Executive Briefing: January 18, 2008

Dell told SilverBack Technologies MSPs this week that it plans to sell managed services directly to end users as well as partners in a program that will eventually require deal registration. But exactly how the program will be structured -- and priced -- is still up in the air, said executives who attended this week's partner conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., for about 175 SilverBack MSPs.

"They will be going direct. I think we all know that would be the case," said one attendee, who asked not to use his name. [READ MORE]

Sun Microsystems set the stage for a heavyweight database battle with one-time close partner Oracle and longtime rival Microsoft with its $1 billion acquisition of open source database kingpin MySQL AB. Sun CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz said the purchase puts Sun at the heart of the "$15 billion database market." He called it "the most important acquisition Sun has made in the history of the company." [READ MORE]

A persistent Oracle is coughing up nearly $2 billion more than its initial offer to acquire BEA Systems, nearly three months after it began pursuing the middleware vendor. Oracle announced Wednesday that BEA had agreed to be bought for $19.375 per share or approximately $8.5 billion. Oracle initially bid $17 per share or $6.6 billion when it first offered to buy BEA back on Oct. 12. As recently as mid-December Oracle executives said BEA's directors were still resisting Oracle's offers. But at some point Oracle decided to sweeten the pot and the two companies reached a deal. [READ MORE]

Whenever a discussion about Software-as-a-Service breaks out among solution providers, one issue that immediately pops up is where the channel will not only fit into -- but also profit from -- a scenario in which applications are delivered by vendors to end users as services. Microsoft, which in the first half of the year plans to roll out Dynamics CRM Live, a Microsoft-hosted version of the Dynamics CRM 4.0 offering it launched last month, finds itself under the increasingly hot gaze of channel scrutiny. Partners feel they've been patient as Microsoft has worked to develop and articulate its own SaaS strategy, called software + services. But this year, partners are going to demand real answers. [READ MORE]

VMware is continuing to expand how much of the data center it wants to virtualize with the second acquisition of a related technology vendor in as many days. VMware, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based server virtualization heavyweight, on Tuesday said it has signed an agreement to acquire Thinstall, a San Francisco-based developer of application virtualization technology. On Monday, VMware confirmed reports that it had acquired Foedus, a Portsmouth, N.H.-based solution provider focused on providing virtualization technologies and services. [READ MORE]