Be My Valentine: The Tech Industry's Biggest Romances And Breakups

Be My Valentine

Valentine's Day is time to celebrate relationships. Most of the time, that means the good times. But it can also be a stressful time after a bad breakup. The tech industry has had its share of both over the last year. Here's a look at some strong marriages and bad romances.

Happy Honeymoon: Intel And McAfee

The merger between Intel and McAfee that was finalized in February 2011 seems to have helped both companies. Last August, McAfee announced plans for new platform-enabling security-embedded silicon products, while Intel execs are also bullish on McAfee's technology.

Bad Breakup: Hewlett-Packard And Oracle

Things had soured between Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, and that was before Oracle started hiring ex-HP personnel like Mark Hurd and Adrian Jones. Since then? It's gotten worse. HP has filed a lawsuit charging Jones with stealing company documents, a charge Jones said is a "knowingly false accusation."

A Good Marriage: HP And 3Par

HP and Dell waged a fierce bidding war for 3Par, with HP emerging the eventual winner, integrating the Utility storage technology into HP Converged Infrastructure offerings last year.

Good Rebound: Dell And Compellent

After losing out on 3Par, Dell made lemonade out of lemons by acquiring Compellent for $940 million. The deal has turned Dell into a major force in the storage space.

Long Distance Relationship Goes Sour: T-Mobile And AT&T

After announcing a deal last March, AT&T hit a lot of snags for its proposed deal to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion. As a result, AT&T finally called off the deal last December.

VARs Don't Exchange Valentines: TIG And FusionStorm

While many VARs rely on relationships with other VARs for success, sometimes it doesn't work out so well. Witness the lawsuit between Technology Integration Group and FusionStorm for misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of fiduciary duty and breach of loyalty.

TIG won nearly $11 million to resolve the case, which was settled last August.

iLove You: Apple And Sprint

Sprint posted a $1.3 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2011, but the carrier partially attributed that to the sale of iPhone hardware at a loss. Sprint said it sold 1.8 million iPhones in the quarter but more importantly it added 1.6 million net new subscribers from October to December, its best quarterly gain in six years, according to Sprint.

In addition, 40 percent of those iPhone sales were to new customers, according to the company.

Reconciliation: HP And Its PSG Unit

Last August, then HP CEO Leo Apotheker said the company was interested in selling off its Personal Systems Group and the channel went crazy. Fast forward a couple months and Apotheker is gone and new CEO Meg Whitman said PSG is going nowhere. Suffice to say, HP partners were jazzed.

Reconciliation II: VMware And Partners

VMware partners were fuming after the company said it planned changes to VSphere 5 because they feared significant price increases. However, VMware relented several weeks later and allayed customer concerns.