Sun slashes (another) 3,000 jobs

Sun Microsystems doesn't want to talk to anyone anymore unless it has permission from Oracle, but the Securities and Exchange Commission has funny rules about disclosure that mean it has to tell investors - the ones who still own Sun's shares - what it is up to. And this afternoon, after Wall Street closed, Sun filed a report …

[Colonel Zander]

What gives with the EU?

I don't get how it is taking them this long to pass judgment on the Oracle/Sun merger. I also don't get the importance of the MySQL issue. Is it now a vital human right to have access to a free relational database? Also, and tell me if I'm wrong, isn't MySQL still covered by a public license? Meaning that anyone can still use it and others can continue to develop it in whatever way they see fit - no matter what Oracle may or may not decide to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is not "arms length" from Sun

The feds should investigate Oracle. Oracle has already taken over Sun. There are three "unofficial" calls per week with Oracle. Everyone has been interviewed to determine the new organization. As soon as the EU approves this the new organization and every single person will be put into the new organization the next day. The dedicated engineers from Sun Oracle has demanded, the unofficial firing of Schwartz (he does not even come into the office anymore), the changing of the development strategy and projects is just not right. Oracle is going to lay off 10,000 people in the first six month so they get to the Non-GAAP goal. All that will be left of Sun is the x86 products, the T2+ but that will be increasingly outsourced, and dramatic price increases for Solaris support. The Fujitsu M-class systems are also history. Larry ignored them on purpose last week as Fujitsu has pulled the 45nm chip. Just like USV was killed now add SPARC64 to the list. Sun software will be pretty much be history. Anyone that can get a job is leaving as soon as they can. This 3,000 RIF is just the beginning and was pushed by Oracle as Larry cannot wait to make Sun into a cash cow. The sales force was also decimated as 50% of the sellers were let go in March.

Oracle is destroying Sun and can walk away from the deal and it wont cost them a dime, only Sun has the walk away penalty.

Anti-trust laws are supposed to prevent this carnage, but everyone at Sun is too frightened to say anything

[David Halko]

There is another way to earn $1.5bn...

Author writes, "And once Oracle does acquire Sun, you can bet the numbers will get even lower. There is no other way for Oracle to extract $1.5bn in operating earnings from Sun in the first full year of the deal"

Unless Oracle believes their position as an approved vendor on all of the existing Oracle customers will be good enough to sell new SPARC or Intel iron in those companies... especially with the Exadata2 systems.

After all, no one else has released any real Flash based systems yet, nor had they released any real competing operating system enhancements to compete with Flash added to ZFS. (The closest company was Apple, but they de-released their ZFS port, just before the last MacOSX release!)

I think Oracle thinks they will be able to ride Flash on Sun Intel/Solaris ZFS into next year!

The benchmarks seem to indicate it...

[amanfromMars 1]

PreCogniscent Plays for the Fast Track to XSSuccess

"Remember, Oracle is going to invest more in Sun technology than Sun did. That may not be all that hard, once this is over."

And whenever Sun technology is inextricably linked to Personnel Intellectual Property and Share Networking, it will make for an interesting showdown/virtual shootout with rivals in the Oracling Field of HyperVision. ..... Virtual Wizardry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Antitrust Police

The European Commission's antitrust police might be the last great hope of humankind to save it from falling into the neo-feudal web of multi-national conglomerate overlords. Certainly, the shills in the U.S. administration, congress and judiciary are not up to the task. GO EC!

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting fed-up!

Think of the poor sods left at Sun, never knowing if the axe is going to fall on you!

How many 'restructures' can we have? When will they get it right?

If I were a younger man.......

... but then I might just retire and head into the SUNSet!!!!

[Charlie Clark]

Pink slips sooner or later

Quite right to point out that Sun is the source of its own misfortune. The EU's investigation is just a convenient smokescreen. As sorry as I am for those losing their jobs, they probably know that if the deal was already done it would be uncle Larry "letting them go". Oracle wants Sun's customer base, IP and product portfolio and probably hopes to keep some of the engineers. The rest is set for the scrapheap or spinoffs.

None of this should detract from the fact that, yet again, the European Commission is holding up the principles of the free market far better than the US. Businesses don't become more efficient by been giving monopolies. There's been oodles of talk about that runt of a database, MySQL, but it wouldn't surprise me if SAP wasn't doing the real lobbying on this.

[Matt Bryant]

RE: There is another way to earn $1.5bn...

Oh dear, Novatose has been drinking the full-caffeine coffee again. With three sugars a cup by the look of his detached bleating.

"....Unless Oracle believes their position as an approved vendor on all of the existing Oracle customers will be good enough to sell new SPARC or Intel iron in those companies..." Sun were already an approved partner, they used to brag about how many old Slowaris servers are ou there running Oracle, but it didn't stop their sales going through the floor. Even with rejigging the Oracle licensing, if all Larry is going to offer is the same old stuff he won't get the job done.

".....especially with the Exadata2 systems....." Nice tech, but not going to provide enough profit to prop up the rest of the Sun bizz, let alone make a profit. How many Exadatas got sold, a few dozen at most? Want to compare to the number of NetApp FAS devices sold, or the number of EMC arrays, or HDS's, hp's or IBM's? And how many Exadata2s does Larry expect to sell a year? We're not talking a product that fits anything other than a narrow top slice of the market, even less of a general appeal than mainframes, and without the big support and services pull-through of a product like mainframes. A few months back you were telling all that Niagara alone would save Sun - it didn't happen. Trying to repeat the same mantra again with Exadata2 is to ignore the realities of the market.

"....After all, no one else has released any real Flash based systems yet...." Once again, just for the Sunshiners, flash is NOT a Sun invention, and Sun are definately not the first to bring it to market. In the storage place, for example, we've had a pair of Texas Memory Systems RamSans for two years now, long before Sun even mentioned flash or SSDs. We also have hp blades with the flash mezzanines. I'm sure there are other products from other vendors that Sunshiners conveniently ignore when they claim all inventions are Sun's.

".....nor had they released any real competing operating system enhancements to compete with Flash added to ZFS...." So how come Windows and Linux are outselling Slowaris, with no need for ZFS and with or without flash? And seeing as ZFS is just a rip-off of WAFL, you could say any Windows server that's had a NetApp storage device attached to has already been there for years before ZFS. And Larry still hasn't said what happens to ZFS post-purchase considering he already has BTRFS which is better, trusted by the Linux community, and not dogged by a NetApp lawsuit. Wakey, wakey, reality calling!

/SP&L

[green]

SUN Insiders: What will be left?

Can anyone privy to the "new world order" care to comment on what will be left. Will the

fishworks appliance group still be out-there wasting resources trying to compete with Netapp?

[Anonymous Coward]

matt bryant can't spell, again... loses track of time, too

poor mattie bryant can't spell Solaris, talks to people who don't exist, and exhibiting old-timers disease

mattie alzheimer bryant ~ Slowaris

i guess he forgot that Solaris is now faster - http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/036544

mattie illiterate bryant ~ Sun were already an approved partner...

hp was a partner, but hp was booted and replaced by sun... oops... more revenue for sun - thanks for reminding everyone that sun will get some more revenue at hp's expense!

mattie idiot bryant ~ flash is NOT a Sun invention...

it seems sun and oracle capitalized on flash with all the performance records they broke lately and no one else has - i bet dave is glad you made his point!

mattie stupid bryant ~ how come Windows and Linux are outselling... with no need for ZFS and with or without flash

let's see them catch up. flash integrated zfs & database products were only just released with their benchmarks, duh. not enough time for your speculation to be empirically observed. matt has old-timer's disease, can't remember how long ago sun has released recent benchmarks and products.

matt nearly almost half-baked bryant ~ BTRFS which is better

brtfs home page say it is "not suitable for any uses other than benchmarking". matt thinks everything half-baked is better. http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page

well, this place says btrfs is "nearly ready". matt's eating some half-cooked port lately. http://www.h-online.com/open/features/The-Btrfs-file-system-746597.html

storage mojo calls btrfs what it is, "almost zfs". http://storagemojo.com/2009/05/20/btrfs-vs-zfs-omg/

gravestone for matt's old-timer's disease

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like ten thousand Sun Employees will not get RIF'd yet

“Kroes expressed her disappointment that Oracle failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems or a proposal for a remedy to the competition concerns identified by the commission,” Jonathan Todd, Kroes spokesman said in an interview today in Brussels. “Kroes reiterated to Catz the commission’s willingness to move quickly towards a decision but underlined that a rapid solution lies in Oracle’s hands.”

As soon as Oracle takes over they will realign both companies in two days and 13K will be RIF'd in 60 to 90 days.

This arms length required by anti-trust laws is BS. Oracle is up everyone's rectum over here.

The word in here is the EU is still pissed at Larry about PeopleSoft so they are playing hard ball this time.

[Anonymous Coward]

AC: Looks like ten thousand Sun Employees will not get RIF'd yet #

AC --- As soon as Oracle takes over they will realign both companies in two days and 13K will be RIF'd in 60 to 90 days... The word in here is the EU is still pissed at Larry about PeopleSoft so they are playing hard ball this time.

If the EU is pissed & is intentionally causing both companies to lose money - you can bet that EU will get the job losses.

dumb... dumb... dumb...

[Tom Fleming]

Saved by the EC?

My goodness. The EC is saving the world from some scary Oracle slaughter of MySQL. The longer this takes, the more MySQL support staff will be lost. It could easily be that 50% of the EOY 2008 support staff for MySQL won't be there when the EC does its approval.

Good thinking there...

[Matt Bryant]

RE: Saved by the EC?

Well, seeing as the MySQL support peeps are also likely to have Linux skills I expect they'll do just fine, especially if they have an RHCE or RHCA certificate (go to http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/10/21/red_hat_isvs/ to see why). It's those with only Slowaris skills that will have a harder time finding new jobs (see here for why http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/10/29/sun_proxy_compensation/).