"Who am I protecting?" he asked. "Reuters customers.".

Just like managers now all have cell phones and e-mail accounts, they also will have blogs, he said. "Five years from now, the global manager will have a blog."

Community-building is important for managers, he said. Sun, for example, must cope with its software being built in 28 countries spanning nine time zones. "You"ve got to figure out how to manage a community," he said.

Fielding a question about Sun"s $4.1 billion acquisition of StorageTek, Schwartz said the purchase gives Sun a presence in storage. Companies always will have a need to store their data in-house, even if they outsource computing needs, Schwartz said.

Schwartz rejected the contention by an audience member that Sun is not a good partner to align with and he cited the company"s relationships with vendors such as Oracle and IBM. "I find it curious for you to assume that Sun was never a great alliance partner," he said.

What has been tough is trying to figure out how to make a small company become a big company, Schwartz said. "On the Internet, no one can corner the market," Schwartz said.