Reuters Blogs

DealZone

Behind the deals and deal-makers

09:38 October 21st, 2009

Oracle watches as Sun sets in East

Posted by: Chris Kaufman
Tags: DealZone, , , ,

By dithering over the $7 billion sale of Sun Microsystems to Oracle, and delaying all those magical synergies, rationalizations and economizations, EU authorities are forcing Oracle to synergize, rationalize and economize just to maintain some semblance of value.

Sun is blaming fresh plans to slash about 10 percent of its global work force on European antitrust regulators, who have not yet cleared the transaction. Don’t be too surprised if the bulk of the firings are targeted in Europe.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison recently said Sun is losing $100 million a month because of uncertainty about the computer maker’s future. Rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard are taking advantage by poaching Sun’s customers with steep discounts.

“Sun’s business is really hurting,” said Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross. Analysts had widely expected thousands of Sun employees to lose their jobs, but not until Oracle closes the deal.

At this rate, Oracle may end up with a black hole.

One comment so far

I hope all of those job cuts are for SUN are in Europe as it is them who are holding up this deal. If anything, this will create more jobs down the line vice kill them as someone else will come in and continue the database trends that MySQL started.

- Posted by Dave Fisher

Post Your Comment

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word

House Rules:
  • We moderate all comments and will publish everything that advances the post directly or with relevant tangential information
  • We try not to publish comments that we think are offensive or appear to pass you off as another person, and we will be conservative if comments may be considered libelous information.