As reported, the realignment of the Sun Microsystems Inc planets following the joining of Sun Technology Enterprises with SunSoft Inc will take effect after the end of the company’s financial year – the end of June. One organisation, SunSoft, will embrace all the former software and Sun Technology units and all planet names will be phased out by then. SunPics – Sun’s hardware and software printer arm – will be divided between SunSoft and Sun Microsystems Computer Corp, details of which are due by the end of the month. The result will be a single worldwide sales, support and service organisation for the entire SunSoft product line; a single applications and market development organisation; a number of independent business units that will focus on developing, marketing and supporting specific software technologies; and finance, billing, corporate development, planning, operations and corporate communications support organisations. SunSoft boss Ed Zander’s will have direct reports from four areas. First is a worldwide field operations unit for sales, support, service, marketing and channels headed by vice-president Dave Walker. Mary Anderson is named as director of a second report – applications and market development with responsibility for the Catalyst independent software vendor programme, independent software vendor engineering, technology evangelism, SunSoft Press and CDware, plus a corporate communications group responsible for all public relations, advertising, sales promotion, trade shows, marketing services and events. The third set of reports are independent business units, while the fourth are responsible for the development, marketing and support of specific software core competencies such as Solaris, networking, developer products, enterprise management products and personal computer desktop integration products. Solaris product definition, marketing, positioning, release, testing and localisation plus specific Sparc, iAPX-86 and PowerPC engineering and support is headed by vice-president and general manager Janpieter Scheerder. The Interactive Unix group will report to this group.
Multimedia
Jim Billmaier will run networking products, with responsibility for wide-area networks (Open Network Computing+/Network File System, Distributed Computing Environment, X.25, X.400, X.500), personal computer local network networking (PC-NFS, Solarnet, Netware, for example) and IBM Corp (3270, Systems Network Architecture) and Digital Equipment Corp communications. Developer products include SparcWorks and ProWorks, TeamWare, Workshop, languages and development kits. The group is run by vice-president and general manager Jon Kannegaard. Enterprise management products – SunNet Manager, system administration technology and commercial data centre products (high availability, back-up, for example) will be headed by former SunConnect boss, now vice-president and general manager, Denis Yaro in Grenoble, France. SunSelect boss Dave Power is to run the personal computer desktop integration unit as vice-president and general manager. Products here include Wabi, Mac Wabi, Mac emulation and MS-DOS technologies. Steve Mackay will head a further report – software technology development – responsible for delivering core Solaris components, including the operating system, windows, graphics, based on requirements from the independent business units. The group will also develop and market the core operating system, the Common Desktop Environment, ToolTalk, Distributed Objects Everywhere and Live! for the worldwide field operation. Mackay’s organisation will incubate new business units being grown for multimedia and object oriented technology, and SunSolutions and ShowMe will report to it.
