Customer still the Sun-shine: McNealy

CHENNAI: Every time Scott McNealy swings his golf club and sends the ball into a hole, he probably hopes it was Microsoft.
Despite a demanding India sapping all his energies, the chief executive office of $13.6-billion Sun Microsystems was characteristically charged up in an exclusive interview to this newspaper late Saturday evening, particularly while dwelling on Microsoft.
MS-bashing was expected, but what came as a surprise was McNealy’s sentiments of hurt: “Rhetoric and theatrics notwithstanding, it’s a fact that we have never made revenues brawling with a competitor. We have only made money by solving our customers’ problems. But that has really been underestimated.’’
The 47-year-old executive, who in 1995 lifted Java from a mere beverage to a coders’ religion, plans to swamp India with Java-enabled handsets: “It was gratifying to meet Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai. Reliance has already shipped a million Java-enabled mobile phones in the last three to four months. Analysts say that there will be a billion Javapowered phones on the planet in a few years from now.’’
Another “wonderful shot in the arm for Java’’ in the not-so-distant future could be the courts ordering an errant MS to bundle “the latest and greatest Java Virtual Machine into Windows XP’’.
He hates this one ... Any qualities that he like in Gates, the CEO? “I don’t think or worry about those matters. It’s disappointing when you ask these nasty questions. I want to tell you about our company, our successes,’’ snaps McNealy. However, he confesses to being a GE Jack Welch groupie, on whose board he served for three years.
Sheer coincidence then that they both are Scorpios? “That sure helps,’’ McNealy says jokingly. And isn’t Bill Gates one too? The brash strategist — who converted a little Silicon Valley company into a $1 billion behemoth in just six years — doesn’t respond to that.