before that at Sequent Computer Systems, I’ve had the honor to work with some of the brightest software folks around. See, the brain power behind PolyServe is a lot of the heavy-hitting Unix kernel engineers from Sequent Computer Systems. They left after IBM bought Sequent. I joined them shortly thereafter, leaving Veritas to do so. I think it is fitting to quote my long time friend and fellow OakTable Network member, James Morle. In Oracle Insights: Tales of the Oak Table, James says:
…around the same time Sequent appeared with a good story, great attitude, and some of the best software technicians I have worked with from a hardware company.
I know what he means. But I’m leaving. I did my part at PolyServe, HP acquired us. Getting taken up in a corporate takeover means a new adventure. When faced with a new adventure it sometimes makes sense to open up to other, sometimes better, opportunity. This is one of those cases.
Next week I start a new chapter. I’ll be taking a role in Oracle’s Server Technologies group. Fortunately for me, I’ve had pretty close ties with a lot of these folks dating back to the mid-1990s and my work in Sequent’s Advanced Oracle Engineering group.
So, I’m transferring to a different ship. A ship that I am very familiar with. A ship with crew that I respect and with whom it’ll be an honor to work.
Kevin Closson's Blog: Platforms, Databases and Storage 
Good Luck and congrats on your new adventure.
Hope you will continue blogging, esp about Oracle over NFS. I got to learn a lot from your blogs that helped me deploy Oracle over NFS, though not on the platform you would have preferred. We are doing it on NetApp and Solaris 10. Looking forward to lean more from people like you.
Thank you once again.
Let me be the first person to comment — unless you’re slacking on the comment approvals 😉 — and wish you best of luck, Kevin. It’s been a pleasure working with you.
Jeff.
Hi Kevin,
Good luck in your new adventure! I know several of the folks in Server Tech have been anticipating your arrival, so I’m sure you’ll be a busy guy right from the start. I boarded a new ship this week, so I know the feeling…exciting, yet a little scary all at once.
See you in November at OOW, I’m sure! 🙂
Dan
Congrats! Hope you can keep up this great blog!
Nice Kevin! I wish you good luck then. You’ve already got the talent, dedication, and excellent team to work in. I expect you will keep sharing your independent perspective on various Oracle related technologies here on your blog.
Hi Kevin,
Good Luck and congrats .
Regards,
Alex
Hey, GREAT news! Server in general or Linux/Unix space?
Anyways, whatever it is, all the best and please DO keep this place going!
Welcome to Oracle. Once again, although we have never met, we are working for the same company !
good luck Kevin!
Thanks for the kind words, folks. Noons, I’m working on a future storage-related product. More info at and after Oracle OpenWorld.
Congratulations!
Just make sure you keep educating us all via this blog!
We now have “our own man” in Oracle Server
Technologies.
However, truth be told, Oracle ST has been
doing a very good job all these years and
you will only enhance their excellent
capabilities.
Let’s get the number of RDBMS bugs down to
the minimum.
Will you be open for direct feedback ?
Hemant
Hemant,
I’ll remain about as approachable as I’ve always been. Don’t be confused, however, not all Server Technologies folks work on the RDBMS specifically. There are a lot of RDBMS-related technology under that umbrella. Think about things like Clusterware. That isn’t *really* database technology, but it comes out of Server Technologies. I’ll describe more about what I’m working on after Oracle OpenWorld.
Best of Luck Kevin!
And we’ll be watching with interest.
I know you have some good ideas there, and I’m curious to see where Oracle will go on this.
I thought you already worked for Oracle? 🙂
Congrats!
Congratulations, a good acquisition by Oracle i think. I hope Oracle will let you time to continue to blog here.
Cristian
All the best in the new role. I am in Redwood next week. Would you be around?
Fairlie,
I’ll be there wed-fri next week… look me up via the contacts section on my blog…we should imbibe
Kevin,
I am sure that folks at HP will miss you a lot. However, on the other hand, you will add a lot of fire-power to Oracle’s arsenal. Truthfully, I like it better that you will be working for Oracle because being a Sun/Oracle/EMC shop, you will be helping us by briging quality and innovation to Oracle’s storage vision.
Amir,
Thanks for the kind words!