What the company hasn't said is what products will be affected, how research and development will change, and whether customers will be dealing with different Sun representatives after the layoff of 11 percent to 13 percent of its employees.

In his announcement of the moves to financial analysts last week, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz pledged that customers will not be affected by the cutbacks. Schwartz contended that the changes will improve the company's focus on core products.

Analysts were skeptical of Schwartz's pledge and predicted that Sun's customers will see changes such as potential cutbacks in sales support. Meanwhile, Sun users are simply hoping that the company will provide more details about how the cutbacks may affect them. "It's cloudy for all of us," Brian Conlon, CIO at Washington-based Howrey Simon Arnold & White LLP, said of Sun's plans. But Conlon, whose law firm uses Solaris-based UltraSparc systems to run its ERP and financial applications, said he remains committed to Sun. "For availability and reliability, it hasn't changed -- we're still big fans," he said. Based on what he gleaned from a meeting with Schwartz last year, Conlon said, "I think Jonathan has a pretty clear understanding of what he needs to get done, but a lot of us are foggy on the details." Conlon said the layoffs could make the company leaner, and may reflect overlap from the StorageTek acquisition.

Chuck Sears, director of research computing at Oregon State University in Corvallis, which has more than 100 Sun Opteron-based servers, added, "We all look forward to future clarification" about Sun's plans.

Sears said he hopes that the moves won't slow Sun's effort to integrate its computer, storage and networking systems, so he can devote resources to research rather than to improving systems integration.