Acknowledgments

To Harris Kern, who convinced me to write this book in the first place and seemed always available, no matter where in the world he traveled, to review anything from a new paragraph to new drafts of the entire book. Harris worked with me every step of the way, from the first outlines to the final draft, and without his help and support this book would never have been completed.

To Dr. Ray Toal, of Loyola Marymount University. Besides writing the foreword, he edited numerous drafts of the book, contributing greatly to its final form. Dr. Toal, as only a true professor could, scrutinized many of the technical details and examples in the book for accuracy. In addition, he would routinely point out whenever my own work experience introduced some language or vendor bias into the text.

To my staff at Sun Microsystems over the last year, including Steve Ballantine, Carolyn Bumatay, Steven Cheng, David Chu, John Fragalla, Barbara Herr, Anita Jensen, Craig Lehman, Bruce Mathews, Tony Mansour, Neil Parsons, Hamant Patel, Andrew Schmoller, Steve Staso, and Jeff Weiss, for always believing in and supporting me.

To my manager at Sun Microsystems for over four years , Tom Swysgood, not only for supporting my efforts to write this book, but also for providing the drive and innovation to manage the dramatic growth and change at Sun in Los Angeles during that time. Tom may not recall, but it is his forwarded e-mail from Harris that first raised my interest to write this book.

And to all the great people I've had the opportunity to work with over the years at Sun, including:

Cesar Baray, who taught me how to manage in a sales organization.
Jae Chung, who taught me the value of never giving up when you really want something.
Jim Eastman, who took on the challenge of teaching me about sales.
Dennis Horgan, whose own journalistic endeavors motivated me as I wrote this book and whose immense wealth of IT knowledge added not only to this book but to all the customers he has worked with at Sun.
Chuck Meyer who finally convinced me to join Sun after five years of trying and has been a mentor and close friend ever since.
Pete Stafford, who taught me how to break through whatever holds you back.

And finally, to all the great developers at TRW who I've worked with over the years, the people who really taught me about successful software development.