McNealy unplugged: Part I
Sun CEO Scott McNealy talks about his vision of IT for the 21st century, the WebTone concept, and more, in an exclusive interview with Tech Update editorial director David Berlind. Tech Update: In October, you addressed a large audience of strategic technology decision makers at Gartner's Symposium and used most of the opportunity to attack Microsoft. After, attendees at the event as well as ZDNet's audience who viewed the Webcast said what they had been looking for was an IT-driven business vision. If you had another chance to give them neutral consultative input, what would it be? What should their top five priorities be?
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McNealy: The first thing is that I wouldn't go to the Gartner conference because they ask all the questions. All they did was ask Microsoft questions and their whole deal was to bait me and I'm pretty easily baited on that subject because I have a passion for it. So I apologize for that. I wasn't in control of that. They have two moderators up there asking me questions that aimed the thing in a bad direction.
We do have a strategy, a vision, a platform, an expertise to go do that, and it's all wrapped up around our SunONE initiative. I did talk about that but I wasn't able to expand on that nearly enough. The vision is services--on demand. You should be taking all your legacy applications and services and publish them into this Solaris iPlanet "jukebox"--a digital services-on-demand jukebox. Take all your eight-tracks, cassettes, CDs, DVDs, old and new legacy environments, and publish them through this digital jukebox and provide these services to a secure, conditional access, authenticated, single sign-on through the iPlanet access server. Use our directory and portal and metadirectory capabilities with the ability to sign on from anyplace, anywhere, anytime--for anybody--and get all these services on demand. We're able to do this without forcing you to rewrite your applications. We do security and authentication in a way that the .NET architecture just doesn't do it. SunONE and .NET are really the only two architectures out there that you can re-architect your current IT environment with and make it all network-ready.
Tech Update: So the top five priorities are?
McNealy: Top five priorities would be: (1) put a Netscape browser on every desktop. (2) Web-enable every one of your services. In other words, tie it into to your jukebox that's based on the architecture you picked--one with an integration server, an app server, and a Web server. (3) Build a directory, an LDAP directory, that has every constituent, every shareholder, employee, customer, reseller, supplier, whatever. (4) Pick an integrator to help you with all of this. Platform independence can bring you great technology. Do not choose IBM Global Services, because they'll bring IBM junk in there. (5) Choose an architecture, a platform. Choose a company that can provide you with as much of that big friggin' WebTone switch as possible so that you have fewer throats to choke. Try to get out from being chief integration officer and chief infrastructure officer by choosing the big friggin' WebTone switch and going to hosting as much as possible through SunTone certified service providers. This way you can spend more of your time being chief information officer.
Tech Update: What exactly is a big friggin' WebTone switch?
McNealy: If you're a service provider and you want to provide telephone services, you go out and buy a big friggin' dial tone switch and you buy it all complete. You buy the whole thing and you don't get IBM Global Services in there to integrate it for you. You buy it complete from Nortel or Alcatel or Lucent and they install it and they turn it over for production, and it has dial tone, call forwarding, call waiting, voice messaging, caller ID, all of those different features. You can go to Sun and buy a big friggin' WebTone switch. That is the server, the storage, the operating system, the monitoring software, the clustering, the alternate pathing, multiple domaining, dynamic reconfiguration--and then it has a mail tone, a calendar tone, a news tone, an app server tone, and a directory tone. It has all of the different features of a big freaking WebTone switch and allows you to create this big jukebox. You can buy that all complete. Or you have one throat to choke and you can buy it all through a service provider that is SunTone certified. Or you can do what many IT directors do and they go out and buy the telephone switch by buying the chip from Intel, the operating system from Microsoft, the disk drive from EMC, the Compaq power supply, the Oracle database, the Novell directory, the BEA app server, the SAP, ERP, and CRM from here, blah-blah-blah, this, that, and the other thing, a SoundBlaster card from somebody else, the anti-virus uninstaller from Norton, and then go bring in IBM Global Services to try to make the whole thing work. Buy the big freaking WebTone switch.
I spend two billion dollars a year in R&D to go and make this whole integrated stack work in a highly reliable 99.99% to 99.999% [availability], scalable SPARC Solaris SunONE architecture. There is no reason CIOs need to duplicate all of that work. You have got plenty to do creating your directory and plugging all of your legacy CDs, cassettes, jukeboxes, DVDs, and all the rest of it into this digital jukebox.
Tech Update: Selling a whole platform traditionally meant providing the platform, recruiting the developers, and finding partners. Now, Microsoft is using a fourth rule and it seems to be working: creating IDs. IDs that once they're transactional, the technology on which they're based is difficult if not impossible to disintermediate. Passport, Hotmail, MSN Messenger--these are all killer apps that are creating transactional IDs for .NET. Java appears to be the only competitor, and many of your partners, extremely large companies, have deployed one version or another of client-side Java. They're optimistic, but none has told me what the killer Java app is. So what's the killer app that will result in transactional IDs that will prevent client-side Java's disintermediation and build even more momentum for all versions of Java?
McNealy: I agree with everything that the question implies. There are really only two developer bases left. Multimillion developer bases, there's the d-d-dot NOT--d-d-dot NET--environment and then there's SunOne, which is SPARC, Solaris, Java, Jini, iPlanet and Forte, and all of the Web protocols that are out there that are multi-vendor and open. You can write to one architecture or the other. There are obviously big differences between them in terms of scalability from SmartCards to supercomputers with Sun One, [and] open interfaces. But most importantly, we won't compete with you in the SunOne architecture. Service providers get to be service providers and they get to own their own IDs, they get to be their own service providers. Microsoft becomes a service provider and the ID provider, and the platform provider, all wrapped up into one. That's not a good thing. It's very anti-competitive, very choice reducing, and very threatening as your question argues. So Java is part of the SunOne platform, and it is an API for writing executable content. ID capture, we have addressed with a different issue. For ID capture, we argue that the right way to do it is through the Liberty directory architecture. Liberty is a group of 34 companies today going to literally thousands of people who are going to use a common schema and single sign-on architecture for how you create a digital on-line presence and identification environment. So companies can maintain and control and keep track of their own customer, supplier, and employee databases--not have a third party disintermediate them, which is what .NET is all about.
Tech Update: So you're implying that the transactional IDs are already in place and it's just a matter of hooking them up to Liberty's authentication scheme?
McNealy: Getting them all to have a common schema so that you can share. It turns out that companies like General Motors and like Vodafone and all the rest of it have a billion plus IDs already. You know, Microsoft talked about 200 million IDs through .NET. Most of those are what we call teenagers working in chat rooms and are not real serious, money-paying IDs. When you look at Vodafone, they've got hundreds of millions of customers who they bill for real money every month and have a real digital ID and a relationship, a voluntary relationship that sends Vodafone money. These are very powerful IDs, and Liberty gets them all to do a common schema in a common single sign-on environment so that they can do bilateral business relationships on a conditional access basis where they protect each other's businesses and partnerships and identifications. Liberty is going to be a very, very successful strategy. What DNS was for the Web, the Liberty architecture is going to be for on-line presence and ID.
Tech Update: So we've been hearing a lot about an old Arab proverb recently which is the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
McNealy: So we've got a lot of friends.
Tech Update: You just talked about a few companies like Vodafone, but one company that rises to the top and has a lot of transactional IDs is America Online. And they're obviously in a blood bath with Microsoft for transactional IDs. Is that a potential partner?
McNealy: AOL/Time Warner and Microsoft have been invited to join the Liberty environment.
Tech Update: But do you as the CEO of Sun see AOL as a partner to Sun?
McNealy: Oh, absolutely. They're a big customer of ours. We're a big customer of theirs. We're doing joint development work. Obviously we've done the iPlanet joint development, which has basically run its course and is now a Sun business unit, but we'll continue to do work on the browser and I will continue to do work in a whole bunch of other spaces and places.
Editor's note: Shortly after this interview, AOL announced it would become a founding member of Sun's Liberty Alliance.
Tech Update: Going back to the killer app, Microsoft Office has been that killer app for Windows on the desktop.
Tech Update: That's such a well-named term for Microsoft. It kills you. Actually, Lookout has turned out to be a bigger killer app. I mean Outlook. What's the new virus that's running around today?
Berlind: If you had installed the patches for it a while ago, you would've been protected.
Tech Update: I'm protected and I didn't install any patches. I don't run Windows.
Berlind: So, what about a Java-based MS Office killer that subscribes to your very vision, which is services on demand, software as a service?
Tech Update: Well in fact we do have the killer strategy for that. It's StarOffice. It's free. It's downloadable from our Web site to any and everybody. I think we've downloaded over five million copies to date, and that may be out of date on what that number is now. We've handed out millions of CDs. And we allow people to share and copy and duplicate, all the rest of it. It runs on Linux, runs on Windows, runs on Solaris. It also has a server-based architecture we call the Sun Portal Architecture so that you can have these productivity environments from a service provider. So service providers will be implementing this as a service to their customers so that literally from your Java-enabled phone you can look at and review StarOffice documents, forward them on, do that sort of thing. We showed those demos many times on stage, and that's the way the world will go. Now [MS-Office] is a pretty strong monopoly and they do everything they can to get you trapped into the Office hairball. My suggestion to all companies is use Netscape, use free StarOffice and put everything in a browser-readable format, not in the Office format. It's smaller, faster, cheaper, more reliable, safer--way better than paying the Microsoft monopoly tax.
Tech Update: OK. You and Steve Ballmer traded barbs about working out your differences. Sun says United CIO Eric Dean invited Microsoft to the Liberty Alliance. You personally invited Ballmer down to Sun to work out a deal. Ballmer says Microsoft wasn't invited to the Liberty Alliance and he would be happy to do a deal if Sun agrees to stop all litigation once and for all.
McNealy: (Laughs) So, I will work with you as long as I can do whatever I want to you and never... I mean is this the most ridiculous comment you have ever heard? I will work with you if you promise that all laws are forever suspended with respect to our relationship. So I can go and breach a contract. I can kill all your employees and I can poison all of your food sources. As long as you don't litigate against me for any of that, I will be happy to work with you. Would you ever... I mean is that the most ridiculous comment you have ever heard in the world? I want to be above the law. I think it's fantastic. It blew me away when he said that at the Gartner Conference and the Gartner folks didn't even bother to call him on that. You mean to tell me you will work with a company only if you don't have to play by the rule of law? You know what? At some point he's becomes so powerful or so successful or so rich or whatever, he doesn't even get challenged on these unbelievable statements. I mean I can just see me walking into any customer, competitor, or partner, or supplier, or whatever, and saying, "I will buy from you as long you promise never to sue me for anything I do, no matter what, no matter how illegal, no matter how unethical, no matter how immoral." People don't walk into partnerships or relationships like that.
Tech Update: The guy who built my house said, "I'll let you buy a house from me, but you have to agree not to sue me if something goes wrong. And if we do have a disagreement, then we go to arbitration."
McNealy: That's different.
Tech Update: Would you be open to saying, "Look, all right, we won't sue you, but we have to go to arbitration."
McNealy: That's effectively what a judge is.
Tech Update: But it's less...
McNealy: Less what? I mean the judge was the arbitrator. When we went and said "You're in breach of our Java contract, the judge said yes you are."
Tech Update: Maybe less public, less a matter of public record.
McNealy: I don't mind. I mean I don't care.
Tech Update: You would do that?
McNealy: Why use an arbitrator when I have the court system to go do that. I have not had to go sue any other Java licensee. And not one of them was in breach. They have all agreed. This is not a Sun litigation. And by the way, we're not the only ones that have sued Microsoft.
Tech Update: Is there a chance that all this emphasis on Microsoft runs the risk of distracting you from three other entities that are perceived as threats to Sun: Intel, IBM, and Linux.
McNealy: First of all, I don't consider Linux a threat to Sun. They're Unix. They're a partner. They're a supplier, if you will, to Sun. We have Linux extensions to Solaris. We're the number one Linux server appliance manufacturer with our Cobalt Product Line. We run StarOffice on Linux. We run Java and Jini on Linux. We run the iPlanet stuff on Linux. And the Linux world steals from Unix and the Unix world steals from Linux. It is very compatible. And applications written to Linux run on Solaris and Solaris applications run on Linux very easily. It's a very compatible. When Linux wins, the Unix world wins. When the Unix world wins, Sun wins. That's a good thing. Intel and Microsoft--Wintel--Wintel is a competitor, and IBM is a competitor. It's Wintel, IBM, and Sun. So it's .NET, which is what Intel is all about. Intel is not the competitor. Intel just drafts behind the Microsoft monopoly. They don't innovate. They don't lead. All they do is draft behind the .NET binaries and, you know, we're on our third going on our fourth-generation 64-bit architecture, and they still haven't gotten Itanic to work. So that's not the competition. It's a Microsoft-led Intel competition, not an Intel-led Microsoft competition. So those are the three competitors, and yes, we're focused on it. IBM doesn't focus on architecture. They focus on Global Services. They lead with people not product.