Even the Web has space limitations. After all, how many times will you click to get through a story? In writing about Sun’s comeback in my Top 10 Unreported feature, I needed to cut an anecdote that I rather liked because it illustrated the progress the company is making in winning the loyalty of small, technologically savvy outfits. Jeff Whitehead, the CEO of Real Time Matrix, read a trade press review of Sun’s Even the Web has space limitations. After all, how many times will you click to get through a story? In writing about Sun’s comeback in my Top 10 Unreported feature, I needed to cut an anecdote that I rather liked because it illustrated the progress the company is making in winning the loyalty of small, technologically savvy outfits.Jeff Whitehead, the CEO of Real Time Matrix, read a trade press review of Sun’s Fire T1000 servers and thought the product might work for him. His two-year-old company delivers tailored content to Web sites, a compute-intensive task that requires real-time matching of millions of articles to millions of data points reflecting corporate and individual preferences. His existing AMD-based Linux servers, Whitehead says, were simply not up to the job. He called Sun and was quickly routed to an engineer who discussed the company’s requirements at length and make a recommendation. Sun shipped a T1000 at no cost, not even shipping, and let the company try it out. If it hadn’t measured up, he could have returned the server at no cost after 60 days. But it did the trick, and Whitehead decided to buy a brace of the brawnier Fire T2000 servers, a purchase made possible by the discounts of Sun’s “startup essentials,” a program launched in November, 2006 (“Try and buy” launched about 18 months ago.) The result: Each T2000 replaced 6 of his old servers, with substantial savings of energy, heat and space. Because he was concerned about 24 by 7 availability, Whitehead decided to change his production operating system to Solaris. To be sure, Real Time Matrix is a small customer and Sun will have to replicate that success many times over. But it’s a start, and a good one. I welcome your comments, tips and suggestions. Reach me at bill.snyder@sbcglobal.net Technology Industry