Sun Outlines Radically Simplified Vision, Pricing At SunNetwork 2003

The latter, of course, is what Sun sees as the future -- a future that revolves around partners delivering radically more simplified solutions for customers at an order of magnitude less than what they pay today.

That's one of several messages that Sun is presenting at its SunNetwork 2003 customer event, under way this week in San Francisco.

During a keynote Tuesday, McNealy took his usual barbs at rivals Microsoft and IBM (see "10 Reasons Why Cost and Complexity Are Out Of Control"). But McNealy also provided both a defense of his company's recent history and a clear vision of why Sun's value proposition is unrivaled, at least from his point of view.

Making light of California's gubernatorial recall election, McNealy said Sun wants to "recall cost and complexity." He even went so far as to hold up an election-style poster emblazoned with the message to emphasize his point. "Probably the No. 1 customer issue [we hear about] is to be predicable and be simple," McNealy said.

During the morning general session, which included presentations by both McNealy and executive vice president Jonathan Schwartz, Sun provided a concrete vision and made some specific announcements regarding its future plans. The vision, of course, revolves around Sun's oft-stated vision of "everything and everyone connected to the network."

During his Tuesday morning keynote, McNealy outlined the underpinnings of this strategy, which hinges on a three-pronged approach. The first element, which was hit on over and over again, is to attack cost and complexity at every turn. The second prong is to accelerate network-service deployment through the Java architecture. Finally, Sun also hopes to unleash unimagined mobility with security.

To emphasize the point, McNealy took out his Smart Card and told members of the audience that one-third of his workforce does not have permanent offices assigned to them at Sun. They merely find a good parking place in a Sun lot and then find an empty office where they authenticate themselves with their assigned Smart Card. McNealy said the goal is to create, with a nod to the film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, the "wherever you go, there you are" computing model.

McNealy took time during his presentation to thank not only his customers, but his 18,000 worldwide iForce partners, too. The company counts 14,000 ISVs among its fold, plus an additional 4,000 solution providers. By focusing on a leveraged business model, Sun has increased partner satisfaction within the past year, McNealy claimed.

Finally, McNealy took umbrage to the notion that IT and innovation don't matter. (On Thursday, he plans on publicly debating Nicholas Carr, the author of the controversial Harvard Business Review story entitled "IT Doesn't Matter.") Contrary to that notion, McNealy said his company, which specializes in addressing complex network computing problems for large organizations, does so by "solving problems through R&D, not through headcount." The latter was a swipe at IBM Global Services and Dell, whose founder and CEO Michael Dell quipped last week that research and development is overrated, according to McNealy.

In closing, McNealy startled members of the audience with his idea that the IT industry employs too many people by an order of magnitude and charges customers too much by the same measure. By reducing complexity, he insisted that huge savings in reduced costs and headcount could be achieved.

From a product standpoint, McNealy discussed a roadmap for the company's Ultra Sparc chips, which should see a 50 to 100 percent performance boost early next year and a significant performance leap with new Niagara technology expected sometime in 2005.

As for Schwartz, he echoed many of the same themes as his boss, but provided specifics on several issue and introduced a few of his own. In particular, he challenged IBM and others to indemnify customers. Sun absolutely will, he said, and those who say that providing legal protection isn't important are essentially lying, Schwartz said.

With regard to simplification, he said Sun will simplify its software portfolio and reduce the number of products it offers from around 225 to a core of six. Sun will move "tons and tons of server components" to the Java server system, Schwartz said.

His other breakthrough message for Tuesday: Sun's radically simplified pricing model. "Take the total number of employees you have and multiply that by 100. That's your price," Schwartz says. "It's that simple."

Despite a few botched lines and one bad demo, the message was well-received by the audience of Sun enthusiasts.