Schwartz's haircut feels the heat

JONATHAN SCHWARTZ has a lot on his plate, what with being charged with turning the ship around at Sun, replacing a Silicon Valley icon, rebuilding the company's storage strategy and pressure to open-source Java. And now even his hair is under threat.

The San Francisco Chronicle is asking the question, that secretly we have all been pondering ever since we saw it swinging into the room seconds before Schwartz made his entrance on the big stage. That's his ponytail, obviously.

Forgive the excerpt but, really, every word counts on this one.

"Now that he's the big cheese at Sun Microsystems, should newly appointed CEO Jonathan Schwartz lose the ponytail?

"Oh, god, yes," said San Francisco public relations executive Joelle Kenealey. "I think, because the company is in the state it is in, does it instill confidence to have a guy with a long ponytail running the company?"

Referring to Google's CEO, who sports a more conventional executive haircut, she added, "Who instills more confidence in you -- Eric Schmidt or Jonathan Schwartz?"

That's probably not a good question to put to customers and staff who experienced Schmidt's reign at Novell but let's focus on the big question of the moment - should Schwartz keep the Davy Crockett hat or not?

The truth is, a Willie Nelson-style ponytail didn't hurt Ted Waitt when he ran Gateway 2000 in its golden run, and anyhow, a ponytail at Sun is pretty much uniform the way that a button-down shirt and chinos is at Microsoft, or a navy suit and white shirt were at EDS when Ross Perot ran the show.

You keep it, Jonathan, you're looking good from where we stand with a cool breeze wafting our bare crowns on this fine day in London.

Meanwhile, The INQUIRER welcomes submissions of great IT haircuts. They don't have to be famous, just… different. The winner will get a prize of something I find in my study over the weekend. [I dread to speculate. Ed.] µ