Everyone has heard Schwartz is in as CEO, and I think thats great.  Read my entry "Who you gonna bet on" for why I think its great, even though I wrote it before the move was announced.  But a new announcement, has Fowler now running the entire x64 and sparc chip shops, and Yen now heading the storage (tek!) shop.  What does this mean?

I have had the great fortune to spend a couple of days with both Fowler and Yen, doing presentations at a SUN analyst conference this past February.  They are both very capable leaders, and very customer driven, while understanding the details of technology - a rarity.  SUN is fortunate to have a beevy of great leadership.

Over the past years, with the guidance of Andy Bechtolstien, the SPARC and X64 product lines have found a number of cost and risk savings common design and components - from chassis components, to circuit designs, to process and off shore (er, global) teams.

And Yen and Fowler each headed the Sparc and x64 groups (respectively) that merged a lot of these costs, risks, and designs.  So now, I expect more of the same, the storage group will benefit from a leader that is plugged into the chip-server group leader, and they can combine components and design elements, wringing further cost structure benefits (big dollar words for "savings") and risk reductions from the storage line thru the server line at SUN.

After all, a large component of storage systems these days is the embedded servers (controllers, etc) that control them.  The Storage tek folks now have Yen heading them up, and he knows how to lead a large group of engineers and hit dates, and how to navigate the SUN eco-system, he is an insider.  They will be able to leverage that to stay fleet, and not get bogged down in merger corporation hi-jinx.

I think its great.  You can't run the company as two camps.