Sun shines as toothsome McNealy uses bottom word

As widely expected, at least here at The Register, Scott McNealy's firm Sun Microsystems (ticker SUNW) had a storming quarter, managing to show a 94 per cent net profit on vastly increased sales of its non-Intel servers. The figures, which buck quite a few server trends, caused McNealy to utter the immortal words: "We kicked some serious bottom". Sun reported a net profit of $508 million in its quarter, a 94 per cent rise year on year, but its share price fell on Wall Street, still afflicted by concerns about the bubble.com phenomenon. Sun's good figures were fuelled because it has cut prices but more importantly persuaded the corporate world that its server technology has headroom, or as the industry prefers to describe it, scalability. Several major corporate wins helped Sun's results, but Scott McNealy cautioned its shareholders that they should not expect the next quarter to scale the same, Icarus-like, heights. He did, however, say that growth continued to be healthy in its mainstream server business. ®