Sun contemplates buying Novell

AN INTERVIEW with Sun's president Jonathan Schwartz in today's Wall Street Journal quotes him as saying his firm could buy Novell and other firms to position itself against IBM in the marketplace.

In fact, according to the article, Sun discusses takeovers every day, Schwartz tells the Journal and is in a position to do so because of its vast cash reserves.

He told the newspaper that a Novell acquisition would wrong foot IBM and Red Hat, but he also said that Sun hadn't formally opened acquisition talks with the Utah based company. Novell may not want to be seduced by Sun Microsystems.

He didn't tell the Journal which other companies might be in Sun's sights, but mentioned different technologies including comms, storage and networking. µ

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