Oracle now a server competitor to Cisco?

Oracle's announcement that it intends to acquire Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion creates a much stronger competitor to Cisco and others in data center servers than Sun did alone. That is, if Oracle intends to retain Sun's hardware business.

All indications are that it will. During a conference call to day to discuss the deal, Oracle officials said they intend to make Sun's server business profitable even though they acknowledged that the crown jewel in the deal is Sun's Java software.

Cisco had its work cut out for it in entering a new business -- blade servers -- against longtime stalwarts HP, IBM, Dell and Sun. Now it must compete with (former?) software partner Oracle as well, which down the road will be able to offer a tightly bundled system of servers, database software, business application software, virtualization and other weapons to make Cisco's entry into the server business even tougher.

Has the partnership between Oracle and Cisco now ended? Should Cisco have acquired Sun? Or is Oracle's move more of a threat to IBM?

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