Sun To Acquire MSP SevenSpace

The acquisition will broaden Sun's managed services offerings by adding support for Hewlett-Packard's legacy HP-UX and IBM's AIX systems, along with Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Linux, according to a prepared statement from Sun.

The Santa Clara, Calif., vendor expects the deal to close in its fiscal third quarter, which ends March 27, 2005, according to a Sun spokeswoman.

SevenSpace's technology manages enterprise applications, including SAP, Oracle E-Business Suites, PeopleSoft and Siebel; databases, including Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server; operating systems, including Solaris OS, Windows and Linux platforms; and network devices. SevenSpace employs a customer-defined methodology that lets companies set up outsourced system management tailored to their needs and desired control levels, according to Sun.

Sun has been steadily growing its managed services portfolio over the past year. In June, Sun Services unveiled Sun Preventive Services, a holistic managed services offering that enabled customers to identify potential risks before network failures actually occurred.

Sun followed that up in late October with a managed security services offering announced in conjunction with VeriSign.

In a recent interview with CRN, Marissa Peterson, executive vice president of Sun Services, said Sun plans to extend the delivery of Sun Preventive Services to partners by the end of the year as part of a push by Sun Services to drive more business through the channel.

In that interview, Peterson also cited managed services as the hottest area of growth for the Sun Services division, attributing this to customers' desire to seek help from a single source when data-center issues arise.