Sun's new MD to focus on green IT and open source

Sun Microsystems has appointed Duncan Bennet as its new Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand. Bennet told ZDNet.com.au that open source, and green datacentres were the future for Sun.

Duncan Bennet, managing director for Sun Microsystems in Australia and New Zealand.

Bennet came to Sun through its Forte Software acquisition in 1999, and has been involved in several US start-ups including Pyramid Technology, Prime Computer and Forte Software.

When asked about the future direction of Sun, Bennet highlighted two key areas. "One area is open source, we will be very focused on that," Bennet said, noting that there had now been 12 million downloads of Solaris, Sun's open source operating system.

Bennet said that Sun's recent acquisition of MySQL would also drive the company further into open source.

Bennet also highlighted green IT as a central concern for Sun: "We have certainly seen a lot of issues around people attempting to grow their datacentres and the power and cooling associated with that.".