Do you think some of your staff are still using applications like Excel? Is there really an open-source equivalent of that yet?
In our finance group we have got the most intensive spreadsheet users, and for years we have been using what's available on the Sun Unix platform. And until Star Office that would have been Applixware.
For people who come into the company and are Excel, Word and Office users, we have actually got a whitepaper we take them through and help them migrate very quickly. In the company there are 30,000 thin clients which we run the business on. If you go to the finance group down at our HQ in Fleet, you'll find thin clients; you won't find traditional desktops running Excel. The macros you produce in StarOffice are more than capable of handling any spreadsheet mechanics we need to do in running our P&L. But on top of that the data is all held in a datacentre; I don't have critical financial data sitting on isolated desktops.
Would you go as far as saying Sun UK is completely Microsoft-free?
Oh, I would say we are but not through an edict. It's not down to a bullying memo. I am not obsessed by the Microsoft thing. I just want good technology. I am also serious about helping IBM. We have proven the integration of the email environment, the office environment, the browser, it's there. Let's go for it.
A Gartner analyst recently claimed that a lot of Sun's financial problems are down to insufficient attention to partnerships claiming your company is 'just not seen as a great partner' and is perceived as being 'dominating and not accommodating'. How do you respond to that kind of criticism?
Well, there are some interesting facts around this. Ninety percent of our business in the UK goes through a channel. And not just resellers: software vendors and system integrators. If you take that one very visible contract with the NHS, then it's a consortium led by BT.
I read a quote from the HP MD Steve Gill saying that he wants to lay the foundations to double HP's services business in the next two to three years. We are not going away here in the UK. We have got some great public sector traction. I have got some technology and innovation that he hasn't got. He has got some service capacity that I haven't got. I think it would be in customers' interests for us to be more open with each other in collaboration.
