Baratz swaps place in the Sun for investment bank

Alan Baratz, who two months ago was appointed president of Sun's software division, is leaving to go to Warburg Pincus & Co, the private investment bankers, in mid-August where he will be managing director of an affiliate. Ed Zander, Sun's president and COO said that Jon Kannegaard will assume Baritz' role on an acting basis, and that Sun will immediately seek a replacement for Baritz. Previously, Baratz was president of the Java Platform division. He played a leading role in the development of Solaris, and oversaw the development of Java, Jini and various developer tools. Recently, Baratz was occupied in the standardisation of Java. There was speculation from a Giga analyst that there had been an internal dispute at Sun, but this seems unlikely. Baritz's move is seen as a career change, rather than a job change. Warburg is a relative rarity in New York: a long-term player content to wait at least five years before getting twitchy about its investments. It has some $12 billion under management, and includes in its portfolio holdings in BEA Systems and Veritas. ®