iversified computer companies, behind IBM, HP and Compaq. Its key Unix server market could be challenged by the Wintel alliance. Microsoft is expected to release a new version of its Windows NT operating system, Windows 2000, next year and Intel plans its fastest chip yet a year later. Equal parts of bold strategy and pragmatism, savvy management and heavy investments in research and development have pushed Sun's position, and McNealy's cockiness, to its current heights. John Swainson, general manager of one of IBM's software divisions, is more blunt: "It just defies the facts," he says. "IBM has more patents in a year than Sun has had in its history."He has assembled a well-regarded executive management team that also includes Mike Lehman, Sun's chief financial officer, and Bill Raduchel, chief strategy officer. The four executives have spent a combined 48 years at the 16-year-old company-an unusual longevity in management that in part explains Sun's allegiance to its own technology. McNealy has created an engineering-driven company. Among its 27,000 workers, Sun counts many technology wizards who are considered among the best in Silicon Valley, and McNealy gives them free rein to innovate.Its most prominent figures include Sun co-founder Bill Joy, who joined the executive management team Friday as chief scientist. While in graduate school at the University of California-Berkeley, Joy developed much of the Unix operating system that has become the foundation for the software that powers Sun's computers. For the past few years, Joy has led a small team of scientists in Aspen, Colo., far away from the company's product divisions. This summer, the group's research paid off, giving Sun its latest technology breakthrough: Jini, a promising technology that lets computers and appliances connect to a network as simply as a telephone plugs into the wall.A few years earlier, James Gosling, a vice president and Sun fellow, also was given time aw...
