Sun readying itself to be carved up?

Sun Microsystems' announcement Friday of up to 6,000 layoffs is packaged as part of a bigger restructuring.

The company's reorganization divides its software operations into application platform software, systems platforms, and cloud computing and developer platforms.

Could this foretell a carve-up and sell-off of different Sun business lines? Could this lead to going private?

Back in early 2007, Larry Dignan of ZDNet suggested on Seeking Alpha that KKR's $700 million investment in Sun could be a prelude to Sun going private. KKR investment or not, going private may be exactly what Sun needs now in order to buy itself time to accelerate its growing open-source software businesses.

Sun definitely needs time. It is experimenting with its software business model(s), and to good effect. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has been right to bet on open source and is spreading his bets further with things like auctions around OpenOffice branding rights. Sun's experimentation is paying dividends. It's just not enough to stem the hemorrhaging from its old product lines.

So, Sun needs time. It also needs space.

It needs time away from Wall Street to grow its open-source software business. It needs space from old product lines that are on the wane.

Let it sell its hardware business to a Fujitsu or some other company, so that Sun (and Schwartz) can finish its software revolution.

[Mr. Dee]

They should change their name to Sunset, seriously. Sun's current state of problems link's back to bad decisions in the past. Linux was in its infancy in 1999, they 'Sun' should have open sourced Solaris then make it available for Intel Itanium and support it on x86-x64 when that was available with AMD Hammer in 2003. This would have allowed them to lock up the market for commercial open source solutions.

The deals that have formed with Linux distros from Novell such as their partnership with Microsoft could have been Solaris. OpenSolaris would have been the top open source UNIX operating system with technologies like KDE and GNOME coming to it first while Redhat, SUSE and others would all be after thoughts. Decisions like the ones I have mentioned would probably have found SUN competing head on for the first time in markets with Microsoft now being owned by Ubuntu. Imagine running Solaris on an eee PC? But, its just a case of what could have been.

[The_Decider]

Mr Dee Dee Dee,

Your do you get your nonsense? Ubuntu owns the hype market. A deal with MS would have hurt Sun, despite the quality of its OS, see SUSE.

It doesn't matter if KDE and GNOME went to solaris first. KDE and GNOME doesn't specifically write for RedHat or SUSE. Those companies modify them.

Sun is on the right path, what they don't need is shortsighted greedy morons from wall street destroying them. I like Matt's idea of Sun ditching its hardware division.

[Mr. Dee]

Microsoft and SUN have made deals in the past that have not hurt either Company's reputations. I remember some time back in 2004 or 2005, Steve Ballmer and Scott McNealy shook hands putting all lawsuits behind them working on better interoperability between their products. When I say KDE and GNOME I am not specifically referring to it being a target first, but more of foundation where a lot of the innovation would begin instead of Linux. SUN could have been first and first choice for many who want an alternative solution in respect to Open Source and tradition UNIX if they had just made correct decisions. Company's don't see the point of investing Solaris on SPARC or X86 because its just too costly and does not make sense for more Company's that can get a satisfactory level of mission critical support with Linux and Windows on x86 already.

[The_Decider]

Going private is the best thing any company that wants to control its future can do.

I hope they do just that, it will benefit them by not being accountable to people who are looking for a fast buck and don't care if they have to destroy the company to do it.

[gstein67]

Huh? How will "going all Open Source" save Sun? Where does the money come from in that case?

Sun has hardware, Java, and Solaris as their big three, well-known products. If they sell off the hardware, and given that Solaris is already free, then how do they make money from Java? Through licensing fees based around the trademark.

Open Source is not going to change that revenue model at all.

Sun needs to find additional revenue streams, AND they need to scale back their operations to match that stream. IMO, 6000 jobs is not enough because I don't think their current revenue stream is very sustainable.