13 March 2010
Saturday
Who will buy my sweet little storage
By Allan Tan | Jun 23, 2009
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Its been a few weeks since Sun Microsystems and Oracle signed the agreement whereby the latter will acquire all of the former in one of the less exciting storage acquisition strategies in recent memory. I say "less exciting" because apart from the potential IBM acquisition of Sun Microsystems, no one has come to the plate for the once mighty vendor.
As noted in earlier blogs, IBM and Oracle were primarily interested in Sun's software business. Although not exactly very profitable as a whole, the Sun software business, particularly the areas around Open Source Software, offer good potential - both mid and long-term. The hardware business is another story altogether.
Broadpoint.Amtech analyst Yun Kim says he isn't sure who would be keen to buy Sun's hardware as well. He did briefly lists potential buyers:
- Cisco - to help jumpstart its ambitions in the server sector
- IBM - to consolidate positions in the server market with the added bonus of getting rid of a storage competitor
- HP - similar to IBM but with the added bonus of getting rid of a storage competitor selling the same Hitachi OEM box
- Dell - why would Dell want to screw around with its EMC partnership?
How about EMC? The only reason EMC would buy Sun's hardware is to get into Sun's storage customer base. Sun has very deep roots in finance, education and manufacturing. Whoever acquires the hardware business will get a foothold into these markets. Personally, product/vendor loyalty is a dying attribute among storage customers these days. Most often contracts are signed on price-performance metrics.
One analyst does give a passing thumbs up to the Oracle acquisition but its more in line with the potential for Oracle to finally compete head-to-head against the IBM-Teradata partnership to deliver an integrated data warehousing solution.
On July 17, Sun's shareholders will cast their vote with regards to the acquisition. Sun's Board has already given their seal of approval. Once approved by both shareholders and the Board, the only barrier to completion of the deal is the Security and Exchange Commission. So far there are no indicators that this is not going to pass the SEC's anti-trust muster.
Whatever happens, the days of Sun's hardware business are numbered.
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IBM, but it will never happen because of the politics behind the scenes that the general public has very little visibility of... Next best choice would be EMC, but then EMC would have to provide support to those Sun branded HDS storage arrays that Sun has sold over the years. I think that alone would keep EMC from purchasing Sun... then again, this might be strategic for EMC as they could easily go on site, rip out the Sun/HDS arrays and... well, you see where I am going with this. Brocade? No way. Cisco, huh-uh. Fujitsu? Not in your life. Seagate would be more of a candidate than Fujitsu, but it will never happen. Just as much politics with that transaction as there would be if IBM pursued the acquisition. Maybe Netapp will purchase Sun's hardware business... ??
On July 17, Sun's
On July 17, Sun's shareholders will cast their vote with regards to the acquisition. Sun's Board has already given their seal of approval. Once approved by both shareholders and the Board, the only barrier to completion of the deal is the Security and Exchange Commission. So far there are no indicators that this is not going to pass the SEC's anti-trust muster.
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