Scott McNealy
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Scott McNealy (born November 13, 1954 in Columbus, Indiana) is the well-known Chairman of Sun Microsystems, the computer technology company he co-founded in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim. In 1984, McNealy took over the CEO role from co-founder Vinod Khosla, who would ultimately leave the company in 1985. On 24 April 2006, McNealy stepped down as CEO after serving in that position for 22 years, and turned the job over to Jonathan Schwartz. Sun Microsystems, along with companies such as Silicon Graphics, 3COM, and Oracle Corporation, was part of a wave of successful startup companies in California's Silicon Valley during the early and mid-1980s. He is a self-described libertarian. [1]
Unlike most people involved in high technology industries, Scott McNealy did not come from the world of amateur programmers, hackers, and computer scientists. Instead, his background is from the business end, having graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. He received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. At Stanford, McNealy met Khosla, Joy, and Bechtolsheim and helped provide the necessary organizational and business leadership for the fledgling Sun Microsystems ("Sun" was derived from Stanford University Network). McNealy is one of the few CEOs of a major corporation to have had a tenure of over twenty years.
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[edit] Personal life
McNealy is married, and has four sons: Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout. He enjoys playing ice hockey and golf, something that is frequently brought up during interviews; McNealy has self-deprecatingly referred to himself as a "golf major" who wound up running a high-tech business.
[edit] Track record
- Chairman of the Board of Directors since April 2006
- Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer from April 2004 to April 2006
- Chairman of the Board of Directors, President and Chief Executive Officer from July 2002 to April 2004
- Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer from April 1999 to June 2002
- Chairman of the Board of Directors, President and Chief Executive Officer from December 1984 to April 1999
- President and Chief Operating Officer from February 1984 to December 1984
- Vice President of Operations from February 1982 to February 1984.
[edit] Sun's motto: "The Network is the Computer"
McNealy was an early advocate of the networked environment. At times, he has been known to be skeptical of products that do not integrate well with networked environments.
A recent example of McNealy's criticism was the Apple iPod. According to The Register, a United Kingdom-based technology magazine, McNealy said, "There's a pendulum thing where stuff is on the client side and then goes back into the network where it belongs", the magazine quoted him as saying. "The answering machine put voicemail by the desk, and then it went back into the network." He continued, "Your iPod is like your home answering machine. I guarantee you it will be hard to sell an iPod five or seven years from now when every cell phone can access your entire music library wherever you are."
The Register offered its own rejoinder to McNealy's comment in the same article: "Well, sure. Unless your iPod is your cell phone."[2]
[edit] References
- ^ On the Record: Scott McNealy. San Francisco Chronicle (September 14, 2003).
- ^ Vance, Ashlee (January 12, 2006). Sun and Apple almost merged three times – Bill Joy. The Register.
[edit] External links
- Sun Microsystems Executive Perspectives
- Sun Microsystems Official Scott McNealy bio
- Scott McNealy's biography at the International Directory of Business Biographies
- Computer History Museum, 11-Jan-2006: Sun Founders Panel
- Sun Feature Story: The Fab Four Reunites (webcast of the event)
- Scott McNealy at the Internet Movie Database
- Marketplace: "A different way of doing business"—A radio interview with Scott McNealy, broadcast on 9 October 2006.
- Scott McNealy's foray into providing educational resources to school children wordwide
