Sun Microsystems has now went with the fashion and unveiled a series of more or less pleasant measures to help it "align its cost model with the global economic climate and accelerate the introduction of compelling open source innovations." The less pleasant part would be a significant workforce reduction which will see between 5,000 and 6,000 Sun employees getting the pink slip over the next twelve months.

"Today, we have taken decisive actions to align Sun's business with global economic realities and accelerate our delivery of key open source platform innovations - from MySQL to Sun's latest Open Storage offerings," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO, Sun Microsystems.

In addition to the job cuts, Sun is going to reorganize its Software arm and 'split' it into three new business groups - Application Platform Software, focused on creating the best platforms on which to develop applications, Systems Platforms which will develop platforms to run those applications, and Cloud Computing & Developer Platforms - aimed at enabling infrastructure as a service through 'cloud platforms'.

The changes (and layoffs) are expected to reduce Sun' operating costs by up to $800 million per year.