‘Hardware and Software are Two Mutually Important Aspects...’

l From the dot

in the dot-com to the "network is the computer", can you trace Sun’s

journey through the upheavals that the IT industry has been through?



Sun Microsystems has undergone a series of transitions since its inception.

The dot in the dotcom phase was just an aberration during the brief period of

the dotcom boom. Development in the first decade was from $ 3.6 to 12.5 billion.

In 1993-94, Sun adopted the network centric view. In the first decade of its

operations, the rules of workstations were changed with NFS (Network File

System) and Sun brought TCPIP to the fore. Data centers came to be more

component centered. The period from 2000-2004 will focus on three key things:

core competence, sound partnering, innovation and intellectual property

development. We hope to achieve this transition by April 2004.

l What is the

re-organization you have carried out within Sun?



In April 2002, we flattened the organization further. A new layer of core

team members now reports directly to Scott McNeally. We also tuned the

organization to focus on vision for network computing.

l What will be

Sun’s focus in the future?



The problem with managing networks today is that they are way too complex.

Our aim is to attack complexity, lower TCO (total cost of ownership) and enable

mobility with security. We have entered into an era of Internet, which has

changed the way networks can be managed. If this comes to a halt, all business

stops. The TCO is very high and there are problems of networking. The future

belongs to the Business to Customer (B to C) era of security and mobility. Here,

we are driving the next era with the Java card.

Our philosophy is that customers buy the system and we coordinate the

hardware and software accordingly. Sun’s Net computing agenda is a combination

of three steps- attack complexity, lower TCO and able mobility with security. We

try to mix and match on the same box.

l Could you

give us a comparison of India vis a vis other APAC countries, in terms of market

readiness an talent?



India has been a good market in the last four years. The intellectual pool

is huge. The services market in India is getting bigger.

We have examples before us like VSNL and Reliance and I see a lot of

innovation here. The markets in Singapore and India are comparable. Singapore

has transformed itself into the hub of network computing. In India too, there is

spending on hardware-but with short term goals. Companies and governments invest

in PCs and small servers. There is little planning for scalability. India must

understand that we need to build networked architecture.

Manjiri Kalghatgi and Aakriti

Kaushik