Indeed, some Sun watchers say McNealy’s delay in positioning Sun as a software as well as hardware company hurt. During the boom, McNealy often quipped that Sun’s business was safe since “no one can download a SPARCstation.”
For the past few years, however, few would agree that Sun’s business was safe. Its stock price languished at less than $5 per share as Dell and other hardware vendors undercut Sun server prices with low-cost commodity servers. Even longtime Sun ally Oracle CEO Larry Ellison started singing the praises of cheap blade servers as the best TCO platform for Oracle’s pricey databases. Sun was late with Linux and, adding insult to injury, longtime nemesis IBM stole Sun’s thunder in Java development.
“Jonathan has to take time to get to know the channel and the many ways it adds value, adds to Sun’s revenue and reach in the marketplace,” said Rob Wolfe, president of AvcomEast, a Sun partner in Vienna, Va. “I hope the Sun executive team becomes more aware and involved with the partner council and the entire partner community.”
Even McNealy boosters said it was time for change at the top. McNealy, one of Sun’s four co-founders, remains chairman but relinquishes the top operations job after 22 years.
“From my personal perspective, Scott’s been looking tired,” said Dave Condensa, CEO of Helio Solutions, Santa Clara, Calif.
McNealy’s incessant trash-talking, his infamous top 10 lists and his “Windows is a hairball” comments were entertaining during the salad days of the PC industry, but his antics started to grate as Sun’s travails continued over the past few years, partners and analysts said.
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