Sun Microsystems
After founding Sun Microsystems and helming the CEO position for 22 years, Scott McNealy stepped down as head of the company in April to make way for new leadership.
News of his departure got journalists writing about how much the quick-witted industry icon would be missed.
Over the last few years, Sun, now led by CEO Jonathan Schwartz, has been trying to turn the tide and regain its glory days. Responding to new market dynamics, the Java creator announced in 2005 its plan to make Solaris an open-source project called OpenSolaris. It also went on to reveal its intention to open source Java by the end of 2006 and complete the process in 2007.
In November, Sun revealed that it would adopt the GNU General Public License (GPL) to govern open source Java.
So far, things seem to be looking up for the server maker. According to IDC's latest report on the worldwide server market for the third quarter, Sun's server revenue rose 15.8 percent to US$1.3 billion. Sun accounted for 10 percent of the market.