Sun exec defects to Adobe

John Loiacono, Sun Microsystems' executive vice president for software, is leaving the company to join Adobe Systems as senior vice president of its Creative Solutions Group, silicon.com sister site CNET News.com has learned.

Sun confirmed the departure on Thursday and said Loiacono's last day will be 24 March. Until a replacement is found, president Jonathan Schwartz - who held Sun's software chief role before Loiacono - will take over the job.

The company said in a statement: "We thank John for his many contributions to Sun and wish him well in his new endeavour."

Adobe, headquartered not far from Sun in San Jose, California, is a graphics software powerhouse which sells popular titles such as PhotoShop. Adobe acquired rival Macromedia in 2005.

Loiacono will oversee design products such as the Creative Suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, InDesign and Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe said in a statement. He will report to Adobe president Shantanu Narayen.

Loiacono, who took over as software head at Sun in 2004, oversaw radical changes: Solaris became first free and then an open source project called OpenSolaris. And Sun's Java Enterprise System server software is following a similar path.

Sun's server software business never produced products that achieved the popularity of rival offerings from BEA Systems and IBM, and its Solaris operating system lost market share to Linux.

Loiacono is the second major executive to depart Sun this month. Bob MacRitchie retired from his post as head of sales and is being replaced by Don Grantham.

At the same time, though, the boomerang effect is still in force at Sun: Peder Ulander, who left Sun in 2004 for embedded Linux specialist MontaVista, will return on Monday as vice president of software marketing. He replaces Mark McLain, who left several months earlier.

Ulander said: "I'm looking forward to having some fun inside of software. I think everything Sun is doing with open source is pretty exciting."

MontaVista is searching for a new chief executive, and Ulander said it's likely that person will want to name his own vice president of marketing. "Being a vice president at MontaVista was a great experience but this is a bigger opportunity," he said.

Other returned execs at Sun include co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, now a top designer of the "Galaxy" line of x86 servers; chief financial officer Mike Lehman, who came out of retirement; Tom Goguen, the vice president of operating platforms products; and Karen Tagan-Padir, the head of Java software development.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com