McNealy does a la Gates sans the dole

NEW DELHI: Compared to Japan, the US and Germany, whose growth is flat for the last few years, India and China have the potential to be the growth engines with their remarkable growth rates. Scott McNealy, Chairman, President and CEO, Sun Microsystems stated this while addressing a 200 plus CII delegates in New Delhi.

McNealy promised more investments in India in future especially in R&D and education and training. Referring to the current geopolitical scenario, he said that the global economy was short of optimism and in this situation, what Sun can safely guarantee is to change fast, based on customers' need. He said that Sun Microsystems had a sound financial footing with positive cash inflow of over $ 5.3 billion and had been having positive cash inflow for the last thirty three quarters.

According to McNealy, the Internet is transitioning through a paradigm shift - from an "Internet of computers" to an "Internet of things that ended in computers" to an "Internet of all things". The revolution encapsulates



"everything" rather than "computers" or "people" and this has led to drastic cost reductions to connect.

He shared Sun Microsystems' vision as "everything and everybody connected to the network" and its mission "To solve complex network computing problems for governments, enterprises and service providers".

Based on these, Sun Microsystems has evolved a three pronged strategy — Reducing cost and complexity in computing, accelerating network service deployment and unleashing mobility with security.

According to McNealy’s estimates, the average global server utilization was only 15 percent and hence there was a need to rationalize resources and costs. McNealy discussed the benefits of a Java smart card that could connect virtually everything to the net and at the same time rationalize resources and costs. He said that the technology has the support of three million Java developers, 65 million Java enabled telephones, 283 million cards already deployed as proof of concept.

Addressing the delicate issue on Open Source, he said that Sun Microsystems believes in offering value added and packaged services on Open Source technology. At the core of the Solaris - the flagship operating system of Sun Microsystems, there is Linux which is a derivative of Open Source technology.

On the issue of its legal face-off with Microsoft, McNealy clarified that the company was not at war with anybody but wanted to see value in the hands of the end customer. Referring to another question, he said that technology couldn't afford to commoditize. The rate of technology change calls for fierce innovation and hence reduces shelf life of IT products.