Caris & Co.

Sun Microsystems Inc. projected quarterly results below Wall Street estimates Tuesday, signaling it will clear some charges off its books ahead of its $7.4 billion acquisition by Oracle Corp.

Sun said it expects one-time items to widen its loss to between 24 cents and 34 cents per share. The results will take into account charges for stock-based compensation, restructuring and the reduced value of long-held assets, among other factors.

VMware Inc. abruptly replaced co-founder Diane Greene as chief executive Tuesday and lowered its sales outlook, triggering alarms that pounded the business software maker's shares to their lowest depths since the company's lucrative public offering 11 months ago.

Former Microsoft Corp. executive Paul Maritz took over as VMware's new leader. In the past few months, Maritz had been running a division of VMware's controlling shareholder, data storage specialist EMC Corp.