Sun Microsytems Inc CEO Scott McNealy yesterday told companies in Paris to create their own portal rather than have key core communities come to them via Yahoo only minutes after Yahoo CEO Tom Koogle had told them how he makes money with a platform built around net surfers’ navigation needs.
Admittedly, McNealy did so via a satellite link from Silicon Valley, while Koogle had appeared live at the IDC’s European IT Forum in the French capital, although one would imagine that he might have known he would be following the Yahoo boss. As it was, he told his audience more than once that: You can do it, not Yahoo! advising them to build a sticky portal for their companies and offering the services of Sun’s new .com consulting group to help them. Unfortunately Koogle left the auditorium straight after his presentation, so his reaction to McNealy’s words was unavailable.
McNealy also cited Sun’s own experience in this context, creating a portal aimed at attracting and retaining the three communities the company wants to see coming back to its site time and again. These are: software developers and content writers; system administrators who are running Sun servers; and equipment designers who are embedding Java into their devices, such as automakers, set-top box manufacturers and producers of white goods, to name but a few. The Sun portal has features that enhance the company’s relationship to these target audiences, such as bug reports and product information, but also has ones designed to increase its ‘stickiness’, such as e-mail and auctions he said.
As usual with McNealy, there were the pot shots at Microsoft, including the prediction that W2K [Windows 2000] will be worse than Y2K. Predicting the end of the shrink-wrap software for sale model, McNealy said a quarter of a million people had downloaded free Star software in the first week that Sun had begun offering its recently acquired Office suite. Within a few months, he went on, the company will be offering a free portal version for ISPs, carriers and the like, and will be giving the source code to Sun communities to guarantee further proliferation.
There were also jibes at other IT industry players. Reminded that, despite his predictions that the days of the PC were numbered as thin clients take over the universe, lots of manufacturers continue to make money producing these machines. Compaq made money for a while, didn’t they? he said.
