Sun goes down over changing tech landscape

As the internet took off, Sun's name seemed highly appropriate. But those days are long gone, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

THE ANNOUNCEMENT of the sale of Sun Microsystems to Oracle this week was a stunner, especially for people who have watched the company for years, and for those who enjoy the history and culture of this ever-evolving sector.

That would include me. I started writing about the technology industry in the mid-1990s, just as the sector went from being a geeky specialist arena primarily covered by niche publications to a hot industry raking in billions with several rock star-like chief executives.

Perched in the chief executive echelons at the time, and for many years afterwards, was Sun Microsystem’s Scott McNealy – he of the big white grin and barbed humour (most frequently directed at Microsoft). Sun was getting bigger and brighter with every passing day, selling the high-powered servers and workstations that were becoming increasingly important to businesses.

But even more central to Sun’s ascent was the fact that it increasingly comprised much of the hardware that businesses used for creating a presence on the young internet.

As the internet took off (and the dotcom bubble began to form), Sun’s name seemed highly appropriate, even if it was not primarily meant as an astronomical reference, but was simply an abbreviation for Stanford University Network (three of the company’s four founders were Stanford University graduates who were involved in developing hardware for Sun, one of the four initial nodes on the internet).

That deep knowledge of hardware, networking and the internet would be Sun’s ticket to megastardom. Profitable from its first quarter of operation in 1982, the company was perfectly placed to benefit from its expertise and product line. Alongside its hardware were two software technologies that, from the start, won it plaudits: Solaris, its version of the operating system Unix; and Java, its platform that enables applications to run on any operating system, any hardware.

So central had Java become to Sun and its brand that, two years ago, it actually changed the symbol for its stock from SUNW to JAVA.

Solaris and Java are seen as the jewels for Oracle in a Sun acquisition, and the move by the database company into hardware will be interesting to watch.

But that’s the future. Following the announcement I, like many others, was more interested in thinking about the past. In my article archives, I found that, in 1996 at the German tech extravaganza CeBIT, I had noted that, despite the great excitement about brand new Java, Sun surprisingly only had two workstations running Java applications. One was a news ticker tape – remember those? – that seemed amazingly innovative at the time.

Around the same time I went on a press trip to Brussels to a Sun event focused on Java. I don’t remember much of it except that the speakers rather bizarrely rose up from a platform in the floor to speak from inside a giant coffee-cup podium. In between speakers, the audience was entertained by a BMX bicycle team performing stunts on the steps of the hall, and by a horde of women in alarmingly nude- looking body stockings who performed dances with long coloured ribbons on sticks. Ah yes, the dawn of the dotcom tech entertainment floorshow!

Then there was Sun at the height of dotcom-dom at one of the huge industry shows, with a massive banner proclaiming “Sun put the dot in dotcom”. Sun seemed to own the internet at the time, and had rocketed to a gasp-inducing $200 billion (€155 billion) market cap.

From those heights, then-chief executive McNealy could be flippant about growing concerns such as personal digital privacy. “You already have zero privacy: get over it,” he quipped in 1999.

By 2001, that old dotcom slogan was a real embarrassment for the company – no one wanted to be associated with having put dotcom dots anywhere or with dissing user privacy. And Sun, lord of the rise of the dotcoms, was beginning to wane in power and prestige.

McNealy – always one of the most lively keynote speakers on the tech circuit and always game for a rigorous press conference, unlike many chief executives in the sector – stepped down amid slumping sales.

Sun insider and smart arch-geek Jonathan Schwartz stepped in as chief executive.

A sale to IBM fell through earlier this month, trashing Sun’s share price and, lo, in rushed Oracle and its fat chequebook, yet again reshaping the tech landscape.

Still, despite its troubles, Sun never lost its glow entirely.

It has retained a reputation for innovation in software, Java is synonymous with the internet, and Sun is generally admired for its commitment to open-source software, having open-sourced Solaris and its office productivity suite acquisition, StarOffice, among other things.

And it has always been seen as a real technologist’s company, perhaps the ultimate insider accolade.

Being liked by geeks was never going to be enough, though. Sun’s absorption into Oracle is a sad ending (remember, Sun was rumoured to be considering buying Apple when Apple’s chips were down, which ironically, might have saved Sun’s bacon). Now, Sun’s purchase is going to add even more spice to Oracle’s unfolding story.

klillington@irishtimes.com

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