Business Tech

Sun Microsystems is a pioneering tech company that is having trouble getting any respect.

A Forbes article on Thursday notes that the company's market cap has dropped below $3 billion: "The company has become so toxic that no one dares to swallow it."

As Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz likes to say, the Forbes writers "over-rotate." But Sun has fallen further and harder on Wall Street than its main competitors over the last few years and months. Schwartz has bravely pushed Sun down the path of open source and created demand for its hardware and service … Read more

Update 8:42 a.m. PST: Stock market and analyst reaction have been added.

Sun Microsystems announced Friday a restructuring that involves layoffs of 15 percent to 18 percent of its global workforce.

The company's reorganization of its software operations includes the departure of Rich Green, executive vice president of software.

Sun's restructuring will result in a charge of between $500 million and $600 million over the next 12 months, with about $375 million to $450 million coming in the current 2009 fiscal year.

The company said it should start seeing cost savings in the third quarter of … Read more

Hewlett-Packard on Thursday announced it has dropped a patent infringement charge against LexJet Corporation over the type of ink used in remanufactured HP print cartridges.

In exchange, LexJet has agreed to alter the recipe used to make its ink as well as pay HP an undisclosed sum.

HP originally filed suit against Florida-based LexJet on May 22.

LexJet is one of many companies that take used HP ink cartridges and resell them with their own ink inside. It's a sensitive topic for HP, one of the world's largest producer of printers and ink cartridges, which has sued several … Read more

Updated at 3:20 p.m. PST throughout with clarification of Yukon and Congo technologies

An AMD-based Netbook? Maybe, maybe not.

On Thursday at an analyst meeting, AMD disclosed "Yukon" and "Congo"--the names that AMD is giving to its silicon technology, due in 2009, that will target the "ultraportable" market. (The meeting was streamed live from the event.)

The company is being very careful to parse this as a more full-featured ultraportable PC play not a strict Netbook play.

The ideal ultraportable form factor is a MacBook Air-style design: very thin with a … Read more

All indications are that IT spending growth will be below the rate of inflation in 2009, thus budgets will actually decrease in real terms.

If things get worse as many experts predict, it could get really ugly. Nevertheless, there are some technology areas that are close to a sure thing in 2009. Here is my non-exhaustive list:

• Virtualization. This ship has sailed and is producing real benefits. The only thing holding up massive virtualization thus far is immature management and operations tools, which will also improve throughout the year. Look for users to buy bigger Intel servers in 2009 … Read more

CA announced Thursday plans to acquire Israel-based Eurekify, in a move to expand its identity and access management software portfolio.

IT management software company aims to use Eurekify's analytics engine to reduce the time and effort it takes for customers to shift through employee's duties and responsibilities and to monitor their access management settings.

The combined CA Identity Manager and Eurekify Enterprise Role Manager will aim to help customers clean up existing identity data and build a model that "serves as the foundation to automate the user provisioning process and enhances identity lifecycle management," according to … Read more

Let bygones be bygones. That's what Advanced Micro Devices is hoping for with the roll-out of its first 45-nanometer processor Thursday.

(AMD also announced its upcoming 45-nanometer "Phenom II X4" desktop technology. See below.)

The No. 2 PC processor supplier will make the case that Shanghai is not Barcelona. The latter chip--AMD's first quad-core processor--was rolled out in September 2007 to great fanfare but then faced prolonged delays. This gave Intel an opportunity to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the server chip market. (AMD lost more than five percentage points to Intel in … Read more

Chip equipment maker Applied Materials is cutting 12 percent of its workforce after posting declining profit numbers and receiving quite the scare from Intel.

The company announced that 1,800 jobs will be cut from its ranks by this time next year, which could save it $400 million a year. Applied Materials makes the complicated and expensive equipment that Intel and AMD use to manufacture their processors, and if those companies see a downturn in their business, companies like Applied Materials are in for trouble.

With Intel reporting a huge decline in its expected revenue for the fourth quarter Wednesday … Read more

Updated to add reference to analyst downgrade.

Intel issued a fourth-quarter warning on Wednesday, noting its financial performance will be less than previously forecast and comes a day after downgrades by analysts.

The chip giant is scaling back its forecast as its revenues come in "significantly weaker" than expected across all its market segments and the countries that it operates in. Gross margins, as a result, also received a revised outlook.

Intel, which released its quarterly warning after the markets close, saw its shares drop 7.47 percent in after hours trading. During the regular trading session Wednesday, … Read more