"I have no idea why a software company would buy a hardware company. We don't want to buy any hardware companies," Ballmer said Wednesday in an appearance at the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo, Egypt.

With server sales sluggish, and an economy that shows no signs of improving anytime soon, Ballmer's confusion is understandable. But solution providers see Sun not as a beleaguered hardware vendor, but as an engine of innovation that will complement Oracle's well-honed software-development capabilities.

Sun's hardware expertise would allow Oracle to package its server and OS product with its relational database, and bring together all the necessary ingredients for building scalable data warehouse solutions in a box, according to Andrew Brust, chief of new technology at New York-based IT consultancy twentysix New York.

Microsoft has been aggressively moving into the data warehousing space, and last September acquired DATAllegro, an Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based purveyor of technology that gives SQL Server the ability to handle hundreds of terabytes of data, making it a viable option for large e-commerce and retail firms.