Still looking to cut costs, struggling server maker Sun Microsystems has sold off its mainframe re-hosting business to Chicago’s Clerity Solutions.

"On June 30, 2006 Clerity acquired the intellectual property assets and hired Sun employees directly involved in the mainframe hosting solution business," Clerity said in a statement Wednesday.

Sun’s re-hosting business, part of its Mainframe Migration offerings, was set up to help customers move their mainframe applications over to Sun’s Unix-based hardware. To date, the group has done more than 1,200 re-hosting implementations, according to Sun’s website.

Sun had written two major mainframe programs to run on its Solaris version of Unix, both of which have now been acquired by Clerity, the company said. These two programs are called Mainframe Transaction Processing and Mainframe Batch Manager.

Clerity did not say how many Sun employees it hired or how much it paid for the business. Sun could not be reached immediately for comment.

Sun is in the middle of a major restructuring designed to save as much as US$590 million annually. The plan, which was implemented by Sun Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Schwartz soon after he took over the company last April, is expected to claim as many as 5,000 jobs.

Sun has rarely been profitable since its server business was decimated by the dot-com implosion six years ago.

-Robert McMillan, IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)

Related Link:

• Sun Lays Off up to 5,000 Workers

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