Scott McNealy Says Goodbye to Sun
Scott McNealy is one of the legendary characters of Silicon Valley. It is jarring to read his goodbye note to Sun Microsystems employees as Oracle is poised to complete its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun. In the email to Sun employees, McNealy said, “Thanks for a great 28 years.”
"This combination has the potential to put Sun, its people and its technology at the centre of yet another industry- and game-changing inflection point," he wrote.
"The opportunity is well documented and articulated by [Oracle chief executive] Larry [Ellison] and the Oracle folks. Not much I can add on this score. This is a very powerful merger. And way better than some of the alternatives we were facing."
“The cost isn’t in buying the pieces,” Lawrence J. Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “The cost is in the labor of assembling them and making them work.”
On Wednesday, Oracle will hold an event at its Silicon Valley headquarters where executives from the company will talk in detail about the plans for Sun Microsystems.
Mr. Ellison said that in the next few months, Oracle planned to lay off fewer than 2,000 people, while hiring more than 2,000 people in engineering, sales and other roles. He did not rule out that additional layoffs might occur later.
Mr. Ellison added that he expected Sun’s chief executive, Jonathan I. Schwartz, to resign and that he hoped that Scott G. McNealy, Sun’s co-founder and chairman, would stay on at Oracle, although his title and duties were not clear.
“We need to have more conversations about his role,” Mr. Ellison said.
Oracle’s purchase of Sun, which European regulators approved last week after months of scrutiny, stands out as the most game-changing corporate technology play made during the economic downturn, according to industry analysts.
“It’s the most significant deal of the decade,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with Gabriel Consulting. “Oracle has a shot here to change the rules of the industry and usher in a new era.”
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