Solaris chief John Loiacono is now executive vice president for software, taking over immediately from Jonathan Schwartz, who Sun promoted as president and COO.
Loiacono, aged 43 and who joined Sun in 1987, assumes overall responsibility for Java and Sun’s entire desktop and server strategy, along with retaining direction on Solaris.
Schwartz said Loiacono has the right energy and aggressiveness to take Sun’s software to the next level building on growth of Java, Solaris, developer tools and initiatives, and Java Enterprise System (JES).
Loiacono, though, must do without deputy vice president of developer tools and Java software Rich Green, who is resigning from Sun. Green spent years arguing against Microsoft, even testifying in the US government’s anti-trust case.
Green’s decision to leave leaked yesterday, following last week’s headline-grabbing $1.6bn legal settlement and technology alliance between Sun and Microsoft.
Sun was unable to comment on Green’s reasons for leaving.
However, Sun’s chief executive Scott McNealy last week gave an up-beat assessment of employees’ reaction to news of Sun’s Microsoft pact, saying: Sun employees are all high-fiving, saying this is so cool.
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The deal, though, was a shock to most, having been engineered by a handful of executives at Sun and Microsoft, and coming after 15 years of antagonism, during with McNealy repeatedly deriding Microsoft, Windows, .NET and Bill Gates personally.
Meanwhile, details of how Sun and Microsoft plan to liaise are slowly emerging. Sun’s executive vice president for marketing and strategy Mark Tolliver and Microsoft’s Hank V Hill are lead executives on the deal, with plans for an executive steering committee composed of members from both companies. Major problems that cannot be solved at the executive committee level will be referred up to the chief executive level.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
