Analysis: McNealy kills Tux plans
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
There was no penguin suit this year. The tough times facing Sun Microsystems called for something a little more serious when Scott McNealy addressed financial analysts here this week. McNealy, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Sun, informed a critical analyst community that Sun will not change by mimicking the strategies of IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. This message was a far cry from that of last year's conference, when McNealy took the stage in a penguin suit, looking like the Linux mascot Tux, and explained why Sun had indeed decided to go in the direction of rivals and ship Intel -based servers with Linux on top.
Sun has been rocked by a tough hardware market and the evaporation of key telecommunications and network service provider customers. Revenue has tumbled from the $18.25 billion reported in 2001 down to the point where analysts are predicting a 2003 mark under $12 billion. Phrases such as "All time high" have been replaced with "Returns to profitability" in company earnings statements.