At Sun's announcement event on Monday, February 10, CEO Scott McNealy talked with InformationWeek senior writer Aaron Ricadela about Sun's R&D priorities, x86 and SPARCR processors and reduced prices on some Sun servers.

McNealy said Sun has spent half a billion dollars on research and development to build server-room platforms, "and we'll spend another half-billion in the next 90 days." The percentage Sun is spending on R&D has increased from five to fifteen percent.

Sun's new strategy is called the NC 03 Q1. "If you go into any switch room -- at Pac Bell, AOL, General Motors or eBay -- each one has a different setup," McNealy explained. "They're like fingerprints. What we're announcing is a whole new set of Lego blocks. We'll build, test, and certify them. Our announcement is not a set of products, but a set of components that are all integrated, all tested, all backward compatible. It's a different model than IBM." (The terms "Java virtual machine" and "JVM" mean a virtual machine for the JavaTM platform.)

"We have a new SPARC blade, and in the second quarter you'll see an x86 (Intel) blade," he said.

When asked about future uses of the SPARC processors, McNealy said, "We think people will say it's way easier to go from the SolarisTM Operating Environment (Solaris OE) on SPARC to Solaris OE on x86. We think Solaris OE on x86 is going to be a big winner this time around. We've been doing Solaris OE x86 for years, and most of the downloads have been on the server side. With the rise of the JavaTM Virtual Machine and SunTM Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) stack on Solaris OE, [developing software on the x86 platform] doesn't force you to go to Linux. Now, all these apps you have will be bit-for-bit and bug-for-bug compatible."

When asked about cutting prices on some servers by as much as 21 percent, McNealy replied it is an opportunity, noting how Sun's gross margins grew last quarter by 6.1 percent. With Sun's strategies, Sun will remain relevant, according to McNealy. "We're not going anywhere." [...read more...]

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