Many big tech hardware makers are expanding into services. Hewlett-Packard last year bought Electronic Data Systems; Dell agreed last month to buy Perot Systems; and Xerox cut a deal for Affiliated Computer Services, also last month.
In order to win European Union regulatory approval for the pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle may need to spin-off or sell Sun’s MySQL open-source database business, according to analyst Trip Chowdhry, of Global Equities Research.
Venture-capital firm Khosla Ventures announced Tuesday that it had raised more than $1 billion in two new funds–the first time the firm has raised funds from outside investors instead of just investing the money of its founder, Vinod Khosla, a longtime venture capitalist and a founder of Sun Microsystems. Khosla Ventures is putting two thirds of the money towards clean technology investments. But what about tech?
The Oracle acquisition machine struck again Thursday, as the software giant snapped up GoldenGate Software, a closely held company whose products help businesses tie together data stored in different systems.
SAP’s new CEO Leo Apotheker says the software giant will focus on its core software business, even as its rivals expand beyond their traditional boundaries.
The latest trend in the tech industry–at least among its biggest companies–is to offer products and services that used to be provided by partners.
Oracle shares actually have gained ground since the company announced its plans to acquire Sun Microsystems thanks in part to the company’s promises to make the deal rapidly accretive to earnings. But in their enthusiasm for the deal, investors may be ignoring some significant risks.
Oracle pounced on Sun Microsystems a week ago, agreeing to buy the battered server maker for $5.6 billion, excluding Sun’s cash.
Business at Sun Microsystems continues to, well, stink.
For the fiscal third quarter ended March 29, the server, storage and software company posted revenue of $2.614 billion, down 20 percent from a year ago, off 18.8 percent sequentially, and well short of the Street consensus of $2.86 billion.
Sun Microsystems will issue its quarterly financial results on Tuesday afternoon, right on schedule, despite the looming takeover by Oracle. But Sun won’t hold a conference call; the company says it plans to simply post a press release and associated financial slides on its Web site.
As investors and analysts digest this morning’s Oracle-Sun news, some are wondering what will happen to Sun-owned MySQL, and whether combining the Oracle and MySQL database businesses would represent an antitrust concern.
In a stunning turn of events, Oracle this morning announced perhaps its most aggressive acquisition yet, agreeing to acquire Sun Microsystems for $9.50 a share in cash, or $7.4 billion. Net of balance sheet cash and debt, the deal is worth $5.6 billion. The news follows the reported recent collapse of talks between IBM and Sun.
There’s a hot formula for hardware start-ups these days: Take standard components that are declining steadily in price, and offer proprietary chips and software that make them work much better.
On Monday, the markets started to question whether International Business Machines and Sun Microsystems will really get a deal done.
It was on March 19 that The Wall Street Journal reported that IBM was in talks to acquire Sun Micro. But it wasn’t until Monday that stock prices of the two companies really started to diverge, a sign perhaps that traders suddenly believed the deal could be endangered.
When I talked the other day with Bill Coleman, CEO of Cassatt and a former colleague of new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz at Sun Microsystems, he said he was initially surprised she would take on such a demanding job. After all, she stepped back from being CEO of Autodesk to be executive chairman, seeming to head toward relative retirement.
Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey cut his target price for Sun Microsystems from $5 to $3, putting the company’s stock under some pressure this morning. His reason? Sun’s services are heavily concentrated in telecom and financial services, putting it at a disadvantage compared to its more diversified competitors, weakening its position during the economic downturn.
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