The Biz of Coding

Sun Microsystems Inc. CEO steps down

by Ujwal Tickoo on April 25th, 2006

Scott McNealy co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) has stepped down as the CEO of the company after 22 years. He will continue as the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Scott co-founded Sun in 1982 with Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy and Vinod Khosla.

Jonathan Schwartz who was the President & COO of Sun Microsystems Inc. till now has been appointed as the new CEO. Jonathan is a regular blogger on Sun Microsystem Inc.’s official blog site and plans to take some time before announcing major changes.

This is a 2nd high level change in Sun Microsystems Inc. recently. The first was announced on March 16th when John Loiacono joined Adobe Systems (ADBE) to head its Design, Web, Imaging, Video, and Audio Businesses. John was also an avid blogger on Sun’s blog site.

Sun Microsystems Inc. posted a loss of US $ 217 million for the 3rd quarter of 2006 (ended Mar 26th). The loss according to Sun was due to acquisition costs and new product releases, even though revenue rose 21% as compared to the same quarter in 2005.

For over 4 years Sun Microsystems Inc.’s stock has kept below US $5. After the announcement of McNealy’s stepping down, Sun Microsystems Inc.’s stock price rose 7.4%. Several Sun employees had lost the value of their Stock Options because of stagnation of Sun’s stock price for the last 4+ years.

McNealy has been an open critic of Microsoft and Bill Gates. He has been part of a major initiative in the tech world to help develop alternative OS and software to Microsoft.  He was a key force behind Java and Sun Microsystem inc.’s "Network is the Computer" vision.

Update: For more on Leadership issues surrounding the changes at Sun Microsystems Inc. read McNealy shakes Up Leadership at Sun.

POSTED IN: Java, SUN, Solaris