I was poking around looking for an explanation for today’s slide in Sun Microsystems (JAVA) shares when I read a fairly astonishing AP piece from a couple of days ago on the pay package paid in the June 2008 fiscal year to CEO Jonathan Schwartz. It turns out that in fiscal 2008 Schwartz was paid $11 million, a 44 percent raise over his fiscal 2007 compensation package. That includes his $1 million salary, a bonus of $1.04 million, 66,000 restricted stock units and options on 500,000 shares. Schwartz also received $52,000 for a car and driver–i.e., he gets a chauffeur–to transport him to work for what the company describes in an SEC filing as “security and efficiency reasons.”

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Sun Microsystems is getting ready to talk about its cloud computing efforts, including some kind of a deal with Amazon for its Amazon Web Services, according to CEO Jonathan Schwartz, who delivered a short keynote at Startup Camp in San Francisco. Startup Camp is an adjunct event to the JavaOne Conference that kicks off later this week.

Following his keynote, I got onstage with Schwartz and asked him a few questions. I queried him about Sun and its cloud computing efforts, given that it was nearly a decade ago that then-Sun CEO Scott McNealy started talking about how “the network is the computer.” In response, Schwartz said they have some interesting news coming out later this week. He refused to give the details, but he seemed pretty excited.

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