Sun owes it all to Scott McNealy
Published: 23 Jan 2004 17:25 GMT
That same Gartner analyst also questioned Scott McNealy's leadership, claiming his vision of the IT industry has become a barrier to Sun's development. Do you think there are any palpable rumours along these lines within Sun?
This summer he [Scott McNealy] beat Gary Player by two holes at St. Andrew's. The guy is vibrant. He has got immense energy. He has architected the business into the position it is at the moment, which is moving forward from strength to strength and that is down to him.
But some people do find him contrary and intimidating?
I think we should enhance strong personalities. We shouldn't let it get in the way of sensible business.
Sun surprised analyst this month with a better than expected loss. What do you put this turnaround in results down to?
From a UK perspective, we have acquired a number of new customers in the last six months. And that has created new business. We are well into double-digit growth in the product line, not sequentially but year on year and that's an indicator for the company. A lot of that was due to new customer signings, not just down to existing companies upgrading their estate.
Sun announced at the end of December 2003 that just three years after acquiring Cobalt Networks for £1.2bn it had decided to kill off the business. Was the whole thing one big waste of money as some commentators have suggested?
At the time it made us the biggest Linux player on the planet. We gained a lot of knowledge and expertise and the financial write-off has been dealt with. In the boom you have got to take risks and acquire know-how and market share any way you can.
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