McNealy steps down at Sun

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MCNEALY FREAKED OUT SOON AFTER MY COMMENTS ON ?SUN- HAS-no problem- at top

SCOTT MCNEALY FREAKED OUT SO SOON AFTER MY COMMENTS YESTERDAY ON ?SUN- HAS- NO- PROBLEM- AT-THE- TOP? ARTICLES!
I woke up to a major surprise today! Mcnealy throwing in the towel so soon after ZDNET comments by Paul Murphy and others that Sun was basically sound at the top ? the problem was the middle. I hope McNealy now has more time to fix customer service as a back seat driver.
I have direct experience of an unresponsive Sun, more enthralled with gizmo toys than listening to and responding to real world customers, and the challenges customers face out there. Quick reminder to Scott also - the world does not begin and end in the 16 or so countries that Sun offers strong support. The new 21st century firm has to be in all regions directly or through trained and well-resourced partners. For instance, the mobile telephony firms in Kenya as well in the eastern Africa region are clearly galloping ahead. The old style Telco?s are limping, walking- dead dinosaurs. Who is not selling them gear to revamp their services and get them net savvy? You guessed it. Sun cannot possibly have hoped to abandon many such Telcos in emerging markets (prime clients for high-end systems, servers, communications and network facing apps) without eventually skidding on red ink.
So, Scott and Jonathan, refocus the top and middle back to customers for 2-3 years to create real disruptive change in client service ?not technological wizardry. Define customers as all leading ?and limping - corporations and large firms in the global village that connect to the net, not merely those in the cozy first world. Note that poor responsiveness to a developer firm in Toronto appeared just as bad as my own experience with Sun while contacting them from here in Kenya). Best to leave the capable tech leaders in Sun to execute the Chip road map. But I know Sun won?t resist the challenge of running ahead of the tech game. So why not get into the mobile telecoms space (spook Intel while at it), wring more performance from CMT like squeezing 16 cores into the next cool threads chip; double the thread; and bundle the whole lot in a 2U dual -processor package by year 2008 to run collectively a cool 256 threads. This would be 8 times the T200 that will surely send one or two chip rivals to an early death. Then pencil in another CHIP - Duel with Intel in 2008 at running windows any way you can (Intel and Dell won?t turn up again! IBM could have long split into a gaming firm and a pure consultancy after selling its high tech HW bits to China).
I assume the financial results will not change much as a result of aggressive customer service upgrades (if you follow my advice). I would also hate to lose the combative, in-your-face- style that makes good copy for Sun detractors and good humor for most of us. Seeing that rivals are scrambling to merely master dual and quad cores while you have an 8-core shipping, it must be ok to shove it in their faces... better still make clients know it and pull customers to defect by providing real value to their businesses.
Jonathan should stop the ritual blah blah that ?we think alike? or ?there will be no changes? etc. There has to be changes when a new CEO takes over, else McNealy would stay put on the job. As long as the departing Scott is around Schwartz will need to don rear view glasses for a while. This is not easy when markets expect him to squint through binoculars for the vision thing and peer closely with a microscope at their businesses -as well as fix Sun?s business - to deliver value and the detail and execution thing.
In my comment to Paul Murphy (ZDNet Blogs editor), I raised one danger to Sun that may be lurking off centre ?A Big, bad wolf swooping down to Gobble up Sun. Hint! He likes yachting, has a recent history of hostile grabbing of firms in his SUITE space, and could morph to grab loud mouths in his STACK space. And he plays God (or the nearest thing to it) when it suits him and brags on wearing the best SUITES. The only way to stay relevant and big is for Sun to grab a SUITE of its own (CAN SUN DIGEST ISCALA,SAS AND SAP or three similar integrated web- centric applications suites IN ONE BITE and make them open source?.

Scott or Jonathan he can reach me also at alexander.owino@yahoo.co.uk

Posted by: mbs_accolade@...   Posted on: 04/25/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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