Sun Gets Ready For The 'Everywhere' Web
(10/05/00, 7:08 p.m. ET) By Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb News
(http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20001005S0012)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems Inc. chief executive, said Thursday his company is developing its technology to support an Internet infrastructure that will be accessible anytime, from any device, anyplace in the world.
The affable CEO told attendees at his Oracle OpenWorld keynote that the Palo Alto, Calif., hardware vendor's development efforts are focused on continuous uptime, massive scalability, and an integrated stack of hardware and software.
Sun believes its products must support "Web-tone," the Internet's version of the dial tone that symbolizes the ubiquitousness of the telephone system.
"We focus on the big, frigging Web-tone switch," McNealy said, noting that "even our name is right.
"It's Sun Micro-systems. It's not Micro-soft," he said, referring to arch-rival Microsoft Corp. (stock: MSFT), Redmond, Wash.
Following his speech, McNealy responded to a TechWeb story that uncovered Microsoft's plans to launch an array of MSN services later this month, as well as a global marketing and advertising campaign to promote them.
MSN's competitors include America Online Inc. (stock: AOL), Dulles, Va., and Yahoo Inc. (stock: YHOO), Santa Clara, Calif.
"Yada, yada, yada," McNealy said. "I'm tired of Microsoft noise. They've got to deliver."
On the recent drop in stock prices of many large technology stocks, McNealy appeared baffled, telling attendees at the user conference, "The stock market is a little funky out there."
However, McNealy said he was bullish on technology stocks in the long term.
McNealy predicted that the current drivers behind Internet technology are entertainment, voice over IP, the connecting of nearly every consumer product, from cars to PDAs, to the Internet and the use of the Web by businesses for sales and purchasing.
The use of the Internet in doing business with customers will eventually eliminate today's sales strategy, which McNealy called a game of "liar, liar," where a sales rep and purchasing agent try to bluff each other to get the best deal.
The Internet would eventually provide immediate spot pricing on all products, so both sides would know the best price in real-time.
"The Internet is going to be the biggest trading floor," McNealy said. "The network does the negotiating."
Although lightly peppered with Microsoft barbs, McNealy's speech was far mellower in its attacks on the company than in past speeches -- a noticeable trend over the last year or so.
While his infamous "Top 10" was once a scathing attack on Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, on Thursday it was the "Top 12 New Reality Shows," a satire on NBC's popular "Survivor" television program of the summer.
Among the list of shows were, "In Between Jobs With Ray Lane," the Oracle Corp. (stock: ORCL) president who left earlier this year following disagreements with chief executive Larry Ellison; and "Onboard the Love Boat with Larry Ellison."
While poking fun at Ellison, McNealy also dedicated a sizable portion of his keynote highlighting the close partnership in technology, sales, and marketing between the two companies.
Oracle, Redwood Shores, Calif., offers its Oracle8i database on Sun's Solaris8 operating system in Sun's server hardware.
Oracle9i, scheduled for release next March, will also be available on Sun (stock: SUNW) hardware.
"It hasn't been easy, but I think the two companies have really pushed the scalability and uptime pretty aggressively. We're very tightly tuned with Oracle," McNealy said, noting that Sun was the "No. 1 platform for Oracle."
McNealy demonstrated Oracle tools, running on Sun hardware, for automating the migration of data from Microsoft SQL Server to an Oracle database, as well as the database's failover and disaster-recovery capabilities.
McNealy said Sun, like Oracle, believed in providing customers with few third-party products, providing as complete a computing platform as possible.
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This should bode well for SUNW as customers migrate to the Oracle solution.
EKS |
