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Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Scott McNealy names Sun's top 10 tech innovations

By | October 11, 2009, 9:39pm PDT

Summary: In what could be one of his last big appearances as the leader of Sun, Scott McNealy named his list of the top 10 innovations that have come out of Sun Microsystems.

In his first big appearance since it was announced this spring that Oracle was going to buy Sun Microsystems, Sun chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy got sentimental on Sunday night in his opening keynote at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco.

Although the Oracle-Sun deal hasn’t gone through yet, McNealy sounded a lot like a leader who knew he was making one of his last major speeches as Sun’s chairman. He talked about how much he’s enjoyed innovating in the technology space over the past couple decades and thanked the Sun employees and customers who came along for the ride.

He also threw his weight behind the Oracle deal and tried to reassure Sun customers that an Oracle-Sun pair-up is going to be all rainbows and unicorns.

However, the most interesting part of his presentation was when he named his list of the “Top 10 Innovations from Sun.” Here is the list, copied verbatim from McNealy’s slides:

  1. NFS/PC-NFS Technology
  2. SPARC (first 7-10 MIPS workstation under $10K)
  3. Open Source Software
  4. BSD + UNIX System 5 = Solaris
  5. Java (Java card, Java SE/ME/EE and Java FX)
  6. E10K (64-way Solaris)
  7. ZFS/Open Storage/Flash (Exadata)
  8. Project Blackbox, world’s first modular datacenter
  9. SunRay
  10. Chip Multi-threading “CoolThreads”

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison took the stage after McNealy and said, “It’s dazzling thinking of all the innovation that’s come from Sun over the last couple decades.”

At that point I was waiting for them to cue the unicorns to run across the stage, but it didn’t happen. There must be city ordinances against such a thing in San Francisco.

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Jason Hiner is the Editor in Chief of TechRepublic. He writes about the products, people, and ideas that are revolutionizing business with technology.

Disclosure

Jason Hiner

Jason Hiner has nothing to disclose. He doesn't hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Jason Hiner

Jason Hiner is the Editor in Chief of TechRepublic, an online trade publication and peer-to-peer community for IT leaders. He is an award-winning journalist who examines the latest trends and asks the big questions about the technology industry. He previously worked as an IT manager in the health care industry.

You can also find him on Twitter, , Facebook, and at JasonHiner.com.

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The front page link is broken....
mrlinux Updated - 12th Oct 2009
I try to goto this link and end up here ???
Ellison rips IBM, shows off Sun-Oracle
0 Votes
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E10K? Open Source
dave.mc 12th Oct 2009
Wow, an all this time I thought that the E10K came from Cray (after the
merger with SGI). The spin that Sun completed it is true, but it wasn't
SUN culture of DNA.

http://www.cray-cyber.org/systems/E10kborn.php

And who knew that Sun created open source, rather than struggling
against it until they lost.

0 Votes
+ -
The front page link is broken....
mrlinux Updated - 12th Oct 2009
I try to goto this link and end up here ???
Ellison rips IBM, shows off Sun-Oracle

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