Working across all of Sun, Senior Vice President, Dave Douglas, has been appointed today to lead the Company's cloud computing efforts. Simultaneously, in a package of "decisive actions to align Sun's business with global economic realities," Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced a restructuring plan aimed at reducing costs by approximately $700 to $800 million annually - including a reduction of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 employees, representing approximately 15% to 18% of the Company's global workforce.

Sun expects to incur total charges in the range of $500 to $600 million over the next twelve months in connection with the plan, of which it expects to incur approximately $375 to $450 million within its current fiscal year 2009, the company said in a statement.

The company expects to begin realizing cost savings in the third quarter of the Company's fiscal year 2009, and expects to realize a substantial portion of the run rate benefit by the first quarter of the next fiscal year,the statement added.

Dave Douglas, in addition to becoming Sun's Cloud Czar, will also lead Sun's efforts to capitalize on Network.com, the NetBeans developer platform, and the StarOffice portfolio. The unit will build upon Sun's existing online developer community - one of the world's largest - to firmly establish the company as a leader in cloud computing and grow this area into a significant driver of future revenues.

Sun also announced that Rich Green, Executive Vice President of Software, has chosen to leave the company, with immediate effect.