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Sun Microsystems plans to cut 3,000 jobs as its acquisition by Oracle remains on hold

Server manufacturer Sun Microsystems announced it will cut 3,000 jobs in the next year as European regulators take a closer look as software maker Oracle tries to finalize its acquisition of Sun.

The job reduction was listed in the company's latest filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  Sun has slashed thousands of jobs across the world over the past few years, attempting to reduce losses as its open source software and servers lose marketshare to competitors.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said Sun is losing nearly $100 million per month, and will continue to lose money as regulators wait to close the $7 billion deal.  Sun said it will have to suffer $75 million to $125 million charges each quarter if a deal isn't reached.  

The acquisition was welcomed by analysts, who note Oracle being able to fold Sun's software -- and struggling hardware business unit -- will give the company yet another tool to compete with IBM.

Even though the European regulators are still investigating the acquisition, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed the deal, which he says could help spur technological innovation in the state.

EU regulators remain concerned a possible deal would give Oracle a monopoly, offering it an unfair advantage in the database software market that it already controls.  Reports indicate a final decision from regulators will be available by Sunday, November 19.

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Marketshare...
By ksuWildcat on 10/21/2009 8:57:27 AM , Rating: 2
I'm not so sure that Sun Microsystems has been losing marketshare on the software side of the business. According to most recent reports I've seen (IDC and various technical journals), 2009 was a very good year for enterprise Java (far outpacing .NET), Glassfish appears to be either the number 2 or 3 application server, and Netbeans is now a very close number 2 to Eclipse. Not to mention many other projects that are sponsored by Sun.




RE: Marketshare...
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 10/21/2009 9:06:37 AM , Rating: 3
I also don't think it will give them a monopoly. There is always SQL Server for medium to large sized databases and it is quite popular. DB2 from IBM if you want that mainframe style to it. Granted Oracle is probably the undisputed king of scalability and it can go from tiny to massive without problem, but not a monopoly.


RE: Marketshare...
By ksuWildcat on 10/21/2009 9:40:34 AM , Rating: 2
I agree with your assertions, and competition is good for all of us. I just don't think that Michael's wording is accurate in stating that Sun Microsystems has lost open source software marketshare. That may change is Oracle decides to drop Glassfish, Netbeans, etc, since there is some overlap in products, although I hope that doesn't happen. Netbeans is a fantastic tool, and Glassfish is a solid alternative to other servers.


RE: Marketshare...
By TomZ on 10/21/2009 12:34:28 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
I'm not so sure that Sun Microsystems has been losing marketshare on the software side of the business.
The problem isn't really about losing or not losing marketshare - it's about being able to make money off of their software investments. Products like Java and Netbeans may be "selling" well, but at the end of the day, how does that improve the bottom line, since for the most part they are free?

On the other hand, in the case of Microsoft, they have a large revenue stream associated with OS and dev tool sales.


RE: Marketshare...
By ksuWildcat on 10/21/2009 1:01:43 PM , Rating: 2
You may be correct, however, that is not how the article was worded. I'll also point out that one reason (of many) that Java has enjoyed so much success and widespread adoption, is the fact that it is free and open source. While Sun has struggled to make money off of the platform directly, there have been ancillary financial benefits from being the largest corporate sponsor/provider of FOSS products.

I really do believe that the business model is changing for many types of software products, and Microsoft will continue to see a decline in profits over time, especially as competitors move into segments once dominated by Microsoft. Perhaps Microsoft will adapt, by actually following open standards and providing compelling products to the rapidly growing world of FOSS.


RE: Marketshare...
By TomZ on 10/21/2009 1:38:45 PM , Rating: 3
I agree with you that the development tools business is slowly changing, and for sure there is pressure on Microsoft due to its low-cost and free competitors. I think that Microsoft will be forced to (a) lower prices and (b) raise the bar. This is something you see them already doing with dev tools, and that trend will clearly continue into the future.

The only concern I have is, what is the endpoint of that change? Because it seems to me that to develop, maintain, and support world-class tools for a large userbase is very expensive. If the revenue stream dries up, how do you pay for that?

If the endpoint is that we are all forced to use crappy, user-supported tools in the future, then I'm not interested. That's fine for hobby/home use, but for hours-are-dollars work, forget about it.


RE: Marketshare...
By Pirks on 10/21/2009 1:28:05 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
far outpacing .NET
That's bad news, I just tried Java after 8 year break (been doing C++ and C# jobs since 2001) and it is the same piece of s#it as it were back in those old days of Java 2.0 and JFC 1.0.

Just compare dumb overly verbose and syntactically complex JAXB with short and elegant XML serialization in .Net, this is sky and earth guys!

Then compare sloooowwww P.O.S. resource hog Netbeans with ultra fast VS2008 with mush better docs support as well.

No way I'm touching Sun's excreta again, ever. Given choice between low salary .Net job and high salary Java job I'd go for .Net hands down, no hesitations. Masochists who like Sun's excreta are welcome to get higher salary and get screwed as usual. Elegance and beautiful REASONABLE system/language/platform design are worth much more for me than just money.


RE: Marketshare...
By Pirks on 10/21/2009 1:38:07 PM , Rating: 2
Also compare beauty and power of Directory.GetFiles() in .Net with insane drap you have to write with FilenameFilters in Java, this is as clownish as it gets! FU Sun, if MS beats the drap outta you I'd be the first one cheering.

Too bad MS hasn't suffocated ugly caffeine bastard in cradle, stupid BG, where was he looking? *mad*


RE: Marketshare...
By TomZ on 10/21/2009 1:45:31 PM , Rating: 2
I couldn't agree more. It's easy to eschew all the virtues of Java, so long as you are ignorant about .NET. But if you've used both you realize that .NET is better in a lot of ways Java.

Really, the only advantage I can think of with Java is the large quantity of decent-quality free libraries. That market is developing for .NET but is not as far along. Other comparisons I think largely favor .NET in my experience.

And I also discount the dogma associated with the "proprietary vs. open" argument. So long as proprietary technology is well-managed and easily accessable, avoiding it purely based on fear is kind of dumb, if you ask me.

And I will also point out that Java achieved its greatest success while it was still a proprietary environment/language.


RE: Marketshare...
By ksuWildcat on 10/21/2009 3:39:42 PM , Rating: 2
But there are associated problems with .NET, namely the lack of cross-platform compatibility and vendor lock-in. And if security and scalable performance under Linux is important (it is for most enterprise work), Java has no equal.


RE: Marketshare...
By Taft12 on 10/21/2009 5:34:26 PM , Rating: 2
About to say the same thing, .NET is a fine development framework... unless your app needs to run on UNIX!


RE: Marketshare...
By Pirks on 10/21/2009 6:44:18 PM , Rating: 2
RE: Marketshare...
By ksuWildcat on 10/22/2009 9:19:06 AM , Rating: 2
Mono is not actually fully compatible with all of .NET's APIs, which is a big problem if you to write cross-platform code that actually runs. Maybe if Microsoft opens up .NET's code behind the APIs and CLR, that will change, but for now, Java is still the best solution for writing code that will run on *nix or Windows or Solaris.


RE: Marketshare...
By ksuWildcat on 10/21/2009 3:34:25 PM , Rating: 2
While C#/.NET has clearly refined OO Java and C++ in many ways, Java still has many advantages such as WORA and a runtime that supports even newer languages (SCALA has very bright future, and it addresses the shortcomings of both Java and C#). Another thing that people fail to remember is that Sun had to make many compromises in order to make Java cross-platform, something that Microsoft did not do with .NET.

I don't think that you've used Netbeans recently, it is quite fast and is no more a resource hog then VS or WDSC. And the plugin architecture is second to none.

That being said, people use the right tools for the job. If it's C# or Java, that doesn't really matter.


RE: Marketshare...
By rdawise on 10/21/2009 11:47:29 PM , Rating: 2
You took the words right out of my mouth. Netbeans (recently) takes up about just as much resources as Visual Studio 2008.

Java is good is you don't want to worry about which platform you app will run on.
.Net is good when your main concern is Windows (which is upwards of 80% of the market).


RE: Marketshare...
By Pirks on 10/22/2009 12:29:51 AM , Rating: 1
http://www.mono-project.com ==>> .Net is good is you don't want to worry about which platform you app will run on ;)


RE: Marketshare...
By ksuWildcat on 10/22/2009 9:25:18 AM , Rating: 2
Mono and .NET are NOT fully compatible...only a subset of the public APIs are actually interoperable. This is a big problem in the enterprise world, where most don't use Windows Server.


RE: Marketshare...
By ksuWildcat on 10/22/2009 9:41:38 AM , Rating: 2
Depends on which market you look at. According to Netcraft and IDC reports, Apache is running about 55% of all public sites on the net, compared to roughly 23% for Microsoft IIS/.NET as of Oct 2009. In the enterprise market, it looks like Apache/Java EE dominates with close to an 80% share.

Looking at the available programming jobs online (Java vs .NET) and compensation packages, I'd say that these numbers are fairly accurate.


RE: Marketshare...
By TomZ on 10/22/2009 1:36:42 PM , Rating: 2
Where are you getting that 80% figure from? For example, here's an IDC press release that shows Windows having a 37% market share in the first quarter:

Microsoft Windows server revenue was $3.7 billion in 1Q09 showing a 28.9% year-over-year decline and comprising 37.3% of all server revenue in the quarter.
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS2185...


MySQL
By oTAL on 10/21/2009 10:55:00 AM , Rating: 2
I'm not sure that I like the fact that MySQL (and some associated tools) will be in the hands of Oracle.
Time will tell whether I'm being paranoid...




RE: MySQL
By Taft12 on 10/21/2009 11:50:28 AM , Rating: 2
I assume you are a MySQL user as I am. There is nothing to fear, this is exactly why GPL software is in a far better position to deal with ownership uncertainty.

If Oracle can't or won't support development, start a fork. Monty Widenius resigned from Sun following the merger, do you think he is just going to quit developing MySQL?

Of course, if you rely on proprietary Sun software, you DO have cause to be nervous.


RE: MySQL
By TomZ on 10/21/2009 12:40:41 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
There is nothing to fear
That's naive. Does Monty have the resources to support a large customer base like MySQL has? No. So people will be stuck with whatever Oracle chooses to do, and if they decide to terminate development, then MySQL users will face some tough choices.

The mere fact that someone has MySQL source code is meaningless. A software business is not just about the software - it's also about all the infrastructure required to support it. That's something that MySQL has, Oracle has, but individual developers like Monty don't.


RE: MySQL
By ksuWildcat on 10/21/2009 1:09:36 PM , Rating: 2
While I think some concern is justified, my guess is that Oracle will continue to support and develop MySQL as an entry for future Oracle DB sales. Yes, Oracle XE is already offered, but I think that there is still room for both since they seem to fit different niches.

MySQL is still the most prominent RDBMS for small companies and independent vendors, while Oracle dominates the corporate/enterprise market. It seems logical to leverage the MySQL customer base to support future sales of Oracle software (and possibly even hardware/integrated solutions) as businesses grow.


RE: MySQL
By Spookster on 10/22/2009 4:41:34 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
by Taft12 on October 21, 2009 at 11:50 AM

I assume you are a MySQL user as I am. There is nothing to fear, this is exactly why GPL software is in a far better position to deal with ownership uncertainty.

If Oracle can't or won't support development, start a fork. Monty Widenius resigned from Sun following the merger, do you think he is just going to quit developing MySQL?

Of course, if you rely on proprietary Sun software, you DO have cause to be nervous.


I've heard rumors that Monty will join the Python open source development team. ;)

http://www.python.org


RE: MySQL
By rdawise on 10/21/2009 11:50:51 PM , Rating: 2
I doubt the will TOTALLY get rid of MySQL, but I am willing to bet they neuter it in a way that if you want to compete in business (even small) you have to upgrade to Oracle.

Your fears are well founded...


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