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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sonki who wrote (12689)	12/15/1998 10:23:00 PM
From: Xpiderman	Respond to of 64865

One On One With Sun CEO, Scott McNealy - Day 1 of NBR SUSIE GHARIB: A big deal today between Panasonic and Sun Microsystems that could open the way for TVs, telephones and other appliances to communicate with each other in the future. The two companies will develop super high- tech consumer products using Sun's Java system. As Scott Gurvey reports, this is just the latest of a flurry of deals engineered by Sun's high-energy CEO, Scott McNealy. SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: For 16 years, Scott McNealy has led Sun Microsystems. Corporate headquarters still has the informal air of a Silicon Valley start up. But this is now a $10 billion company with 27,000 employees. McNealy is a long- time hockey fanatic and while he is quick to credit his team for the company's growth, there is no question that his competitive spirit sets the tone. Sun began making work stations, used in design, engineering and financial analysis. SCOTT MCNEALY, CEO, SUN MICROSYSTEMS: Well, we're still a work station company and we've had three unbelievably successful quarters in a row here now since we introduced our new Darwin-based work stations. But now we're also doing servers from our very low-end two- way 250 all the way up to our big 64 way Starfire 10,000 which are, you know, one of our big storage products. And then, you know, we're selling technology in the Smart Cards and all of these Java appliances and programming environments and Web servers and proxy servers and mail and application servers. So we've really certainly broadened our business. I don't think you can be a $10 or $12 billion engineering workstation company. We had to kind of expand. GURVEY: McNealy's decision four years ago to expand into servers could not have come at a better time. Sun is now the leading server supplier. MCNEALY: The worst way you could look at this is we're just the nuclear arms supplier to everybody who wants to compete out there on the Internet, all of the service providers. The nice thing is we have the best arms to go supply them. You can't go to Microsoft and get this kind of stuff. And even then, Microsoft, they'll use the weapons you buy from them to blow your own site up. So, the fact that we don't compete with the service providers in any way shape or form, yet, provide this Smart Card browser to services in e-commerce side strategy with the full turnkey service and support-that's very powerful to them. GURVEY: That shot at Microsoft was clearly intentional. While many in the industry go to great lengths to avoid offending Microsoft, McNealy has taken an aggressive stance. Sun is the rare hardware vendor that sells its own operating system which McNealy says many customers find better than Microsoft's Windows NT. MCNEALY: Nobody can do an ad campaign, a PR campaign, a media campaign like Microsoft. And if you read the news, you'd think, you know, everybody on the planet would have at least three personal copies of NT and nothing else would exist on the planet. Well if people started to try it and found out it just doesn't cut it. GURVEY: Sun has also challenged Microsoft with Java, a system designed to let programs run on any platform. When Microsoft made changes to its Java products to prevent programs from running on non- Microsoft systems, Sun sued and so far, has won two key decisions. MCNEALY: And I think a lot of people are applauding the judge's decision and are thrilled to death. The big winner here is the user of computer technology. You know, you and I and everybody else. GURVEY: Ahead, McNealy sees a whole line of Java appliances getting intelligence to products from cell phones to microwave ovens. McNealy credits architect James Gosling for the Java revolution. But it was McNealy who was willing to take the chance. MCNEALY: I think you can over-manage. I think you can over- constrain. I think you can over-goal. You can over-milestone really bright people. And, I looked at James and said, this guy's not going to goof off. He's not going to go do something silly. He's not going to go do something-he may take a chance that doesn't work out. But he took a chance and then got lucky. And he was good and lucky and that's-there's nothing better than being good and lucky. GURVEY: Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York. Nightly Business Report transcripts are available on-line post-broadcast. The program is transcribed by FDCH. Updates may be posted at a later date. The views of our guests and commentators are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc. Nightly Business Report, or WPBT. (c)1998 Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc.