BeachRider

Expect Tech Mergers to Increase

VMWare has certainly been a roller-coaster for EMC. It competes with Microsoft on MS's home-turf, so investors have been very fidgety. Palm could be at a local high-point, so an acquisition would need to take that into account. Red Hat has been on the M/A chart for so long, it seems like no one really wants to own them. BMC has been tracking that life-cycle that so many have followed before. If it follows their pattern, it won't be sold until it is on some kind of down-tick. This might be similar for ERTS. There can't be a lot of buyers for ATML, so the opportunity would have to be special.

Sun: Oracle Bid for Software Assets and Who Was 'Party B'?

Don't forget Fujitsu. They could have gained a lot from a Sun acquisition. They already know a lot about SPARC and the UNIX server environment. The IA32-blade stuff was the strangest part of Sun for them. This filing shows that Oracle found the hardware purchase to be the most difficult. It also shows that Sun had no other suitors for SPARC (or that deal would have worked). As it played out CSCO and DELL are unlikely because of the STK storage business.

Data Center Survey: Cisco's Server Push Sparks Interest

UCS has promise, because CSCO could do switch-tricks that others might not anticipate. It has risk, because they don't have the background in blade-server design and lifecycle. They are hoping that VMW will bridge their obvious deficiency in storage.
They are awfully closely tethered to VMW's ability to cope with any fancy wiring that they hope to deploy, though.
CSCO stock could go up on this kind of news, but only for non-short-term investors (I think the last two or three of them still have some uninvested capital!).

Sun-Oracle Deal Remakes the IT Landscape

I don't get why ORCL wanted SPARC or the IA32 business. I don't see HP as being interested in it, at all. IBM would expect ORCL to struggle with it.
I agree on the tape/disk stuff. It just aggravates HP (a traditional ORCL ally).
Did Ellison just need to bail out Sun's board of directors?

Overall Storage Revenue Slips, But EMC Remains on Top

Sun is losing ground here. From being a customer, I can also tell that they are losing their internal capability to build this market-share back up, should that opportunity arise.

Tech Bellwether Earnings Scorecard Update

Why do companies like this think that they can 'get away' with no Guidance on business levels? They must have firm plans on this because those plans are needed to gauge infrastructure, staffing, supply chain, etc.

They have 'Guidance', but they don't want to chance a stock-crash if they miss.

They need stronger high-leadership to establish confident objectives that generate confident Guidance.