Sun (Microsystems) notifies 1,300 people of layoffs

[Pale Blue Dot]

Source: Daily Camera

Sun Microsystems Inc. officials confirmed Thursday that the networking and storage company has notified 1,300 employees they would be laid off as part of a previously announced workforce reduction.

It was not immediately known how many people at Sun’s Broomfield campus — where 2,380 people work — might be affected. Spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said the company is not providing a breakout by location.

The reductions were made across “all levels,” including vice presidents and directors, she said.

No further notifications are planned for this week, she said.

The reductions stem from a Nov. 14 announcement of “a series of changes designed to align (Sun's) cost model with the global economy and accelerate the introduction of compelling open source innovations,” Lengkeek said in an e-mail Thursday.

Read more: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/jan/22/sun-notifies-1300-people-layoffs/

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That's now about 14,000 jobs lost today alone... that we know about.

[Xipe Totec]

1. IBM, AMD, Sun, It's news dump pile on time

Now that Microsoft has announced, the rest of the high-tech sector will spill the beans, hoping that the can hide in plain sight.

[FarCenter]

2. Broomfield Colorado would be the old StorageTek operation

That Sun bought a couple of years ago for a fancy price.

Why they bought a company most noted for its IBM-compatible tape drives and tape library systems is beyond me.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. No, that's Louisville (Colorado)

Broomfield is the new, huge site that Sun built a few years before it bought StorageTek.

[Azlady]

5. Storage Tek was in both locations.. Broomfield & Louisville... this is bad...

But what I find interesting is.... they are now just making a blanket statement.. not stating what jobs are being cut.... I guess more difficult to track????

[OhioChick]

3. Things are getting bad....real quick.

K&R

[napoleon_in_rags]

6. The software world is incredibly interesting all of the sudden.

Basically, you have people not able to really afford Windows, and Ubuntu 8.10 rocking incredibly. Fundamental things are being questioned. We see Microsoft copying Synaptic, which marks the beginning of MS starting to copy free software for its designs:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2009/01/21/is-microsoft-working-on-a-software-center-for-windows
Which is obviously a losing proposition, if Microsoft is paying people to produce copies of what people are creating for free. This begs the question of why Microsoft doesn't just start using the free software itself, and integrate synergistically with the FOSS community, which is what really needs to happen, and they seem to be putting out feelers in this direction, but basically nobody trusts them.

Then you have Red Hat Surpassing Sun in market capitalization:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10146879-16.html
And sun wondering why it isn't them, talking now about moving boldly in the direction of open source. Yet they screwed around with Java so long, protecting their hardware business, that they have to fight to be taken seriously now as well.

Then you have the zeitgeist of open government, and the integration of public service and awareness of the damage caused by excessive privatization playing in as well to the rising prominence of Open software, and the fact that so much of what we need to help this country is in the world of information technology. So in other words its an incredibly interesting time.

[FatDave]

7. Another problem for MS:

PC's apparently got powerful enough for people. Hell, my 2Ghz Athlon system I bought 3 years ago isn't showing any signs of age yet. The continuous upgrade cycle seems to have ended or at least stalled, and MS is gonna have a hard time moving copies of Vista without new PC sales.

[napoleon_in_rags]

8. Good point.

And you have power usage tied to computing power. One of the sexiest machines I have seen lately is an MSI Wind with Intel Atom for around $200 dollars, because its power consumption is around 15 watts, I can leave it on all the time. I have a 100 watt phenom quad core, but I have yet to find any application that utilizes all its speed. So why spend the extra power bills for computing power I don't need?