A few bombs have dropped within Sun Microsystems" software division, as employees have departed to potentially greener pastures. The most prestigious name is Dr. Yousef Khalidi, distinguished engineer and chief technical officer for N1 products at Sun, who has defected to Microsoft. Khalidi was the brains behind Sun Cluster 3.0, much of Solaris 9 and was appointed to provide technical guidance to N1 - Sun"s software and hardware management package. A few months back, we have confirmed, Khalidi decided to join the dark side.
Khalidi"s defection to Microsoft comes as a huge shock given his apparent devotion to Sun. For years, he has extolled the virtues of Unix and Sun"s systems company approach to computing. He closely guarded company secrets but now is no doubt coughing them up to Sun"s bitter enemy. Khalidi joins former colleague Jim Hebert, Microsoft"s General Manager for the Windows Server Product Management Group but formerly in charge of Sun"s gwana-gwana mine.