After seeing the front page of the Mercury News business section - had to write a blog entry to add some color!

I have been at Sun for over 18 years. A couple of lifetimes in the computer industry. So I have seen the good and the bad and am now enjoying the good again. This was a pretty hard recovery. We exited the dot-com boom with the wrong products, we had gotten lazy and we lost some of that fire.

We went through a long drought where we spent much of our time reducing costs (everything that you can think of, and of course a good number of people). The first couple of RIFs, while they were a new experience, didn't seem too bad. We had gotten a bit fat and truly needed to go on a diet. But the next couple of RIFs hurt. These were good people - people that we could have used. People that we still miss today.

But thanks to Scott. And a lot of the credit goes to him. We tried very hard to retain our R&D spend. He knew that we had to invest in the development of new products to get out of the hole that we were in. As he said many times, you don't cut your way to profitability. You invent. He was exactly right - even though Wall Street didn't always agree.

A couple of other things that he did that might not be visible on the outside included a real focus on quality. Our quality had slipped as well during the dot-com bubble days and we needed it back. He drove a daily 8am (pacific) call to review hot customers where all his direct reports were required to attend and participate in solving customer issues. This lead to significant improvements in processes that have resulted in excellent product quality today.

And he found ways to keep the energy high across all employees. This can be difficult when friends are asking if Sun will survive, bonuses were not being paid and friends were being let go. But it is why we still have the strong team that we do (and why I am still around!).

Now we have a new leader. Jonathan is both similar and very different from Scott. They are of course both very smart and committed to the company. They are both excellent with customers and know what has made us what we are today. But Jonathan has taken us to the next level. As the article says - he is partnering where we did not partner before. He is a quick study. He really listens, communicates well, is fast to make decisions and drives disconnects or overlaps our of the company.

Boy is it great to be back. We have the best and most complete set of products that we have ever had at Sun. The acquisitions of Storage Tech and SeeBeyond (EAI, B2B and the core of our SOA platform) mentioned in the article, as well as others completed earlier such as Waveset (for identity management) and Kealia (AMD based servers) have really helped us helped us to fill out our product line and make us incredibly competitive.

Now lets get back to kicking butt and having fun! (something Scott frequently said ...)