Long
ago, Scott McNeally and his US-based company, Sun Microsystems
added some dazzle to the boring software ads by coining
slogans like The network is the computer
and We're the dot in dotcom. After a lull
they are back. With their latest mantra $100 per employee,
per year. It is not about pruning their operational
cost. Rather, it's about the cost to customer, which
they claim is much lower than what customers currently
incur. Sounds interesting, but McNeally & Co. may
find it difficult to convince customers and competitors.
Sun's
latest strategy, which promises to cut costs and redefine
the industry's business model, comes at a time when
the company is facing serious problems. Over the last
three years, after slowdown in technology spending globally,
Sun, lost much of its market share and customers to
its rivals. During this period, its revenues shrunk
badly and stock price had fallen by 90%. The maker of
the popular Java software is now about the same size
it was in 1999. Scott McNeally, the company's chief
architect and the only co-founder left is under immense
pressure to fix Sun's woes. However, that is a difficult
task.
The
company was depending solely on workstations till 1991.
When it revealed its intention of take on the big names
like IBM, HP, and Dell in servers (computers that handle
centralized computing tasks like running a database),
no one took them seriously. Yet, it proved itself. In
1995, when the company launched its Java programming
language, critics again doubted its, success. Yet, it
became the first ever Internet standard. When it made
its desire to dethrone the Microsoft both public and
critics laughed. Yet it succeeded to some extent; it
is said that it was Sun's tirade against the Redmond
tech that inspired the biggest antitrust lawsuit in
the history of the technology industry. "One way
or another, all those gambles helped make Sun one of
the biggest success storiesand McNeally one of the biggest
business. |
