Sun Microsystems, which recently announced it was shedding up to 6,000 jobs globally, is still unsure if or how its 640 staff based in Australia and New Zealand will be affected, according to the company's managing director.
Duncan Bennet, MD of Sun Microsystems in Australia & NZ.
(Credit: Sun)
Duncan Bennet, who has been running the Sun's ANZ operations for about a year, told ZDNet.com.au today that he still had no information on how many local jobs could be at risk.
Despite Sun recently announcing that revenues had dropped seven per cent, Bennet said the job cuts and restructuring would allow the company to focus its resources on areas that had the potential to thrive in a tough economic climate.
"We have been here before. If you think about the dot-com bust, the world at that stage was going to end but it didn't," Bennet said. "If you think about that period, it was when open source and linux really started to pick up — as people were looking at saving costs and doing things in a more cost-efficient way."
"If you go back and track the adoption of Linux or Apache and some other initial open source products, that is when they started to pick up. We think we will see exactly the same thing this time around as people try to cut costs."
Bennet added that the restructuring package would allow Sun to take advantage of market areas that were likely to grow.
"The Q1 results were down seven per cent and most of that was reflected in the US high end server space. This restructure is trying to get the focus in the different areas," he said.
"People have not stopped buying big computers or survey arrays. Technology is not a discretionary cost — it is a core part of their business. Customers will continue to do things with IT but will want to do more with less," he added.
Sun has already shed its staff numbers from 860-900 back to the 640 Duncan mentioned in his article.
The first cut occurred in the end of June, and there has apparently been another cut that has either just occurred or is about to occur.
Cuts occurred in their Storage, Software team and Professional Services teams. There is a aim to also cut back on its sales force too.
The Sun Australia business is returning to its core business of hardware and abondoning the growth strategy laid out by Sun's Global CEO Johnathan Swartz of growth from Software and Services.
Australia recruiters & head hunters have been inundated with Sun employees seeking to leave Sun.
Sun in America is remoured to be considering Chapter 11 protection. It is widely acknowledged by the market as underachieving. A number of US companies are considering acquiring Sun.