Buying StorageTek: Sun's last big gamble?

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about it, there are no easy wow acquisitions out there," said Forrester analyst Frank Gillett.

StorageTek's coming ILM products
StorageTek's ILM business has yet to prove itself, Gillett added. "StorageTek has the capability to be competitive, but they haven't publicly come out with anything. It could be that Sun is buying stuff we can't see yet," he said.

It's likely some of what Sun can see will come into view next week, though.

StorageTek plans to debut its first in-house ILM product June 8, a disk-based archiving system that has built-in "intelligence" to automate the process. And StorageTek's ILM push could fit well with Sun's Honeycomb storage equipment coming later this year.

ILM so far is "perceived as more hype than reality," said Data Mobility Group analyst John Webster. "It's got a lot of promise as something that people can put on developmental roadmaps."

One factor keeping it from fulfilling its promise is missing software support, he said. If the applications that actually generate files and data don't dovetail with the ILM systems, ILM is little more than a fancy backup system.

EMC professes to be unfazed by Sun's move. "It remains to be seen as to how relevant the acquisition will be to the industry and customers. The lion's share of the growth in the market today is going to be with focused technology providers such as EMC, Cisco, SAP, Oracle and Intel," spokesman Greg Eden said.

Hewlett-Packard was less reserved. "Sun's move reeks of desperation," the company said in a statement. "Their server market share continues to decline, and they've taken their eye off the ball again with yet another strategic blunder, making an acquisition in an area of storage that does not promise high growth over the long term.

Sun, naturally, has a different interpretation. By buying StorageTek, Sun hopes to have a broad enough product line to keep a place on customers' short lists. And it reinforces Sun's attempt to ease technology hassles by improving and integrating equipment rather than handing the problem over to expensive services personnel.

"Rather than trying to figure out how to make my storage work with my server or work with my switching environment, we believe we can provide a more integrated environment," McNealy said in a conference call. "We believe we can give a simpler answer."

CNET News.com's Martin LaMonica and Jim Kerstetter contributed to this report.

[Bob_Barker]

Analysts are harsh

"We would rather have seen the company buy back a billion shares and fire 10,000 people."

I guess someone has to put the "anal" in analyst though. What an ass.

[cheeseboy]

ass

Based on his asstute [sic] comments (share buybacks are only a temporary band-aid to prop up lagging share prices), Steve Fortuna is obviously much better at his job than the 10,000 Sun employees who he'd like to send to the unemployment line.

[Bob_Barker]

Analysts are harsh

"We would rather have seen the company buy back a billion shares and fire 10,000 people."

I guess someone has to put the "anal" in analyst though. What an ass.

[cheeseboy]

ass

Based on his asstute [sic] comments (share buybacks are only a temporary band-aid to prop up lagging share prices), Steve Fortuna is obviously much better at his job than the 10,000 Sun employees who he'd like to send to the unemployment line.

Some won't never understand Sun's mission

Analysts are one of these group of people. :-)

Sun needs storage because every big business (Suns main
market place) needs big storage. Now they have good machines
for the big business, good and nearly complete software stack
and a storage solution with a sales force which was successfull
in doing their job in that area. Good partners of Sun will have in
one moment a new are where they can sell solutions with Sun
technology - great deal from their point of view.

Have you read the last anaylst report? Service and storage sales
are growing, also inside SUNW. It was not the last big deal of
Sun, be sure. But it was also not the last stupid comment of
analysts.

Some won't never understand Sun's mission

Analysts are one of these group of people. :-)

Sun needs storage because every big business (Suns main
market place) needs big storage. Now they have good machines
for the big business, good and nearly complete software stack
and a storage solution with a sales force which was successfull
in doing their job in that area. Good partners of Sun will have in
one moment a new are where they can sell solutions with Sun
technology - great deal from their point of view.

Have you read the last anaylst report? Service and storage sales
are growing, also inside SUNW. It was not the last big deal of
Sun, be sure. But it was also not the last stupid comment of
analysts.

[furian]

Sun

is on the move, being squeezed by Linux offerings as well as the marketing gorilla MS who could sell reading glasses to the blind, after all look what they have done with Windows- made people computing illiterate and a boat load of cash for themselves. Fools and their money are soon parted and with MS we part with it over and over and....

[furian]

Sun

is on the move, being squeezed by Linux offerings as well as the marketing gorilla MS who could sell reading glasses to the blind, after all look what they have done with Windows- made people computing illiterate and a boat load of cash for themselves. Fools and their money are soon parted and with MS we part with it over and over and....