Sun never sets for Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy, who is leading Sun Microsystems' two-pronged battle against Microsoft on the operating systems front and IBM on the infrastructure segment, is not a man to give up. The man, who for the past two decades has been at the forefront of the Open Source chorus against Microsoft, is pushing ahead relentlessly without any sign of fatigue.

"It is a never-ending battle. Java and Dot.Net will co-exist forever. The only difference is how each of us approaches this battle. We see this as an endeavour to broaden the horizon of the community at large, without getting into litigations," a relaxed McNealy said in Bangalore on Friday. He is here after a gap of four years and feels a palpable change.

"A host of Indian corporations are adopting Sun products and rightly so," he declared, adding that nearly 37 per cent of global data is processed on Sun's platforms. People surf the World Wide Web day in and day out on the ubiquitous Java. And it has grown as a tool on which the developer community has been driving innovative applications for financial services to mobile phones to automobiles.

Even as he says he doesn't want to go on over the battle with Microsoft, he never lets go of a chance to take a dig at the software leader. "We do not compete with our customers for subscribers as Microsoft does with their MSN portal. We provide the arms and ammunitions for companies like Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Amazon and we let them build. This is the core differentiation," McNealy explains, tongue in cheek.

While on the operating systems front he is tackling Microsoft with some arguable success, he has his hands full on the infrastructure front engaging IBM by offering infrastructure as a service.

Network.com, an offering of Sun Microsystems, gives developers building high performance computing applications the complete resources and tools they need to create, post and make their work available to a large number of users without having to invest in costly infrastructure.

"The Network.com developer community has created dozens of projects, many of these from open source communities that have provided access to these applications. With the Network.com Application Catalog, developers can make their applications available pre-configured and ready to run, removing the barriers to adoption. Additionally, Network.com allows easy monetisation of the intellectual property developed and visibility to these applications," McNealy highlighted.

To fight IBM and Microsoft, Sun is looking towards India for developer ammunition.

"This is the biggest challenge we are facing. As long as you guys keep cranking out quality engineers on a regular basis, the battle will get all the more interesting," McNealy signed off.