So – Jonathan Schwartz – Sun’s President – blogged about Sun’s offer to let people try a Niagra server free for 60 days. According to Jonathan:
The program started off slowly – partly due to internal disbelief (there’s a long story, there), but secondarily, our focus group feedback suggested no one believed we’d actually send them a free Niagara. So let me reiterate: go to sun.com, fill out the form, we’ll send you the fastest server on earth, absolutely free. If you don’t like it, we’ll send someone to pick it up.
We were also serious about the following: if you write a blog that fairly assesses the machine’s performance (positively or negatively), send us a pointer, we’re likely to let you keep the machine. (And before you ask, the marketing team makes the decision about what qualifies for the promotion, not I – although I know they love drama, charts, and compelling competitive analyses.)
Not surprisingly, I asked Ross (my IT guy) to get one and give it a good workout. Look for a review here in a month or so.