Speaking at an industry event in Korea, Cisco CEO John Chambers
has ruled his firm out of a potential bid for Sun Microsystems
after the supplier was jilted by IBM last week.
According to Bloomberg, Chambers told reporters that Cisco moved
"rapidly" on its acquisitions and hinted that if it was planning to
acquire Sun it would have made a move already.
Chambers has been vocal in the past about his intention to
ramp-up Cisco's buy-and-build strategy during the downturn with the
ultimate aim of positioning Cisco at the forefront of industry
innovation, as he did successfully following the dot.com
crisis.
Just last week the acquisitive supplier picked up Tidal Software
to bulk up its recently-announced datacentre strategy, and last
month it expanded further into the consumer market with the
acquisition of Pure Digital, maker of the Flip video camera.
At the start of the week Sun launched a new networking hardware
device as part of its Nehalem-based server line-up. Sun claims the
Virtual Network Express Module, which fits into a blade chassis,
could cancel out the need for a Cisco switch, and the move was
widely read as a riposte to Cisco's recent assault on the blade
market.
