In Focus

Scott McNealy: Links to Sun

As I sit here in Scottsdale, Arizona, all I can think about is how upset my husband is that that I'm here. It's not because I left him with all four children, nor that I left him without an ounce of milk in the fridge, nor that I won't be home until Sunday. He's upset because I'm in the golfing capital of the U.S. If there is one thing that excites my husband more than his hockey career, it's golf. Hmmmm. sounds like someone else I know; Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems (SUNW). (Okay, I really don't know him, have never met him, nor can I even pretend to be his friend. But I do know he loves golf.)

A few years ago Golf magazine listed Scott McNealy as the lowest handicapped CEO golfer of the Fortune 500 companies. (If you don't know golf, this is a good thing.) Scott decided to call up the number two man, Jack Welch, GE's CEO (and CEO of the Century), to see if he wanted a show-down. Scott brought the trophy, Welch won, and their friendship and the Welch Cup tradition began. Scott now sits on the board at GE and is mostly responsible for the technology turn-around at the Chick-held company. As women we could go into all kinds of psychological dissections of the caveman and his need to swing a club, his desire to chase a ball or his competition with his neighbor to become the King of Hill. Just what is it that drives these grown men to the course for hours on end to perfect their game? Is it ego? Is it passion? Is it their desire to be number one? Do the greatest golfers bring these characteristics to other areas of their life? In the case of Mr. Scott McNealy, 45, it's the core of who he is.

Scott is driven, and not just with the Big Bertha Welch gave him years ago. McNealy grew up in Bloomfield, Michigan, graduated from Harvard with a BA in Economics, and went on to get his MBA from Stanford. It was at Stanford that he and some of his buddies started SUN, an acronym for Stanford University Network. Since 1982, he has taken Sun from a couple of connected computers to a fourteen-billion-dollar company. (I can't even fathom a billion dollars and his company turns around fourteen of them.) He brings his competitive nature to the corporate world. At six feet and inches, he is (and has been) a huge thorn in Microsoft's side. For years he has voiced his "out of bounds" comments Bill Gates' way, never sugar-coating his opinion that Microsoft's game is unfair play. But even with these corporate confrontations, Sun Microsystems has become the leading global supplier of network computing solutions, yards ahead of competitors Hewlett-Packard and IBM. They employ almost 30,000 people worldwide, with 15,000 of those in the San Francisco Bay area.

McNealy's goal from the get-go wasn't to become the corporate icon he now is. His father was the vice chairman of American Motors Corporation, but Scott dreamed of owning a machine shop, making enough money to retire, and then pursuing his passion, golf. (Men crack me up. Can you just picture us at our high school graduation saying something like, "What I'd really like to do is get married, have children, and make enough money to retire. Then I'd like to pursue what I really love, golf." Don't laugh, my husband is still saying it.) But these guys aren't stupid. McNealy scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT test, which got him into his father's alma mater, Harvard, which eventually led to Stanford's business school. (Not the easiest of business schools to get into in this country.)

For years Sun's running theme was, "The Network is the Computer," focusing on network connectivity, but in 1995 Sun introduced Java. It's the first software platform to allow any application to work with any operating system. (This is what irritated Mr. Gates; his dominance was beginning to slide.) Sun is now "the language" of the internet, and it moves Sun into their next phase, "The Dot-Com home." Soon everything from your dishwasher to your cell phone will be connected, all talking to each other using Java. Now you'd think that the CEO of the "Dot-Com home" company would have something really cool in his own home, like a video screen to talk to his wife Susan or three boys from the car. But nope! According to Scott, the neatest thing in his home is the bowling alley with the fire pole that takes him down to the floor beneath. What is it with men and their games?

My husband, Phil, has met Scott, at a hockey game. (Hockey is also one of Scott's passions, and he plays in a men's league. Surprise, surprise.) My husband sat with him during a San Jose Sharks/Calgary Flames game as Phil was out with a concussion. Phil thought he was a great guy, but then again, why wouldn't he? They talked about golf.