Scott G. Mc Nealy

Cover Story -- The Best Managers

SCOTT G. McNEALY

People keep counting him out. But feisty SCOTT G. McNEALY, 42, has delivered on his high-risk strategy. The Sun Microsystems chief executive has positioned his Java programming language as the most serious challenger yet to Microsoft's software dominance. And sales of Sun's lucrative UNIX computers are booming, despite Microsoft's growing presence in corporate computing. The combination helped Sun blow away rivals for '97. Profits surged some 60% in the year ended in June, to $762 million, while sales were up 21%, to $8.6 billion.