Sun's McNealy: "I give Microsoft actual credit"

During his keynote address at Comdex in Las Vegas on Monday, Sun's ebullient CEO Scott McNealy reiterated several familiar Sun themes, warning potential customers away from IBM and Microsoft - although he did have some kind words for the software giant.

Letting IBM Global Services into a corporation amounts to a "self-imposed lobotomy," McNealy said. He called Microsoft technology "welded together and welded shut," explaining that the software giant's products don't work well with other companies' products and only forces customers to buy more Microsoft products.

Sun's philosophy, by contrast, is to use a stacking-block approach of standardized "integratable" components, allowing Sun products to be easily exchanged with other companies' products.

Storage systems from EMC, username-password databases from Novell, and application servers from BEA Systems will fit into a Sun environment, just as well as Sun products, McNealy said.

McNealy is something of an outsider at the Comdex trade show, which in the past has focused on "Wintel"-based computers. He gave his first Comdex keynote address in 1999, when internet mania was still alive and well and McNealy's products still commanded a steep price premium.

Today, Sun is in the process of laying off thousands of its employees and is struggling to return to profitability. Still, McNealy remained optimistic - and unapologetic - about Sun's role amid the dot-com mania.

"We monetized the bubble," McNealy said. "Having $5.2bn cash in the bank is a very, very good thing. We've generated cash for about 32 straight quarters.

"It's not all that bad out there, at least from my perspective," he said.

Three years ago, McNealy also had good material for his keynote address, as a federal judge had just declared that Sun archrival Microsoft was a monopoly. Today, Microsoft has emerged largely unscathed from its long-standing antitrust suit. Not surprisingly, McNealy didn't use Microsoft as the butt of his keynote jokes.

He did offer some grudging praise to Microsoft as a company that's investing research money in the right direction - the cluster of interconnected computers McNealy refers to as a "big frigging web tone switch."

"I give Microsoft actual credit. They are trying to solve the problem with R&D, as we are," McNealy said. He didn't pass up an opportunity to criticize the company, however, for lagging in high-end servers that contain 64-bit chips and with more than four processors.

McNealy stood by his company's own research and development efforts, which is being spared the worst of 4,400 job cuts. Over the next five years, Sun plans to spend $10bn in research and acquisitions, the company said in a statement Monday.

Sun's CEO also praised Microsoft for having superior programming tools, an edge that can win contracts.

"The one area Microsoft does well, is have really great tools that get to prototype quickly," McNealy said. The resulting product might not work well on large servers and might be riddled with security holes, he said, but producing a good prototype fast can be enough to get a customer to place an order, he added.

"We're better at getting from demo to production, but they're better at getting to demo, and a demo often gets you an order," McNealy said.

Stephen Shankland writes for News.com