Exclusive A pair of Sun's top Solaris executives have scurried right on out of the company, The Register can reveal.

Solaris VP Tom Goguen will leave the company for "personal and family reasons," and Sun's director of Solaris marketing Chris Ratcliffe has also departed for "family reasons." Those damn families sure do take a toll on the executive lifestyle.

Sun confirmed both moves, noting that Ratcliffe jumped ship in early February and that Goguen will stay on through the end of March. (We saw Goguen at Sun's analyst conference a couple of weeks back and now understand why he gave a nod but didn't stop to chat.)

"Tom is committed to leading the Solaris team through early March as we finalize the search to identify his successor," Sun said. "While it is always sad to see an employee of Tom's caliber depart, we wish him well as he begins a new chapter in his life."

Sun offered no substantial comment on Ratcliffe, who spent nine years hawking Solaris for the company.

Prior to Sun, Goguen led Apple's product marketing. He's from New Brunswick and, wouldn't you know it, an avid hockey player.

We banged on the ground over at Sun, but the Solaris moles refused to come out of their holes. What gives with these very senior level departures? Is there a Solaris x86 start-up in the works? ®

Related stories

Sun's Solaris success paves way for next-gen OS push (2 April 2007)
New OpenSolaris distribution for developers (9 March 2007)
Sun unsheathes mysterious multi-threaded NIC (21 February 2007)
HP trumpets HP-UX release and Itanium kit (15 February 2007)
Sun dims LAMP, AMPS up Solaris (14 February 2007)
Analyst reverses stance on Red Hat threat (14 February 2007)
Zero-day vuln hits Solaris (12 February 2007)
Sun gives workers the okay to 'feel good again' (6 February 2007)
HP smacks Sun with Solaris stick (6 February 2007)
Sun updates Solaris 10 (5 February 2007)