Sun to buy remote-management firm
With SevenSpace technology, Sun's remote-management services will be able to control Windows, Unix and Linux systems.
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The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2005, Sun said Monday, but terms of the all-cash transaction were not announced. SevenSpace, based in Ashburn, Va., has about 100 employees, Sun said.
The acquisition is aimed at expanding Sun services for remotely monitoring computing systems. For example, with Sun's Managed Services package, the company remotely operates customers' data centers. Additionally, Sun's Net Connect monitoring system can flag problems and provide information when a customer wants to involve Sun engineers in fixes.
Those services today can control only Sun servers, however. The SevenSpace acquisition would extend the services' reach to systems running Windows, Red Hat's Linux, and versions of Unix from Hewlett-Packard and IBM, Sun said. In addition, SevenSpace's technology can manage business software from Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP, as well as database software from Microsoft and Oracle.
Sun plans to incorporate SevenSpace within its services organization under Marissa Peterson, executive vice president of Sun Services. SevenSpace has more than 100 customers.
Sun plans to acquire SevenSpaces' technology, but not all its employees. "Most of the SevenSpace people will be offered positions at Sun," spokeswoman May Petry said.