Chief executive officer, Sun Microsystems ADDRESS 901 San Antonio
Road, Palo Alto, Calif. AGE 44 NET WORTH $1.75 million BIO He
mugged in a superhero's cape on the cover of Fortune in October
1997. The message: Javaman has arrived to save us all from the
evil specter of Microsoft. McNealy's singular goal of trumping
Bill Gates has taken many forms, from promoting Java--an Internet
programming language--as a way to weaken Microsoft's market
dominance to telling the Senate that Gates is "the most dangerous
and powerful industrialist of our age." McNealy's ability to
trade on the fears of his neighbors in Silicon Valley has
catapulted him from CEO of a little-known company that creates
workstations for engineers to Valley standard bearer. And his
early appreciation for the potential of networking, ahead of
Microsoft and just about everyone else in the game, spurred Sun's
growth: sales rose 21% in 1997. 1998 POWER PLAY Sun emerged this
year as the No. 1 unix server maker, jumping ahead of IBM and
Hewlett-Packard. In July the company bought application
server-software maker NetDynamics, proving it's serious about
becoming a major player in the software game too. PLACE YOUR BETS Even Gates concedes that unix will be around for the long haul,
and Intel's new processor will rely on it. As dominant provider
of that technology, Sun is poised to profit from its place. So
will anyone who buys this stock, say analysts.
