Sun Microsystems Inc., (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today a “series of changes” in response to the changing economic climate. You have to love their NASDAQ ticker name, don’t you?

In order to “accelerate the introduction of compelling open source innovations,” Sun will be restructuring the company into new business groups:

• Application Platform Software (JAVA, MySQL, etc.)
• Systems Platforms (Solaris Virtualization, Open Storage, etc.)
• Cloud Computing & Developer Platforms (StarOffice, NetBeans, etc.)

The restructuring aims to remove costs by 700 – 800 million dollars each year. Of course, there is also a human price tag — a reduction of 15 – 18% of the workforce (about 5000 – 6000 employees).

Sun provides popular open source software and promotes itself as a leader in the open source community. Popular Free, OpenSource Sun products include:

• Java
• MySQL Database Software
• OpenSolaris OS
• OpenOffice (Compare to MS Office)