The Pushback on Sun's Ticker Change to JAVA

[Sunite]

The Pushback on Sun's Ticker Change to JAVA
By Richard Koman
August 24, 2007 12:21PM

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While feedback on Sun's blog was mainly negative after Jonathan Schwartz announced that Sun would be changing its ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA, a few people approved. One wrote: "I am very happy that Sun has kept its name so it remembers where it started from, while taking a first step to capitalize one of the biggest brands."

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   Sun Microsystems
   Java
   Jonathan Schwartz

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   Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced on his blog Thursday that the company will change its stock ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA. Emphasizing the importance of branding, Schwartz wrote, "Java is a technology whose value is near infinite to the Internet, and a brand that's inseparably a part of Sun (and our profitability)."

Sun's old ticker, SUNW, stood for Stanford University Network Workstation. But the company has branched far beyond the workstation market, Schwartz said, and most people know of Sun, if at all, as the company that invented the Java programming language. "SUNW represents the past, and it's not without a nostalgic nod that we've decided to look ahead," he said.

Java is the Sun brand, Schwartz said, because that's the corporate logo that is all over the Internet. "Hundreds of millions of users see Java, and its ubiquitous logo, every day. On PCs, mobile phones, game consoles -- you name it, wherever the network travels, the odds are good Java's powering a portion of the experience. There's no doubt in my mind more people know Java than Sun Microsystems. There's similarly no doubt they know Java more than nearly any other brand on the Internet."

Rebranding Backlash

What do the readers of Schwartz's blog -- many of them Sun employees and dedicated customers -- think of the rebranding of the stock ticker? Not much.

"Call me unable to understand and cope with modern marketing. But I do not like it," wrote I.T. consultant Volker Brandt. "In the minds of many people, Java = slow." As Sun continually rebrands products, "the first thing we always have to do is to convince the customer that no, the desktop window manager is not written in Java, the directory server, etc. etc. is not interpreted and slow."

Investor J. Dabney called the move a "horrible" idea. "JAVA is more of a limiting factor than this illusion of infinite possibilities. SUNW allows for more possibles (sic) instead of being known as only the Java company. This is a sad day."

An anonymous user posting as "wtf" wrote this scathing critique: "It's a shame the marketing robots at Sun move forward with pointless endeavors such as this instead of fixing the mountain of serious and important marketing problems that have plagued Sun since its inception. This just confirms my hunch that Sun is going to go the way of DEC and shrivel up and die due to being unable to keep up with the times."

A Sign of Misplaced Priorities?

An anonymous post from "A Sun Employee" suggests Sun engineers see the move as yet another sign of incompetent management. The writer called on Schwartz to "fire California."

The company's headquarters in Silicon Valley is "a filter that catches and keeps people who can't get a job with better prospects," the employee wrote. "It is the most astonishing center of incompetence on the planet. Please put it out of its misery. ... If you want evidence that Sun is a filter that aggregates, collects, and cultivates incompetence, there is no better evidence than our own corporate marketing," the writer said.

While the feedback on the blog was overwhelmingly negative, a few people approved of the change. One reader wrote: "I am an I.T. professional and an investor. I am very happy that Sun has kept its name so it remembers where it started from, while taking a first step to capitalize one of the biggest brands."