Sun Microsystems, in another last ditch
attempt to prove that it can become a profitable business, is axing
up to 6,000 jobs.
The company posted a sales and profit warning last month, and it
has already shed thousands of jobs in the last few years.
With server revenue well down, the open source Solaris operating
system initiative failing to generate sales, and recent
acquisitions proving to be an albatross around the company's neck,
Sun's employees are continuing to pay.
"Sun Microsystems today announces a series of changes designed
to align its cost model with the global economic climate and
accelerate the introduction of compelling open source innovations,"
said Sun.
"As part of this effort, Sun is announcing a global workforce
reduction and alignment of its Software organisation into new
business groups - Application Platform Software, Systems Platforms,
and Cloud Computing & Developer Platforms - with a focus on
boosting open source momentum and growing new sectors of the market
who view technology as a competitive weapon."
Apart from different parts of the business being given different
names, Sun watchers may not see the announcement as a solution to
the loss-making company's continued decline.
"Today, we have taken decisive actions to align Sun's business
with global economic realities and accelerate our delivery of key
open source platform innovations - from MySQL to Sun's latest Open
Storage offerings," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO at Sun.
The 6,000 jobs to go and restructuring of operations are
designed to eventually save the company up to £515m a year. The job
cuts represent up to 18% of the existing headcount.
Restructuring
The job cuts and restructuring will cost the firm up to £385m
over the next 12 months, plunging the firm further into the
red.
Sun has also announced that Rich Green, executive vice president
of Software, has chosen to leave the company. Ironically, Green was
responsible for developing one of Sun's more successful initiatives
- the Java operating system.
One Sun watcher posted on the Marketwatch website: "I really
need to understand this. A failed reverse stock-split, overpaying
for StorageTek, and spending $1 billion for My SQL which generates
$0 revenue as a standalone product.
"Now, 6,000 innocent, hard working employees get the benefit of
all the ineptitude in the form of pink slips. Nice. Unless
Schwartz' pink slip is one of the 6,000, kiss this Sun
goodbye!"