Nighthunter

Sun Micro: Layoffs, and a 13-Year Low

IBM won't be allowed to purchase Sun. Either won't be HP. Dell or Fujitsu might be allowed. If someone is going to acquire Sun it won't be with good intentions.

Sun is a company in good financial standing. This situation is challenging for Sun but it might be not as bad as it look like. It's the Analysts who are pushing down the stock with there wild speculations (like with the oil price) without any rhyme or reason. Most people forget that Sun has a great range of low-end servers which are leaves the Dell, HP and IBM competition in dust. The problem is that Sun's marketing and sales is not really pushing these low-end servers and low-end storage enough.
L like Sun strategy to go open source, however it's wrong giving the software away for "free". However since Sun is giving the software for free Sun's service contract sales did noticeably go up. The basic idea was hoping that customers not just getting the software for free but also buying the support contracts (what customers do) but also are buying the Sun Hardware (what newer software customers don't seem to do)

But I'm still very optimistic that with the recent changes in their management (Peter Ryan as replacement for Don Grandham) the company will be back to profit probably by Q2 in FY09.