It looks as though the decision about when to cash out my StorageTek stock has been made for me. As a veteran of StorageTek and Electronic Data Systems I'm not sure what to make of the deal. It seems to make a lot of sense in as the two companies have very integrated offerings in the open systems world. The two companies have significant campuses that sit across from each other along the Boulder Turnpike in Colorado. Both also have an existing relationship with Texas based EDS for some of their support and comarketing agreements.

For the past several years it has appeared that StorageTek was trying to slim down and make the company an attractive takeover target. Though results have appeared to be good it seems many of the gains came from down-sizing and cutbacks instead of organic growth. In a press release announcing Sun's reselling the StorageTek StreamLine SL8500 tape library last June Bob Koecheler, StorageTek's vice president for golbal partners and alliances said:

"The vision for Sun and StorageTek has always been to combine our strengths in the most supportive, strategic way possible, and to jointly deliver the best automated tape technology solutions the market has seen to date to the benefit of our global customer base,. As we enter the sixth year of our partnership we mark today's success by offering the full feature set for enterprise-class solutions: multi-platform support, tiered tape storage, automation of management and opportunity for lower overall storage cost of ownership."