Name: Yuting Long

Course: comp1631

Term: winter

Sun Microsystems ——basic introduction

• Sun microsystems, inc. is found in February 24th, 1982. • It is one of the largest sellers of server computers and fa

mous for the system created on Sparc chips. The company has created and produced a lot of computer products with intensive impact on both computer field and our world, among which the Solaris operating system, the open-source MySQL database and the Java programming language aroused special focus.

• On January 27, 2010, Sun was aquired by Oracle Corporation for US47.4 billion, they actually reached the agreement on April 20, 2009.Since then Sun Microsystems, Inc. was renamed Oracle America, Inc

Gold age and

achievements

In 1992,the first Multi-processor desk-top SPARC sation 10 system was indroduced by Sun Microsystems.

Next year, it became one of the top 500 wealth corporations in the world.

In 1995, Sun Microsystems developed java, the first universal sorftware platform

In 1997, Sun Microsystems introduced[sun enterprise 1000] and develped java2

Gold ageand

achievements• Sun Microsystems reached its peak at 2000. it h

ad around 50000 employees and the market cap was over two hundred billion dollars which is as much as thirty times of its current value and far more than the current google’s market cap—170billion dollars and current IBM’s market cap—160billion dollars.

• It defeated all other workstations including IBM and minicomputer.

• Depending on Solaris and java, Sun became the most promising one which can challenge the Microsoft’s operating system

PRODUCTS

Products list

Computer servers, workstations (depends on its own SPARC processor, ADM”s opteron and intel’s Xeon processor

Storage system

Solaris operating system, developer tools, web infrastructure software, identity management application

others Java platform. mySQL, NFS

Open source software (e.g open Solaris

• Java was a programming language developed by Sun's software engineers in the early 1990s. What made it special and popular at that time was that it was not for just one particular computer operating systems. It was actually designed for any computers used at any time. so that millions of computer users can talk to each other in one universal computer language. McNealy regarded Java as the basis of a completely new platform for the computing world. Undeniable Java was somewhat like a mile stone for the computer world as well as the internet world.

• The launch of Java also identified Sun as a leader of Internet world. It was also, for a long period of time, a powerful weapon for Sun to challenge the dominance of Microsoft.

“the network is the computer”

—Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy——before Sun Microsystem

• Scott McNealy was born in Columbus, Indiana.• His father was a manager and finally a vice chair man of

motor business. And this seemed become the first chance for little Scott to gain business experience

• Unlike most people in this field, he was not from the world related to computer science. instead, he studied economic in Havard and get a MBA in Stanford graduate school of business.

He was employed to manage manufacturing at Onyx, and no longer after he left Onyx, his friend invited him to found their own network and since then, he became one of the co-funder of Sun

Funding of Sun• ——Sun?

• ——Stanford University network！There were four young men funding Sun in 1982. Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott Mcnealyt and Bill Joy. Vinod Khosla met Andy Bechtolsheim, who was working on a project called the Stanford University Network, or SUN. Khosla invited McNealy to join the project due to his business and manufacturing experience. And Bill Joy, was brought in for his programming genius to develop a Unix operating system for the prototype workstation. Since then, four men in all their 20’s with passionate, dreams, as well as talents, fund the base of Sun microsystem corporation and led to way to success and gloriousness full of up and downs

Scott Mcnealy ——career

1984-1984 vice president, manufacturing and operations

1984–1999 chairman, president, and chief executive officer

1999–2002 chairman and chief executive officer

2002–2004 chairman, president, and chief executive officer

2004– 2006 chairman and chief executive officer.

Scott Mcnealy——CEO journey

• thanks to the rich skills and experience to deal with various demands of a company, in 1984, McNealy became CEO in Scott McNealy after Khosla. However, as the dissatisfaction among staff and board increased on him as a CEO, he was forced to leave in 1984. and then, he was named interim CEO. It was might be lucky for Scott McNealy that there was not any others suitable to replace him, so the board decided to stick with him——Scott McNealy, an inexperience young man with little knowledge of running industry and a reputation of cockiness as well as arrogance.

• It was his confidence, energy, and commitment to make this company success that convinced the board and proved himself to the world.

——“I was kind of the glue that kept everybody together and helped enunciate what our goals were, how we're going to get there, and kind of cleaned up after the engineers and made sure the customers got what we promised them”

Scott McNealy—— CEO journey

• After he became CEO, he led this company to step into the gold age.

• In 1988,under the management of Scott McNealy, Sun reached the annual sale of 1 billion dollars.

• In 1992, Scott McNealy managed to make the revenue of Sun exceeded 3billion us dollars.

• In 1995,scott McNealy succeed in leading JAVA in to market after many difficulties and intensive competitions.

• In 1996, the share of Sun’s service ranked the 3rd in the world.

“the net work is computer”?!!!

• Scott McNealy always believed that:“ the net work is the computer” which means that what is really valuable is not the computer itself but being connected to other computers and the global world.

• This has an intensive impact on Sun. it was more or less like the potential core rule for Sun that Sun always tried its best to follow this rule to made their machines be built with network capabilities. And this rule was well reflected by such things as Java, open Solaris.

• During 1990s, as most people gradually understand the benefits of the data network and the rise and importance of internet, Sun had evolved and been at the center of web revolution.

• Beginning: for a long period of time, the industry was growing dominanted by Wintel (Microsoft’s Windows operation system combined with the Intel computer chip.) McNealy found that and soon recognized that this would cause great threaten to Sun’s key market. The battle between the two began by McNealy attacks Bill Gates’ wrong view that due to Microsoft’s unfair business practices, it can dominant the market.

• Among McNealy’s attacks, he also banned the Sun’s worker using any Microsoft’s software like power point ,etc. although McNealy's attacks on the company certainly won Sun publicity. However, some people thought is was over attack. And some people also pointed out, although it was a good wish to live apart from Microsoft, which fulfill those people with angry about Microsoft’s dominance, it was not realistic in the world that in our life, people would like to need both of the two.

• The Java case probably was the most well-known one among the battles between Sun and Microsoft.

• In 1996.Sun and Microsoft reached a contract that allow Microsoft to include Java in Windows operating system in order to make Java a truly universal computer language, and meanwhile, Microsoft still needed to use Java to reposition itself in new world of internet computer.

• However, Microsoft violated the contract that made some changes to Java and it was incompatible in Sun’s own system. So Sun sued Microsoft in1997, the cooperation failed eventually.

Difficulties!!

• As time flied passing 1990s, both Scott McNealy and Sun experienced great difficulties beginning at 2001:

• 1due to the the intensive attack at September, 11 2001, th

e economic went into recession which had a bad impact on technology and computer industry.

• 2the competition in server and computer markets increased at a unbelievable fast speed.

• 3 Sales of Sun products were also badly affected by the Linux operating system, an open-source software

• 4 Sun had experienced a great loss since 2002. and it was suffering 12-succisive quarters of shrinking

• 5faced with a series of loss, Scott McNealy was criticised inability to make Sun profitable again and also, there was a great speculation pointing out that he was on the way to end his CEO journey in Sun

Time to end of the journey

?

On 24th April 2006, McNealy ended his as long as 22 years’ CEO journey. He is one of the very few CEOs of a major corporation to have had a tenure of over 20 years.

Although we have to say Sun has not got as strong impact as before, Scott McNealy did not do as well as before, yet, Sun did leave something for us under the charge of Scott. Something that can not be waved off. ——maybe Java, maybe Solaris, maybe the dream to challenge Microsoft

Reference

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_McNealy#Personal_life (at January 30th, 2011)

• http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/sun_microsystems_inc/index.html

• http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/M-R/McNealy-Scott-G-1954.html

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSolaris (at February 1th, 2011)

• http://www.answers.com/topic/scott-mcnealy