Sun is nearly unassailable: McNealy

Easwaradas Satyan Nair and Prasanto K Roy

MUMBAI: Sun’s chief executive officer, Scott McNealy, 47, is visiting India on March 20. This is the first India visit for charismatic and iconoclastic co-founder of Sun, who has led the company almost since its beginnings two decades ago.

In an exclusive email interview to Dataquest on the eve of his visit, McNealy, who has been the driver for Sun’s long-term "the network is the computer" vision, said that despite Intel, Microsoft and Linux, Sun was nearly unassailable–and growing stronger. Despite the pressure from apparently cheaper alternatives, he said, "there’s nobody better than Sun, at reducing complexity and cost."

About the growing interest in .Net, he said that Java was "way ahead in terms of technology, adoption, and widespread industry support". The success of Web services, he said, ultimately depends on open, royalty-free standards--the same driving force that propelled the Internet to become an indispensable global business tool. "By agreeing on standards, we can make the market bigger for all players." Sun has also an open desktop client code-named Mad Hatter. McNealy said that there was a lot of interest in this from call center and other users "who don't need a million features that go undiscovered and unused -- and they certainly don't need the expense of a Windows desktop".

Asked whether Sun wasn’t going overboard on its non-invented-here "vertical integration" strategy–its own processors, OS, software, McNealy told Dataquest that being a systems company Sun has a distinct advantage in being able to tune the various hardware and software elements to work together. "Processor speeds have doubled every two years, but memory speed has doubled every six years -- a serious mismatch," he said. "We see that -- and are addressing it -- because we're a systems company."

McNealy will be in Delhi on March 20, where his engagements include a morning session with Nasscom on "The next big thing in technology", followed by a CII CEO Forum on "Leadership Through Technology", both at the Oberoi Hotel. He will visit Mumbai on March 21, where scheduled media interactions include an exclusive meeting with Dataquest; and Bangalore on March 22, where he will, among other things, address Sun’s annual developer conference and meet with Wipro’s Azim Premji over lunch.

(Eswaradas Satyan Nair is Bureau Chief, West, Dataquest and Prasanto K Roy is Group Editor, Dataquest)