Computerworld.com recently published an interview with Sun's CEO Scott McNealy, touching on everything from the data center and R&D to competitors and even the current SCO/IBM/Novell debacle. McNealy conceded a point or two, such as Sun's high cost structure, but overall defended the way Sun is positioned as well as its plans for the future.

McNealy began with a description of Sun as an all-inclusive data center provider. Specifically, he pointed to the reference architectures that Sun offers to help customers solve specific data center problems. He also stressed the point that Sun offers user-visible interfaces that are both open and adopted.

A question on converged systems prompted McNealy to remark on how the N1TM control panel should make things like different virtualization engines invisible. McNealy also explained how recent acquisitions such as Pirus, CenterRun and TerraSpring all fit into N1: "They are all about virtualizing and provisioning CPUs, disk drives, switches and services."

Sun's current expenditures on research and development (Sun spent 16 percent of its revenue on this last year) have prompted some industry analysts to question whether Sun has its priorities straight. McNealy defended Sun's investment, "Sixteen percent is high by historical standards, but I have not yet had a customer say shame on us for doing all that great invention and innovation. We've got a very, very strong cash position." He goes on to describe the recent changes to the SolarisTM 10 Operating System (Solaris OS), UltraSPARCR IV, UltraSPARCR IIIi and Opteron products as all being well worth the expense.

When questioned on Sun's finances, McNealy expressed confidence at the more than $5 billion Sun currently has in the bank. He also defended the company's footing, "I like our position. I like our brand. I like our product line. Our cost structure is a little high, but we're not going to go take a meat cleaver to it and ruin the product calendar or let customer satisfaction suffer."

For the complete interview, see:

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=1488326127&;fp=16&fpid=0 [...read more...]

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