Try reading that speech (http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20060425) in its entirety because it reveals some precious insights on private aspects of the character of both men that many outsiders (I, for one) may have never guessed.

Schwartz's salute touches on some of the most vibrant milestones in computing of the past 15 or 20 years. Those milestones had so much influence on the lives of many people, either working in the IT industry or not: the ascent of the Windows OS; the general, worldwide acceptance of Java; and the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

Looking back, Sun was the first company to connect a box of disks to a server using fibre links -- but it allowed other vendors to eat its storage lunch. Isn't it also ironic that the company that preached to everybody that "the network is the computer" did not extend the same leadership to storage, which is a major component of that network?

Maybe that's changing: A vibrant message came out on Tuesday from Sun's Network Computing 2006 event, declaring that the company is now (finally) looking at storage as a network resource. Here's what McNealy had to say (http://www.sun.com/nc/2006-0502/docs/mcnealy_transcript.pdf) on that:

"In the Participation Age, I believe storage is going to be a network resource. Instead of carrying it around in your briefcase, or your laptop, or on your iPod, it's going to be a network resource, it's going to be accessible anytime, anyplace, from any device, by anyone with the proper authentication and the proper identification."