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IBM in talks to buy Sun Microsystems
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 18 March 2009, 23:10 IST |
6 Comments
New York: Global IT major IBM is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems, reported the Wall Street Journal, citing people in the know of the development.
The combination would bolster IBM's heft on the Internet, in data storage and in government and telecommunications areas.
Any deal would also strengthen IBM as it fights with HP to be the number one in the systems market and in the data centre. HP took the number one spot from IBM when it purchased EDS in 2008.
IBM is likely to pay at least $6.5 billion in cash to acquire Sun, the people told the paper. That would translate into a premium of about 100 percent over Sun's closing price of $4.97 a share on Tuesday on the Nasdaq, the paper said.
The two companies have a common interest in that both make computer systems for corporate customers that aren't reliant on Microsoft's Windows software, and their product lines are less dependant than rivals' on Intel's microprocessor technologies. The two companies are also strong supporters of open-source Linux and Java software.
