Surprise Guest: Sun CEO Greets SugarCRM Crowd

The VAR Guy stopped by SugarCRM’s first user conference today in San Jose and received a sweet surprise. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz made a surprise appearance at the event. He had some rather intriguing views to share.

Schwartz, during a combo keynote with SugarCRM John Roberts, predicted that the majority of the world’s businesses eventually won’t “buy” IT products and won’t have their own server data centers.

“The last thing you want is your own server room, and we love server rooms,” quipped Schwartz.

During the discussion, Schwartz said countries such as India, Brazil and China are among the most progressive movers to the “on-demand” or “software as a service” (SaaS) business model. In other words, Schwartz expects more and more of Sun’s servers to be housed by outsourced IT service providers and managed service providers.

And while some closed source software companies criticize open source business models and free software, Schwartz says he’s seeing a clear shift in the market. “It’s a simple message: You’re not diminishing revenue by promoting open source. You’re developing opportunities.” He noted that the first question venture capitalists now ask open source companies is: “Tell me about your community.”

Translation: The larger and more loyal the developer community, the larger the revenue opportunity down the road.