Three broad-shouldered tech titan have their sites on the datacenter.
They all have plenty of money in their pockets. And they all have plenty of desire to capitalize on the big changes coming to way corporations manage and store the tons of digital data they create.
Cisco, IBM and H-P have the datacenter in their sights
So it is not hard to imagine a coming acquisitions binge as they try to out-position each other.
The heated battle went public last week when Cisco Systems announced its data center strategy and the introduced a blade server, taking it directly into the path of IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
Cisco, more so, raised $4 billion in February, which analysts believe it will use for mergers and buyouts to supplement the partnerships it is forging to strengthen its product portfolio.
It may not be alone. IBM is said to be considering an acquisition of Sun Microsystems, with its tape storage and other datacenter businesses.
Meanwhile, H-P last year acquired integration and consulting firm EDS, dramatically increasing its capabilities in corporate technology services.
So, which companies are most likely on the block? According to UBS analyst Nikos Theodosopoulos, possible candidates include Juniper Networks, Brocade Communications Systems, Netapp,, Accenture, EMC, VMware and BMC Software.
Cisco could easily be the most aggressive.
However, “we view the convergence of storage and networking in the data center as at least two years away,” says Theodosopoulos, with the recession “the lack of confidence on unified standards pushing out this market.”
Posted by Mark Boslet 
Today 
