Sun Micros' John Gage Goes Green

Sun Microsystems' fifth employee has left the company to join his friends at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and research green technology. It's a bittersweet day.If you've ever been to a JavaOne or similar Sun event, Gage was the one who kept things calm and put things in perspective. As a reporter who has covered Sun for a bit, Gage was the guy who made sense of it all. He saw through the marketing-speak and really told it as it was.

"We're here to connect with each other," Gage told a conference room full of Java developers a couple of years ago. "Forget all of this software mumbo jumbo, I want you to meet up with at least three people who are not in your field of expertise. You might just come up with a really great idea."

John was like that.

But John, Sun's former chief researcher, also is a pragmatist and he knows that talking the talk isn't the solution.

"Everything we built at Sun sucks power," Gage told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview. "We've got to make a difference in where power comes from and how it's used."

So the remedy? Gage revealed Monday to a few media types that he is leaving Sun to join Kleiner Perkins and bolster the VC's investments in green technology. Gage joins Bill Joy as another Sun original at the Silicon Valley firm.

Apparently, Gage got the gig at Kleiner Perkins bumping into former Vice President Al Gore. The two got to talking about adding China and India to Gore's famous slideshow -- and a little while later, Gage was asked to expand on his ideas.

Gage officially retired from Sun on June 1. The company has been reorganizing its sales people of late to focus more on overseas markets. I don't know if the two events are related, but a Sun spokesperson told the Chron that Gage will not be replaced at Sun because "he is irreplaceable."

I'd agree to that.