Rumor of HP looking at Sun HW acquisition
By joe
- 2 minutes read - 347 wordsReported on the Inquirer site. The claim is that this deal would complement the EDS services business. Hmmm…. HP could take (and is taking) Sun’s business for effectively free. Why would they pay for something they can get for free? Something just doesn’t ring true about this, and I’d chalk this rumor up to more wishful thinking on the part of some of the reporters sources.
Never mind the regulatory hurdles HP would have to go through as one of the top hardware vendors. It all goes back to the question of, is it cheaper to take this business the way they are doing it now, or to pay for it to get it all in one fell swoop? Of course, if they do go this route, look for Dell to start in on looking for storage, archive, and similar acquisitions. On the HPC market, HP is winning its share of deals. Maybe not on the high performance storage side, but certainly on the cluster side. Adding Sun hardware to the mix doesn’t give them wins in the HPC side that they don’t already have covered. It doesn’t give them a high performance storage platform to work with. And there is substantial overlap between products, which means HP would have to EOL some set in favor of some other set, or merge lines. This effectively tosses out the value proposition of the purchase. Not just in HPC, HP leverages its brands in slightly different configs across many markets. Adding Sun HW to the mix doesn’t extend the reach, it just muddies the water. Then there is the question of Sparc. HP got through closing down PA-RISC last year, AlphaServers a while ago, and had spent time on Itanium products for a while, though the writing is clearly on the wall as far as the future of such products go. Maybe EDS wants Solaris. But I’d venture to guess that no one wants Sparc (maybe Fujitsu). I could be way off base here, but I don’t think I am. Not calling BS, just wishful thinking on someone’s part.