Sun completes $4.1 billion StorageTek acquisition

Sun Microsystems finalized its $4.1 billion acquisition of Storage Technology (StorageTek) on Wednesday, shortly after the data management company’s shareholders voted their approval.

Sun paid $37 per share in cash for StorageTek, and said the purchase makes it an instant heavyweight in the global storage market, which it values at $65 billion. The tie-up combines StorageTek’s know-how in information storage with Sun’s ability to put data to work, which will enable the companies to help users to better manage their information, Sun said.

The Sun-StorageTek combination creates a company with total revenues of $13.3 billion over the past 12 months, and whose products hold over a third of the world’s total archived data, Sun said.

Users should see new flexibility and choice in storage and data management thanks to the acquisition, said Sun.

The deal also prompted Sun to reorganize its business divisions, adding StorageTek into its new Data Management Group (DMG), which replaced its Network Storage Group, the company said. The new division will be led by Mark Canepa, executive vice president of the DMG, Sun said.

The DMG will consist of three units, disk, tape and ILMS (information lifecycle management solutions), and its leadership team is comprised of former StorageTek executives as well as members of Sun’s storage team, the company said.

Kathleen Holmgren will lead the disk business unit as a vice president, Sun said, while Nigel Dessau, another vice president, heads the tape business, and Brenda Zawatski takes on the ILMS business as a vice president.

The two companies had very little product overlap, Sun said, except in disk and management software, where the company expects some product changes to be completed within two months.

StorageTek’s former CEO Pat Martin, will not join Sun. The company did not say how many employees might lose their jobs due to the acquisition.

StorageTek’s financial results from the close of the deal through Sept. 25 will be included in Sun’s consolidated financial statements for its first quarter, 2006, which ends on Sept. 25, the company said.