Irreverence

posted on 15 August 2008 07:36

The Flash Summit has seen a new great rumour sweep the scene: Seagate is going to buy SanDisk - or - Seagate will buy Intel's stake in IM Flash Technologies. Another rumour is that Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) is safe for a year.

The logic behind the Seagate SanDisk buy is that Seagate needs a flash memory/solid state drive (SSD) partner for it to enter the SSD market, as it has said it will do in 2009, as anything other than a reseller of another supplier's kit. That was the reasoning behind the mooted Seagate purchase of STEC a month or two ago. Also SanDisk has just announced poor results.

SanDisk shares have risen on the strength of this, from a low point of $16.08 on August 13th to the current $17.82.

A contrary rumour is that Seagate will buy out Intel's stake in its NAND flash joint venture (JV) with Micron, Intel Micron Flash Technologies. The reasoning is basically the same coupled with an Intel CEO-expressed desire to do whatever it takes to get the flash business right.

Regarding FSC, Siemens has been trying to extract itself from that JV with Fujitsu of Japan, FSC results not being up to Siemens standards. So it wants to extract its money and invest it elsewhere. The story now is that Fujitsu won't buy it out and Siemens can't sell its stake to anybody else so it has decided to hang on for another year and see what the situation is then.

Current rumours on our rumour watch dashboard are:-

1. IBM will refresh its high-end DS8000 storage arrays in 2009.

2. IBM will launch the IBM-branded, release 2 version of its XIV scalable, Web 2.0 system in the fourth quarter of this year. WRONG. IBM made it available on August 12th, two days ago.

3. NetApp will announce a refreshed sub-file-level deduplication VTL (Virtual tape library) this quarter. Quite likely but it might be in Q4.

4. EMC is looking to buy the tape automation side of Sun's acquired StorageTek business. Er....

5. Seagate will buy SanDisk.

6. Seagate will buy Intel's stake in IM Flash Technologies.

7. Siemens will sign up with Fujitsu to keep the Fujitsu Siemens Computers JV alive for another year.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}