Sun Profits in Fiscal Q2, Gets $700 Million Equity Injection from KKR
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Server and operating system maker Sun Microsystems reported its first significant--albeit still small--profit in a long time with its second fiscal quarter of 2007 results this week, and the top brass at the company--office mates Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief executive officer, and Michael Lehman, chief financial officer, were clearly happy about that. Sun also announced that it has negotiated a $700 million equity investment from KKR Private Equity Investors, the publicly traded equity arm of takeover specialist Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. READ MORE >

Sun, Intel Form Alliance for Xeon Servers and Workstations
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Last week, executives at Sun Microsystems hinted at the release of the 11/06 update for Solaris 10 that it would be forming partnerships with various OEM partners to get Solaris more broadly supported by the vendor community. And this week, Sun announced a broad alliance with Intel, which will see the chip maker endorse Solaris as a tier one platform and Sun make Xeon-based servers and workstations, Sun is showing that it is dead serious about cranking up Solaris adoption and getting a higher-volume X64 server business. READ MORE >

IBM Closes Out 2006 With a Strong Fourth Quarter
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM may have started out 2006 with some bumps and bruises as various hardware, software, and services products were a bit stuck in the mud. But as the year progressed and Big Blue tweaked these businesses--and IT departments rushed to spend down their budgets for the year--the company was able to ramp up its sales, ending the year with a strong fourth quarter. Revenues in the fourth quarter were up 7.5 percent, to $26.3 billion, with earnings up 11.1 percent to $3.5 billion. READ MORE >

The X Factor: Solaris Versus Linux Support Pricing
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Since Solaris 10 was announced nearly two years ago, Sun Microsystems has been determined to convince any and all that its Unix variant, which was taken open source and made freely available in binaries as well like Linux, is not only spiritually like Linux, but better and cheaper, too. With the initial Solaris 10 support pricing announced in early 2005, Solaris 10 support was certainly a lot less expensive than Linux. But a lot has changed since then. READ MORE >