On Tuesday evening Sun issued a fourth-quarter guidance range largely above analysts' estimates. The company pre-announced that revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter ended June was $3.725 billion to $3.8 billion, with gross margin in the 44-45% range. Sun expects non-GAAP profits of 25-35 cents a share. Some analysts nonetheless had been looking for $3.8 billion and 27 cents.

"In these difficult economic times, we continue to see customers across the world look to open software and hardware as a source of savings, and feel Sun is well positioned with our most robust line ever of server, storage, software and service offerings,” said Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz (pictured).