Here's news of yet another mega-merger in the storage market: This morning, Sun Microsystems announced that it will buy storage giant Storage Technology (StorageTek) for $4.1 billion in cash. StorageTek will be absorbed into Sun's storage business. The acquisition will dovetail StorageTek's technology, which includes primarily data-archiving and data-protection products, with Sun's storage and networking products, which include the Sun StorEdge line. Customers stand to gain from the deal by gaining a single source for a broad range of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) solutions. Sun is betting on the acquisition to help it rebuild its revenue stream and reclaim market share in the wake of the dot-com bust in 2000. Sun CEO Scott McNealy said that the planned acquisition would add about 1000 data storage salespeople to Sun's workforce.
-- Anne Grubb