Sun CEO Touts New Products, Services

Although the company lost more than $300 million in its last quarter and $846 million in its fiscal year 2006, he said the company is staging a comeback -- not just in market share, but also in profitability. The company on Wednesday also announced several new products, services, initiatives and an expanded partnership.

"I believe we're in what precedes a bubble, which is global build-out," he said.

Speaking at the company's annual New York City event, Schwartz said Sun is poised to benefit from positive technology trends and recover from the dot.com bust. Sun recently passed Dell to rank third for server market share, according to Gartner. Sun was among the most injured IT companies during the bust, suffering a dramatic drop in shares from about $64 in 2000 to less than $5 last week.

Marking his 114th day as CEO, Schwartz said that the company would expand in the server, software, services and storage markets, while focusing on where those areas intersect.

He said that, with 3.5 billion Java-enabled mobile devices around the world, Sun stands to benefit from the fact that most people in the world today will have their first Internet experience through a mobile device.

While Sun battles competitors IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard for market share, Schwartz said those competitors are actually offering Sun opportunities. Since Sun introduced open Solaris 10, the company has sold 5.9 million new licenses. Schwartz said that 70 percent of the licenses are being used with IBM, Dell and HP hardware.

The company will continue to focus on financial, telecommunications, media and entertainment industries, as well as others that look at information technology as something that helps drive value and business opportunities, rather than a cost to cut, he said.

Sun's latest announcements include several new Sun Fire UltraSPARC servers, the V125, V215, V245, V445, the Sun Ultra 25 Workstation, the Netra CP3060 Ultra SPARC T1 ATCA Blade and the Netra T2000 Server. For storage, the company announced the Sun StorageTek T10000 Crypto Ready Tape Drive, the Crypto Key Management Station and the Virtual Tape Library Plus. The company also announced Solaris Trusted Extensions and Sun Java System Identity Manager 7.0.

Schwartz also reiterated that the company will shift gears and offer discounted or free hardware for extended service plans, rather than offering free service for hardware purchases.

Sun also announced that it would expand its partnership with Accenture. Engineers from both companies will work together at a new innovation center to develop secure, custom Identity-enabled and SOA-based solutions.

Accenture Chief Technology Officer Don Ripper said during the event that his company brings to the table the ability to improve security and productivity.