US Report: Sun carries out sweeping changes
Sun Microsystems announced a sweeping reorganisation this week that will do away with all of its operating companies, shuffle the responsibilities of its executives, and redistribute product development and marketing.
In place of the five operating companies that are currently part of the Sun organisational structure, it will create seven new divisions, with the various division heads reporting to Sun's COO, Ed Zander.
Masood Jabbar will head Sun's computer systems division, which includes servers, desktop workstations and network computers. Mel Friedman will lead the microelectronics division, which includes the SPARC microprocessor, board products and Java microprocessors.
Gone is SunSoft, to be replaced by the new Solaris software division headed by John McFarlane, who will oversee the Solaris operating environment for SPARC and X86, PC-interoperability and messaging/mail.
Also gone is JavaSoft. Its President, Alan Baratz, will lead Sun's Java software division and be responsible for the Java architecture and platform, development tools for Java and other languages such as C++, desktop software and the software developer program.
Lawrence Hambly will head the customer services division, which focuses on end-user service, support, education, training and professional services.
Janpieter Scheerder, the former president of SunSoft, will head the new networked storage division, which includes all storage hardware and software products.
Mark Tolliver has been named president of the new consumer/embedded markets division, which will focus on Java technologies for embedded systems (including automobiles, phones, set-top/cable) and JavaOS for consumer software. The division will also be responsible for lower-end versions of Java called Personal Java and Embedded Java.
A fallout of the reorganisation will be internal restructuring within each division. In the case of the Java software division, it is likely that different business units will be created in order to separate the development of the Java platform from the creation and sale of Java-based software products.
Sun hopes to have the reorganisation completed by the end of its fiscal year in June.