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McNealy Resignation Rumor Goes "Legit"

from the slow-news-day? dept

Fri, Apr 21st 2006 9:30am — Carlo Longino

We noted several weeks ago how a game of telephone led to some unsubstantiated posts that Sun Microsystems' CEO, Scott McNealy, was resigning. The story got traced back to an article based on the suspicion of one Wall Street analyst that McNealy might be ready to move on. Now, six weeks later, the "real" financial press has picked up the story, with the WSJ leading the way, and others falling into line. The thing is, though, about the only thing backing these stories up other than pure speculation is the opinion of that same, solitary analyst. So is the rumor any more legitimate now than when it went around lesser-respected financial news sources like Digg and Blog Critics? Probably not. But it makes for a juicy headline.

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Anonymoose, 21 Apr 2006 @ 9:41am

Scott is standing in the way of progress
I believe that there are a lot of people who are "stuck", in a way, with a ton of Sun stock. They bought in to the very real promise of Java back in the dot com era, driving Sun stock up to lofty heights. When Sun failed to deliver growth on having one of the leading business operating systems (Solaris), hardware reputations (Sun's servers), and application programming language (Java), the stock tanked and has barely recovered. So many investors are sitting there with stock they can't bring themselves to sell, to realize the ugly loss.

And who do they blame? Scott McNealy. It takes a special type of CEO to fail to deliver on strong products. So there is no doubt to why rumors of his departure are so persistent. It's what everyone wants to believe.

Consider the frothing at the mouth about "Snapple", or "Sun + Apple". Talk about two companies made for each other. Great engineering, positive brand recognition, quality reputation, and very complementary product lines. But the fusion that Sun needs to grow will not happen without Scott being gone. He simply is too close, emotionally, to Sun to let his ego step out of the way and the best thing to happen for shareholders.

Imagine Sun servers filling in the Apple enterprise picture. Java and Rosetta making the Apple APIs the defacto language of application development, running on a platform with the ease and beauty of OS/X with the enterprise-class features of Solaris.

A match made in heaven, but not until Scott goes.
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Ajax 4Hire, 21 Apr 2006 @ 10:09am

Yawn, Tell me again why I care?
Who are these people?
SUN what?
McNealy who?
Power the internet with what?
JAVA more than coffee?
and why do I care about a company that is clearly gasping for air.

This might have been news years ago when SUN was a real company making real money;
"the avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote" "Kosh".
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- Trollfinder, 21 Apr 2006 @ 11:27am
  
  Re: Yawn, Tell me again why I care?
  You're either unintelligent, a troll, or a shill. I'd say all of the above.
  
  Good luck with your AJAX work in VB Studio copying code out of a WROX book with someone who looks like you on the front cover.
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Dave, 22 Apr 2006 @ 4:30am

Re: Yawn, Tell me again why I care?
>> This might have been news years ago when SUN was a real company making real money .. JAVA more than coffee?

It was direct and willful sabatage by Microsoft that killed Java on the desktop. Remember they were in court for a number of years over it. See this quote.

`how do we wrest control of Java away from Sun?' Ben Slivka 1997

A Sun selling hardware and services is still a real company. Open sourcing Solaris is also a good idea if a little to late. Splitting with the Open Source/Linux crowd - not such a good idea. Doing a deal with Microsoft was the best McNealy could do in the interests of Sun. As the court case was dragging on too long and a drain on the company.

Immediatly after the Sun/Microsoft pact there was a lot of press advising McNealy to go. I wonder who would benefit if McNealy went and if some company is behind these stories.

> You're either unintelligent, a troll, or a shill. I'd say all of the above.

I concur ...
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Apr 2006 @ 2:37pm

Guess it was true after all
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