Could Oracle make a play for HP?


I ran across this interesting post by Tom Foremski at Silicon Valley Watcher where he puts forward the idea that Oracle could possibly be making a play to acquire HP. Now given how right on Tom was with his prediction that Oracle would hire HP’s ex-CEO Mark Hurd; and with some of the information coming out today about a pending lawsuit from HP to stop Hurd’s hiring, one has to take a look at an acquisition scenario a little more seriously.

Now I would like to point out as well that Mark Hurd being hired by Oracle could also be the worst case situation for any of Oracle’s open source products that they picked up as part of the Sun acquisition. Given that HP’s R&D projects met more than one ax being wielded by Hurd during his tenure as CEO and that he is being hired as a move to improve Oracle’s bottom line this could spell bad times ahead for Oracle’s open source projects.

But back to Tom Foremski’s analysis around the the idea that Oracle could make a move to snap up HP his three points to support the idea are:

– HP remains leaderless and that makes it vulnerable to be acquired.

– HP would provide Oracle with enormous and highly profitable consolidation opportunities with its Sun Microsystems acquisition.

– An Oracle/Sun/HP plus the 45 plus other acquisitions over the past 10 years, would make a company capable of competing against all of IBM. It would create a West coast versus East coast tech rivalry that would span the globe.

One other piece of news that is just hitting the web that could also make this scenario a little more interesting is that HP is launching a lawsuit to stop Oracle from hiring Hurd. According to Business Insider

In the lawsuit against Hurd, HP says Hurd puts, “HP’s most valuable trade secrets and confidential information in peril,” by accepting the job of President at Oracle.

On its company blog, HP says, “Mark Hurd agreed to and signed agreements designed to protect HP’s trade secrets and confidential information. HP intends to enforce those agreements.”

This tech ménage à trois is just getting interesting.

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