Acquisition could accelerate investment plans in the country
Valor Econômico 03/19/2009
The possible merger between Sun Microsystems and IBM would strengthen the operations of these companies in different ways in Brazil. For Sun, the acquisition would solve an old controversy of the company, which is not to have an industrial unit in the country. Present in Brazil since 1991, Sun is the only one among its great rivals - companies like Dell, EMC and Hewlett-Packard (HP) - that still does not have production in Latin America. As IBM produces several pieces of equipment in the country, it would be possible to include the production of servers. In recent interview to Valor, Jonathan Schwartz, chief-officer of the company, affirmed the company has evaluated the possibility of assembling equipment in the country and that it has kept conversation with the government in order to do so. With 600 employees in the country, Sun currently has a great part of its businesses supported by dealerships specialized in services. With IBM, the subsidiary would become part of a team of 18 thousand professionals in the country. For IBM, it would be more strategic than an operational gain. The acquisition of Sun can help the "Big Blue" to power up its entrance in the freeware sector. Brazil is currently the main producer of developers of Java-based systems in the world, a computer language of Sun which currently reigns in the Internet. The greatest gain for the Big Blue, however, would come from the servers market, large-size computers used by companies. Sun, which in the last years decided to open the codes of its main programs - among them the operational system Solaris, used in servers - has strong presence in the area of telecommunications in Brazil, one of the industries that buys more technology in the country. IBM, on the other hand, dominates great part of the financial sector, main national consumer of computer products. The union of the operations would keep IBM on the top of the list of the servers market in the country. According to the research company Gardner, IBM was the leader of the sector in sales in 2007, followed by HP and Dell. In units sold, Dell was the leader, ahead IBM and HP. In 2007, the Brazilian market of servers sold USS$ 962 million, what represented 42.3% of the sector in Latin America. The projected increase for last year was 16.8%.