The Leadership Shuffle season
Is it May already?
One of the few predictable things about Sun is its cyclical nature. Every May seems to bring a whole new set of reorganizations and leadership shuffles. The season started a bit early this year with two leadership moves of note this morning.
First, Dave Douglas, formerly VP of Eco-Responsibility, has moved over to the Software organization with the generic title of VP of Technology. Why do I care? Because it's a coordination role - something I feel Software really needs at the moment. The announcement phrases his role as "leading the strategic development, planning and on-going coordination of technologies and product road maps across Software". Knowing Dave, he'll be keeping a close eye on how Software's activities align with the activities of the hardware side as well.
Though it's not explicit in the announcement, I understand that Dave will be holding on to the Eco- side of his job as well. That's good news for things like improving the efficiency of servers through improvements to Solaris and other software (which you probably heard him talk about in his presentation at the Analyst Conference - you did take my advice to watch those didn't you?). Also not explicit, but I've heard he'll be shedding the Corporate Social Responsibility group, which will now move to the Public Policy organization.
Second, Mike Splain, formerly (and still) Sun's Chief Engineer, will eliminate the acting label and formerly run the Microelectronics business. I was a little surprised that he took it given some of his previous statements about not wanting to lead people (even though he's quite good at it), but I have a hunch that the real draw is the technology. There are some fun things coming up not just in the chip multithreading arena, but also in things like proximity communication implementation and the DARPA work around optical interconnects.
Let the reorg season begin!
