Sun Microsystems, a CEO's Last Stand?

pillageplunder writes "Businessweek's cover article is a sharp look at Sun Microsystems. The gist of the article? That its fall can be laid at the Feet of its CEO, Scott McNealy. Overall, a balanced read, one that does a good recap of the the high and the very low low's that Sun has reached under McNealy."

Comments

How do I apply for his position?

[Kjuib]

can I just email my resume to HR@sun.com? or should I walk in and say I want the job?

Brave Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

and the very low low's that Sun has reached under McNealy.

I certainly wouldn't want to reach under McNealy, especially near his low lows.

Re:Brave Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

I would... that man is HOT.

I'm kind of disappointed ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I couldn't find the word "beleagured" anywhere in the article.

Oh, wait. Sun, not Apple. Got it.

Damn, no comments yet...

[johannesg]

Oh well, I guess that means I'll have to read the article.

Everything is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG Sun is dying
OMG Apple is dying
OMG *BSD is dying
OMG Linux is ... wait a minute. Almost slipped.

I'm confused about "wildly"

[AndroidCat]

"The Internet is still wildly underhyped, underutilized, and underimplemented

How do you wildly underhype something? (Or even wildly underutilize or underimplement.) Does it involve caffeinated valium?

Re:No, you need experience.

[Zocalo]

First, you must have some experience of having brought another major corporation to its knees in the past.

So, you're saying that Darl McBride might still have career opportunities after SCO? Damn.

Then again, SCO isn't a major corporation and was already scrabbling in the industry detritus when he took over, so there's still hope.

Astrophysically speaking...

[Beast in Black]

...does this mean that when Sun actually dies, it will turn into a black hole and suck all the other silicon valley companies down? It sure is massive enough :)

Re:Astrophysically speaking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shoot. Some of Silicon Valey companies are great. Quick, force Sun to relocate their HQ to Redmond!!

So what are we doing with Sun?

[Pervertus]

They got a cool logo and lovely servers (I like the shinying sparkles on their blue covers).. but people aren't happy to buy their computers. Mostly because of their proprietary peripherals.

Think. It could be cool if you could take a SparcStation keyboard and use it in your own computer, no? But the connection is incompatible. So that might be one of their biggest problems.

Re:So what are we doing with Sun?

[christophersaul]

That's right. Only the other day I heard of the CIO of a major bank choosing a different vendor to Sun for their multi-million dollar clustered Unix systems to run their securities software. The reason? He wanted to be able to take the keyboard home with him at weekends to use on his home PC. He was also annoyed that he couldn't fix a web cam onto the Sun servers either.

Re:Sun employees vs Microsoft employees

[IOOOOOI]

I too have some first hand experience comparing M$ and Sun.

Whenever a M$ sales team comes-a-knocking, its always 3 or 4 pushy guys.

Whenever Sun calls, its a smoking hot sales chick (to weaken your resolve) and a grandfatherly guy who actually knows his shit (to instill confidence).

Re:The PC put the knife in but Sun twisted it

[chromatic]

I wrote a little program to generate Sun's strategy. Here's what they're doing today:

• Sparc works on the desktop.
• Java belongs on servers.
• Linux means nothing to us.
• Solaris should be open source.

Next month, it'll be:

• Sparc will never be open source.
• Solaris works on the desktop.
• Java means nothing to us.
• Linux should be open source.

(I realize that half of those statements make no sense. That's how you know it's working.)

Re:Classical big-company problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Wala...

Sorry, I can't read any further; all breakers tripped. "Voilà." It's from the French, idiomatically used to express triumph and delight; it translates roughly into "see here!" "Wala," on the other hand, is, well, it's... it's just pathetic. "Wala." I mean, come ON. How can you get to the age where you can manipulate a computer, and even write seven internally consistent paragraphs (your conclusions are another thing, but this is a spelling flame; let's not get too off-track), with a link to a real book and everything, that you even appear to have read, and still we get: "Wala."

Here, let's at least make it a little more dramatic: "wa-LA!" Now I feel a sense of the theater; the magician has just performed his best trick. Pity it was a with a deck of TV Magic(TM) Cards, but what did you expect? The guy said "Wala" instead of "Voilà!"

Wala. You don't happen to use "formally" instead of "formerly" too, such as in, "I formally had credibility, but then I used 'wala' instead of 'voilà'"? That one drives me nuts, too.

Wala.

Re:No, you need experience.

[Anonymous Coward]

> So what's the point of the facade if it's ineffective?

to compensate for a little penis, as always.

Re:Sun employees vs Microsoft employees

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not wrong! I work at Sun PS (UNIX tech) and my project engagement officer is this hot chick in a tight red dress. All the UNIX techs have beards and most of them are over 40, to give that air of wisdom. Techs without beards are "encouraged" to grow beards. It's not an official policy, but the rest of the techs give us gentle ribbings like "you can't know UNIX until you have a beard" so we end up growing one.