CRN Interview: Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems

At the iForce Partner Summit last week, Sun Microsystems Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy voiced strong support for sending more business the channel's way. McNealy fielded questions from Senior Editor Elizabeth Montalbano about how Sun aims to leverage partners to grow revenue.

CRN: What is the biggest message Sun is sending to partners this year?

McNealy: I just think we've actually been following up on what we committed to a year ago. We're moving a higher percentage of our business to the partners. %85 It's a very strong commitment that the way we're going to grow this business is through the partner model, not through hiring 4,000 to 5,000 employees in the field per quarter like we were doing at the peak of the [dot-com] bubble.

CRN: Can you shed light on how Sun will derive revenue from more than just hardware, which is still where much of it is coming from?

McNealy: The right and interesting model is ACS [a Sun partner] in Dallas, [which] has a joint offering with Sun that is based around Sun Power Units. %85 We put our infrastructure in there, and by the way, it's Intel, AMD and/or SPARC, it's Linux and/or Solaris, and it's [Java Enterprise System] and/or other components. %85 It's our equipment, Sun owns it, Sun operates it, in an ACS-managed data center, and we've created the Sun Power Units. We went in and we filled that first data center we set up on our nickel, on [an] ACS and Sun nickel. Three customers signed up and filled the thing up. So now we're building a second one. %85 I've got a list of about a dozen customers that we're bidding out Sun Power Units to in a true utility computing model.

CRN: Do you plan to do more of those with other partners?

McNealy: We plan on doing lots of new things in lots of ways. %85 You're going to see some Solaris pricing subscription models that are very, very interesting. You're going to see more Sun Power Unit kinds of things where we wholesale to our channel partners services, network services, whether it be to a phone or to an end user or whatever.

It's a very, very different model. It blows up a lot of how the world operated in the old days.

CRN: IBM Software Group executive Steve Mills said Sun has been more adversely affected by Linux than anyone. Some people see the Sun-Microsoft deal as a play against IBM, and also as a play against Linux. Could you comment?

McNealy: This [deal] was all about advantaging our customers who all have Microsoft products and who all want better, more aggressive and more certified interoperability with the Microsoft environment. Steve Mills can fantasize all he wants about what this means, but what it means is our customers have a uniquely advantaged interoperability position between Sun and Microsoft products, both ways. I have met some competitors that are very upset by this, but I have yet to meet a customer who's upset by this. %85 They might be skeptical, but not upset.