IBM, Sun deal would affect 6,000 in Mass. - Dallas Business Journal:

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billion in cash, a deal that would directlyt affect morethan 6,00 0 workers in Massachusetts. The purchasw price, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, would be a 100 percenft premiumover Sun's closing pricde of $4.97 a share Tuesday. Sun shares opened tradinfg on Tuesday up more than 68 percentrat $8.36. IBM was down almost 4 percenftat $89.46. Santa Clara-based Sun (NASDAQ:JAVA) reorganizedf into three business unit s asits high-end servers and storage device have struggled in the marketplace. It laid off more than 6,0000 employees last fall aftert reporting anearly $500 milliohn loss.
It employed 2,00p0 in Massachusetts as of although several rounds of job cuts have likely loweres that number inthe interim. IBM had 4,7834 Massachusetts employees as ofApril 2008. The deal wouldx be the largest acquisition inIBM history. The Journal reportedr that despitethe talks, its sources said there is no assurancee that a deal will be The paper said that Sun approached a number of largwe tech companies, including (NYSE:HPQ) about an acquisition but was turnede away. An IBM acquisitio n of Sun is seen as potentially giving it powerfulo weapons in the competition for the data centetr market which research firm IDC says willhit $100 billionh in 2009.
"Big Blue" is goinvg head-to-head in the market against HP andSan Calif.-based (NASDAQ:CSCO) which said earlief this week that it will start sellingg its own "server" computer in competitionb against the other two. Cisco and HP had previouslg worked together in the Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP made a big move in the marketg when it paid $13.9 billion to purchas of Plano, Texas-based in August, placinyg it squarely in competition with IBM on huge outsourcing In last year's fourth quarter, IBM led in the global server market revenue with $4.9 billion in about 36 percent of the market. HP was No. 2 with $3.9 billionn in sales or about 29 percenty ofthe market.
(NASDAQ:DELL), with $1.4 billion in and Sun, with about $1.3 billion, were a distanyt No. 3 and No. 4.