McNealy in combat mode at JavaOne

Sun Microsystems chairman and chief executive Scott McNealy told the JavaOne developer conference that Java is everywhere and Sun is here to stay.

McNealy claimed that there are now four million Java developers and 550 Java user groups worldwide, and that Java-enabled content now powers over seven million web pages.

The technology is found on more than 650 million desktops, he added, and has been deployed for mobile applications by telcos. And 60 per cent of global PC desktops ship with the most current version of Java.

McNealy explained that another indication was the dramatic growth in attendance at the JavaOne conference, and a 30 per cent growth to over four million developers since last year.

"Java is everywhere and you cannot get away from it," he said. "But some ask whether Sun is the right company to run the Java community."

He responded by insisting that a product like Java needed a benevolent steward to avoid anarchy. Sun had done a pretty good job, stated McNealy, even though it had not been free of mistakes.

He also insisted that Sun remains a strong company. "Some ask: are we going to make it? We're rock solid," he said.

"We have $7.5bn in cash, we are well capitalised, we have an unbelievable [intellectual property] and a great product line."

McNealy pointed to the past three quarters in which Sun server unit volumes had grown 22 per cent year-on-year.

Explaining why this was not yet reflected in profitability, he said: "[Sun] has very aggressive pricing, so the market doesn't get it yet."

McNealy also outlined a new, as yet unnamed, Opteron system which he described as the equivalent of 32 Intel Xeons.

"This will give a huge order of magnitude performance boost," he claimed, hinting that all Sun's processors would soon be using the new multi-threaded architecture.