Scott McNealy came to New York last week for a product announcement, not a memorial service.
Yet before the audience of customers, industry analysts and journalists was told of Sun Microsystems' new computers last Tuesday, McNealy -- Sun's chairman and chief executive -- spoke briefly of Philip Rosenzweig. A software senior engineer and manager, Rosenzweig, 47, had worked for Sun for more than a decade. His only mistake, McNealy said, was that "he got on the wrong airplane," American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston on the morning of Sept. 11. As McNealy mentioned Rosenzweig's surviving wife and two children by name, his voice broke and he turned aside and sobbed. "I know thousands of people are lost," he said, "but it's so personal."
McNealy recovered quickly, and after a moment's silence in honor of Rosenzweig, he returned to computers once more. As Sun's president, Edward J. Zander, who next took the stage, explained, "We need to get back to business."
For Sun and companies across the nation, that promises to be a struggle economically as well as emotionally. In the vast, diverse US$10 trillion economy of the US, there is no such thing as a truly representative company. But Sun, an innovative stalwart of the computer industry, was one of the companies that fueled the technology-led economic boom of the 1990s, and this year Sun has been leading the way again -- downward, as its business eroded abruptly and alarmingly while the economy veered toward recession, even before Sept. 11.
Sun's experience in the last few weeks, and the challenges it is now facing, are shared by much of the Corporate US. The landscape of business has been shaken, as if by an earthquake, though one of uncertain force. Consumer confidence and business investment have fallen sharply, but the outlook depends much on what political and military -- and possibly terrorist -- actions lie ahead. The virtual halt of business activity in the week immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has passed, and companies and workers are indeed getting back to business. Still, it is by no means business as usual.
Hurt -- not devastated
Like many companies, Sun has been hurt by the tragedy, but not devastated. Its New York offices occupied the 25th and 26th floors of the south tower of the World Trade Center, and all of its 346 New York employees got out safely. Sun is also a major supplier of technology to the financial industry, including firms like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney, all of whom had offices that were destroyed or damaged.
So Sun's suddenly displaced workers dusted themselves off, then scrambled to get Wall Street up and trading again. At times, the company's sales and technical managers even drove trucks filled with replacement computers to clients trying to relocate and revive their operations. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, the New York product introduction -- eventually held last week at the Hudson Theater in midtown Manhattan -- had been scrapped. Sun had arranged to move the event to San Francisco. But after reflection, and prodded by Zander, a Brooklyn native, the Sun marketing team was persuaded to go to New York after all -- partly by leasing three private jets so that the staff, fearful for its security, would not have to fly on commercial airlines.
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