Sun plans to cut 6,000 more jobs

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=1208&u_sid=10487864

Published Saturday November 15, 2008
Sun plans to cut 6,000 more jobs

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The economic downturn might be pushing Sun Microsystems Inc., one of the storied names in computing, to the brink of extinction.

The company's servers and software helped stimulate the Internet boom, and its engineering acumen is revered. But Sun never fully recovered from the previous financial crisis — the dot-com meltdown — and it has been steamrolled by big shifts in the way businesses buy their back-end computers.

Now Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun plans to slash up to 6,000 jobs, or 18 percent of its global work force, as it scrambles to cut costs to offset a devastating slump in sales of its high-end servers. Sales of those machines fell 27 percent in the latest quarter as banks and other big customers went under or couldn't get loans to buy the servers.

"These are hard but necessary changes," Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's chief executive, said in an interview Friday as he disclosed the cuts. They sent Sun shares up 4 cents, or 1 percent, to close at $4.12.

Sun also said its software chief, Rich Green, has resigned, as the company splits its software division into three new business groups.

Sun's extreme restructuring is what many investors were calling for. It follows three other rounds of big layoffs in the past three years in which nearly 7,000 jobs were axed. Analysts say it gives Sun breathing room to improve its margins and try to return to profitability.

[TankLV]

1. I never knew there were people on the Sun! That's amazing!

talk about a hell hole back office...