McNealy: Sun Software Strategy 'Unfairly Maligned'

On a conference call reporting the vendor's earnings for the third-quarter of fiscal year 2003, McNealy defended Sun's software strategy, which he said has been "unfairly maligned" for its lack of profitability.

McNealy said Project Orion, Sun's strategy to offer its entire software stack--including all of the Sun ONE Java software products--on both Solaris and Red Hat Linux, will change an industry view that Sun can turn a profit only in its traditional hardware business.

"There are new opportunities for Orion and creative ways we'll roll out pretty soon to [get monetary gains from] the software R&D effort we've put into this company," McNealy said. "We have some unique abilities to [make a profit]."

But McNealy did not specify how Orion's pricing will serve to increase Sun revenue, advising listeners to stay tuned for the project's official rollout later this year.

Sun executives already have revealed that Orion will be available in the fall under some form of subscription pricing based on three models: employee-based, traditional per-CPU and metered usage.

To prove that it's committed to selling systems made up of both hardware and software, Sun also unveiled a new sales engagement model at its recent iForce show. That model is aimed at helping Sun partners deliver solutions around several technology practices using both hardware and software rather than just selling individual products to customers.

Sun iForce partners said they're optimistic that Orion will bring in new revenue for them. "There are some real opportunities around Orion," said Christian Dwyer, vice president of operations at Navidec, a Greenwood Village, Colo.-based solution provider. "This opens up more of a customer base for us because customers will have all of the software [on Solaris], so now we can go in and wrap services around it."