Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy
Scott McNealy presenting an award to Steve Hoffman of Orbitz.com at JavaOne 2004
Born	November 13, 1954 (1954-11-13) (age 57) Columbus, Indiana
Known for	CEO and co-founder, Sun Microsystems
Website
Sun Microsystems Scott McNealy bio

Scott McNealy (born November 13, 1954) is an American business executive. He co-founded computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim.

Biography

Sun Microsystems, along with companies such as Silicon Graphics, 3Com, and Oracle Corporation, was part of a wave of successful startup companies in California's Silicon Valley during the early and mid-1980s. In 1982, McNealy, who was then manufacturing director at Onyx Systems,^[1][2] a vendor of microprocessor-based Unix systems, was approached by fellow Stanford alumnus Khosla to help provide the necessary organizational and business leadership for the fledgling company. The name "Sun" was derived from Bechtolsheim's original SUN (Stanford University Network) computer project, the SUN workstation.^[2]

In 1984, McNealy took over the CEO role from Khosla, who would ultimately leave the company in 1985. On April 24, 2006, McNealy stepped down as CEO after serving in that position for 22 years, and turned the job over to Jonathan Schwartz. McNealy is one of the few CEOs of a major corporation to have had a tenure of over twenty years.

Unlike most people who become involved in high technology industries, Scott McNealy did not come from the world of amateur programmers, hackers, and computer scientists. Instead, his background was in business, having earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Harvard and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to college, he graduated from Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where his father was in the automotive industry; most of his work experience prior to joining Sun was in automotive manufacturing.^[1][2]

Personal life

McNealy was born in Columbus, Indiana. He is married, and has four sons: Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout. He is known to be an enthusiastic ice hockey player and has been ranked as one of the best golfers in executive ranks; McNealy has self-deprecatingly referred to himself as a "golf major" who wound up running a high-tech business.^[3] He is a self-described libertarian.^[4] McNealy is the commissioner of the Alternative Golf Association (known as "Flogton").^[5]

Positions at Sun

• Chairman of the Board of Directors from April 2006 to January 2010
• Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer from April 2004 to April 2006
• Chairman of the Board of Directors, President and Chief Executive Officer from July 2002 to April 2004
• Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer from April 1999 to June 2002
• Chairman of the Board of Directors, President and Chief Executive Officer from December 1984 to April 1999
• President and Chief Operating Officer from February 1984 to December 1984
• Vice President of Operations from February 1982 to February 1984

Opinions

In 1999, Stephen Manes quoted McNealy as saying, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."^[6] Manes criticized the statement in his Full Disclosure column: "He's right on the facts, wrong on the attitude. ... Instead of 'getting over it', citizens need to demand clear rules on privacy, security, and confidentiality."^[6] The authors of Privacy in the 21st Century admitted, "While a shocking statement, there is an element of truth in it."^[7]

McNealy was an early advocate of the networked environment; his company's motto was "The Network is the Computer". At times, he has been known to be skeptical of products that do not integrate well with networked environments. One example McNealy has given involved the Apple iPod. As quoted in The Register, McNealy said, "There’s a pendulum thing where stuff is on the client side and then goes back into the network where it belongs. The answering machine put voicemail by the desk, and then it went back into the network. Your iPod is like your home answering machine. I guarantee you it will be hard to sell an iPod five or seven years from now when every cell phone can access your entire music library wherever you are."^[8]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Scott McNealy and Sun Microsystems", Center for Management Research, Case Code LDEN039, 2006 [1]
2. ^ ^{a b c} Brent Schlender (October 13, 1997). "JAVAMAN THE ADVENTURES OF SCOTT MCNEALY TODAY'S EPISODE HIS FIGHT TO SAVE THE WORLD WIDE WEB FROM THE EVIL EMPIRE". Fortune Magazine. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1997/10/13/232510/index.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-17. "They called their box the SUN--for Stanford University Network—workstation. The investor was intrigued; within a month, Sun Microsystems was born." 
3. ^ John Steinbreder; Narayanan, S.; Murad, M.A. (June 1998). "Handicapping America's CEOs". Golf Digest 7 (3): 215. doi:10.1159/000026045. "Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, once quipped: 'Am I a computer scientist? No, I'm a golf major.' A former captain of the Harvard golf team, he now plays to a 3.2 Handicap Index -- lowest of any top executive." 
4. ^ "On the Record: Scott McNealy". San Francisco Chronicle. September 14, 2003. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/14/BU141353.DTL&type=business. 
5. ^ Glier, Ray (8 May 2011). "Turning Golf Tradition on Its Head". The New York Times. http://onpar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/turning-golf-tradition-on-its-head/?partner=rss&emc=rss. 
6. ^ ^{a b} Manes, Stephen (2000-04-18). "Private Lives? Not Ours!". PC World 18 (6): 312. ISSN 0737-8939. http://www.pcworld.com/article/16331/private_lives_not_ours.html. Retrieved 2009-05-27. 
7. ^ Adams, Helen R.; Bocher, Robert F.; Gordon, Carol A.; Barry-Kessler, Elizabeth (2005). "The Future of Privacy in Libraries". Privacy in the 21st Century. Libraries Unlimited. p. 181. ISBN 978-1-59158-209-0. http://books.google.com/?id=d8j4fGlIrYsC. 
8. ^ Vance, Ashlee (January 12, 2006). "Sun and Apple almost merged three times - Bill Joy". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/12/sun_apple_snapple/. 

External links

• Scott McNealy on Twitter
• Scott McNealy's biography at the International Directory of Business Biographies
• Computer History Museum, 11-Jan-2006: Sun Founders Panel
• Scott McNealy at the Internet Movie Database
• Marketplace: "A different way of doing business", a radio interview with McNealy
• McNealy's foray into providing educational resources to school children worldwide
• USA Today story about McNealy and other CEOs who have played golf with Tiger Woods
• McNealy meets with a group of UK entrepreneurs (2008 video)
• McNealy to Ellison: How to duck death by open source

Preceded by Vinod Khosla	CEO of Sun Microsystems 1984–2006	Succeeded by Jonathan Schwartz
Preceded by Owen Brown	President of Sun Microsystems 1984–1999 2002–2004	Succeeded by Edward Zander
Preceded by Edward Zander		Succeeded by Jonathan Schwartz
Preceded by Vinod Khosla	Chairman of Sun Microsystems 1984–2010	Company acquired by Oracle Corporation

Persondata
Name	Macnealy, Scott
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Date of birth	November 13, 1954
Place of birth	Columbus, Indiana
Date of death
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