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Sun Microsystems To Cut 3,000 Jobs As Oracle Deal Drags On

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-let-the-sun-go-down-on-me dept.

afgun writes with news that Sun will be shedding 3,000 jobs, roughly 10% of their workforce, as they continue to lose money while waiting for EC regulators to approve their acquisition by Oracle. "Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said Sept. 22 that Sun is losing about $100 million a month as the transaction is delayed by the EU probe." James Staten, an analyst with Forrester, said, "The longer a cloud of uncertainty hangs over Sun, that drives customers into delays of purchases or into the hands of competitors. This is a very trying time for Sun and Oracle as they wait for an answer." A spokesman for EU Competition Comissioner Neelie Kroes said today that she "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," and that "a rapid solution lies in Oracle's hands."

3 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Nancy Kroes? by anomnomnomymous · · Score: 4, Informative

    Erm, she is called Neelie Kroes.

    --
    When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
  2. Re:Aren't these both US companies? by Microlith · · Score: 5, Informative

    They both operate in Europe as well. When you're a large, multinational corporation you generally have to accept regulatory practices of each nation you wish to operate in.

  3. Apple can't take server share by Ilgaz · · Score: 3, Informative

    While OS X Server is real underrated state of art UNIX which can do amazing things, Apple isn't and can't be a "server" competitor unless they allow OS X Server to run on "generic" x86.

    While not widely known, OS X server can be used as a client, you can even play all the games on it even with better performance. So, they can't make "blade only" Apple OS X server. It would mean the end of "OS X working only on Apple hardware". I mean it is not AIX.

    Forget everything, Apple can't compete in "support" department for servers. There is Big Blue there, Dell there, HP there and of course, Sun with decades old agreements and happy customers who expects same kind of service.

    Of course, if you consider the things you can do with distributed computing (Xserve), spotlight (server version), it is sad but industry hates brand hardware without any competition. Java's (especially J2EE) success and mainframes coming back to life is also related to that trend, people choose Java because it will work anywhere, any CPU and even any OS with minor modifications.