It's hard to say what Sun under Oracle will look like, but it's getting harder to believe that what remains of the company will look like anything that resembles its present hardware/software form.

Sun turned in a dismaying preliminary report on its fourth quarter earnings Tuesday. Instead of revenues of $3.04 billion, as analysts expected, the company said revenues for the quarter ended June 30 would more likely be in the $2.58 to $2.68 billion range. Analysts polled by the Thomson Reuters financial service had expected Sun to report a 14 cent per share profit; instead it indicated a 24-34 cent loss per share.

When Oracle announced it planned to acquire Sun for $5.6 billion in April, it said it expected Sun to add $1.5 billion to its operating profit in the first 12 months of the acquisition. After the Sun preliminary earnings report, Oracle again said Tuesday that it still expects Sun to add 15 cents per share of profit to its earnings the first year.

Oracle shares held their value after the Sun announcement, showing only a slight drop in the day's trading. Sun's shares were up 4 cents to $9.21, buoyed by the Oracle offer and far above their mid-April slump to $6.13 when IBM walked away from a potential Sun acquisition.

Meanwhile, Oracle may or may not be able to close the deal in August, as planned. The new head of the anti-trust unit of the Justice Department, Christine Varney, appears more inclined to scrutinize large deals such as this one than her predeccesor and has announced the launch of a second inquiry into the ramifications of the deal.

If it is a typical second round, then it may be the end of November before Oracle can complete the acquisition, assuming Justice Department approval. That would allow another bleak quarterly report by Sun in the midst of a limbo period when it may have become increasingly difficult to sell its hardware.

According to Sun's 10K report filed with the SEC at the end of Fiscal 2008, Sun gets 45% of its revenues from computer systems, primarily hardware, with another 29% coming from technical support services of the systems. The figures include whatever revenues Sun obtains for its Solaris operating system and Java software as well. Storage at 17% and professional/educational services at 9% account for the rest.