Ex-Sun CEO sees rosy future in health

Former Sun Microsystems chief executive Jonathan Schwartz has opted for the hard life of Silicon Valley startup rather than running another Fortune 500 mega corp into the ground.

Schwartz has blogged that he is teaming up with an old friend to form something called PictureOfHealth.com, and Schwartz will serve as chief executive.

Sun's last CEO isn't actually saying what the company will do, but saidy: "We're focusing on the intersection of innovation and public health."

Former Reg writer turned New York Times journo Ashlee Vance squeezed a tad more out of Schwartz, who talked vaguely about leveraging technology in pursuit of better health.

Apparently, Schwartz is using the new site to try and recruit people to whatever it is he's trying to build. "We want people that love math and what we're doing," he said.

Schwartz and Sun co-founder and chairman Scott McNealy sold Sun to Larry Ellison's Oracle in deal that closed earlier this year following a protracted European anti-trust probe.

Under McNealy, Sun's server business prospered from the early 2000s dot-com boom, but the company as a whole was unable to recover from the crash. Quarterly results stayed in or around the red while its Unix and Java middleware business lost market share despite Schwartz's insistence the web meant a mass market of developers and consumers that would see Sun prosper.

Schwartz left Sun in February, after the Oracle deal closed, with a $12m package. Since then, he's gone on to join the board of HR software company Taleo.

Joining Schwartz at PictureOfHealth is chief technology officer Walter Smith who started his career at Apple working on the Apple Newton and who also helped develop and build Internet Explorer, several versions of Windows, and MSN while employed at Microsoft. ®