Microsoft Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Steve Ballmer and Sun Microsystems Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy will host an event in mid-May to detail progress the companies have made since the signing of a 10-year collaboration agreement last year. The event will be the first time for the CEOs of both companies to publicly discuss their collaboration since the deal was closed in April 2004.
Users and analysts have criticized the companies saying the collaboration, which is intended to focus on interoperability, has not resulted in many tangible results. "Scott and I are going to do sort of a state of the union report [on] where we have gotten in a few weeks," Ballmer said in a presentation at a Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) event on Wednesday. A Sun spokeswoman on Thursday confirmed that an event is being planned for mid-May. It will be a physical event, as opposed to a conference call or webcast, that will be open to media and analysts, she said.