Servers & business storage

Sun Microsystems' largest shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, has upped its stake and taken a more aggressive attitude toward its investment, indicating that it will take an active role in maximizing shareholder value through talks with management and third parties, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

Southeastern, an investment advisory service and self-described value investor in large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap companies, increased its stake to 21.2 percent from its previous investment in September of 17.3 percent.

In noting the increased stake and change in its status as a passive investor to … Read more

Sun Microsystems shares plunged a whopping 17.5 percent on Tuesday, after the company warned that its first-quarter results would fall short of expectations.

Sun closed at $4.77 a share, down $1.01, marking the third time this month that its shares have ended the trading session below $5 a share.

But Sun wasn't the only tech stock bleeding red, as evidenced by the declines in the broader markets.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9,033.66, down 231.77 points, or 2.5 percent. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq ended the day at 1,696.68, … Read more

Venture capitalists pulled back sharply on U.S.-based tech deals in the third quarter, pushing the flow of deals down to a level that hasn't been seen in more than a decade, according to a report released over the weekend by Dow Jones VentureSource.

During the third quarter, 270 IT-related deals were completed, a 21 percent drop compared with 342 deals in the same period a year ago, according to the Quarterly U.S. Venture Capital Report. That translated into $2.73 billion in investments, likewise down 21 percent from a year ago.

Software, which historically accounts for … Read more

Forrester Research on Wednesday revised its best-case-worst-case scenario for U.S. IT spending. Rather than possibly posting an upside above the base, Forrester is warning, at the extreme, the situation could get worse than its September base projections.

Back in September, Forrester made a base prediction that IT spending would grow 6.1 percent in the U.S. and between 7 to 8 percent overseas. Forrester, at the time, also noted a potential existed that IT spending could exceed its base projections.

But a dramatic downturn in the markets, a virtual chokehold on credit availability, and a financial crisis that … Read more

Microsoft is hitting the books, creating a new czar to oversee its education initiatives.

The software giant announced on Tuesday that it has appointed Michael Golden to the post of corporate vice president of Microsoft's Education Products group.

In this role, Golden will be responsible for the Redmond giant's education business and product development, overseeing its strategy and marketing efforts. The executive will report to Anoop Gupta, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential Group and Education Product Group, overseeing technology policy and strategy.

Microsoft clearly has its eye on the education market. Earlier this year, Microsoft … Read more

The beleaguered Dow Jones Industrial Index surged back up above 9,000 in its largest single-day point gain ever Monday, while Apple, Microsoft, Dell, and other tech companies captured double-digit gains.

After taking investors on a hellacious ride last week, Wall Street didn't disappoint expectations of a better week with the Dow soaring 936.42 points to close at 9,9387.61, after suffering eight consecutive days of losses from its previous post of 10,850.66 on September 30.

Investors … Read more

Growth in information technology spending next year is expected to go from a modest uptick to a virtual blip, according to a report released Monday by Gartner Research. Meanwhile UBS Securities predicts a more dire outcome.

IT spending is expected to grow 2.3 percent next year, a figure that's down from earlier projections of 5.8 percent growth, according to Gartner. The lowered forecast comes as the markets have been whacked particularly hard over the past two weeks and the credit market has tightened.

"Developed economies, especially in the United States and Western Europe, will be the … Read more

IBM, which expects to unveil better-than-expected quarterly figures, has announced it will spend some of its cash on incentives to encourage some of its largest partners to invest more in training and other areas.

On Wednesday, the company introduced a scheme to help its business partners who are cooperating on its New Enterprise Data Center strategy. The scheme involves incentives for IBM partners to improve their knowledge in three specific areas: virtualization and consolidation; energy efficiency; and business resiliency.

And Mike Bernard, general business and channels marketing leader at IBM, told ZDNet.co.uk that there is also a fourth … Read more

Update 11:50 a.m. PDT, with additional M&A data from investment banking services firm The Jordan, Edmiston Group.

Tech mergers and acquisitions took a dive in the third quarter, with spending falling by a third compared with the same period last year, as Wall Street investment banks and financial institutions were rocked to the core, according to a report released Wednesday by The 451 Group.

Tech deals fell to 691 transactions with a total value of $37 billion in the third quarter, down from 822 deals and a value of $58 billion a year ago. That marked … Read more