NEW YORK — Sun Microsystems continued to hog the
spotlight at the Bear Stearns technology conference here Thursday with CEO
Scott McNealy insisting Wall Street was misinterpreting the company’s recent
string of executive departures.
“Even with the management changes, the work chart doesn’t change. I don’t
think people understand that the average tenure among Sun executives is 10
years. We’re a simple business unit and we’ve basically simplified the work
chart,” McNealy said.
He seemed irked by the media’s perception of the Sun’s management structure,
insisting the main players remained in charge of the company’s key business
units and even took a swipe at criticisms of his management style.
“The media paints me as someone who doesn’t listen but, my board kicks my
butt because I listen too much,” he declared.
Much like outgoing president Ed Zander did during the morning session,
McNealy’s presentation was peppered with jabs at Sun’s competitors, mainly
the recently-merged HP/Compaq and Dell Computer
.
“The airbags are deploying right now,” he said, arguing that HP
shouldn’t be seen as a direct competitor. “We don’t really compete against
them, much like we don’t compete against Dell. HP is getting out of the
enterprise storage and software business, where we are seeing most of our
gains,” McNealy said.
“I don’t compete with Dell. I’m not a grocery store for PCs,” he added.
At another point, using statistics from IDC to show Sun was taking market
share away from IBM Corp. , McNealy quipped: “This is not
Carly math either, this data is from IDC,” an obvious reference to the
public battle waged by HP chief executive Carly Fiorina during the
contentious HP/Compaq merger vote.
On Sun’s head-to-head competition with IBM, McNealy insisted his company was
gaining ground on Big Blue. “In the toughest pricing market, our gross
margins are improving. I want to make it clear that, in a lot of market
segments, we are actually crushing IBM.”
He also took several veiled swipes at Microsoft
including a response to a question about his motivation as Sun’s chief
executive. “I don’t want the world to have to deal with a
Control/Alt/Delete environment. That’s huge motivation right there,” he said
with a big smile.
On Sun’s financial targets, he would not be drawn into details. “We haven’t
changed our statements. You’ll have to joint he conference call to hear
more.” The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun is projecting fiscal fourth quarter
profit with revenues expected to improve over the $3.1 billion posted in the
most recent quarter.
Despite four consecutive quarters of losses, McNealy maintained Sun took
great advantage of both sides of the technology bubble of the mid 1990s.
“We took bigger advantage of the bubble that anyone else. And, when the
bubble popped, we managed it better than anyone else. Our team gets huge
marks for being opportunistic on both sides.”
