On Sun's part, the acquisition gives the server and software company a database offering that is capable of storing and manipulating the information used by its software tools, a role it has largely handed to Oracle.

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Shalom says his firm's decision to target specific hardware, in pursuit of higher performance and greater scalability, is in some ways similar to Oracle's recent moves to leverage the proprietary server hardware it got with its acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

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Sun's applications server strategy became somewhat hazy after the acquisition, when, as a spin-off of America Online's (AOL)purchase of Netscape Communications, Sun acquired Netscape's application server software.

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With this acquisition, Oracle acquired important middleware tools like the Weblogic Server (a tool for deploying Java based enterprise applications) and Tuxedo (a tool used to deploy mainframe-based applications).

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Through the acquisition of SeaMicro, AMD will be accelerating its strategy to deliver disruptive server technology to its OEM customers serving cloud-centric data centers.

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Dell is VMware's number one reseller, and in the view of Dell, the acquisition makes a good fit because EqualLogic is a good platform for VMware server virtualization products.

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Some of its popular middleware tools are Oracle Weblogic Server, Oracle Tuxedo, and Java Software (acquired through the Sun acquisition).

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In addition Citrix, one of the major players in server virtualization, recently purchased MDM vendor Zenprise and claims as part of that acquisition that virtualization is a major component of its mobile management capabilities.

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With the acquisition of Sun Microsystems in January 2010, Oracle began selling hardware products and services, primarily comprising computer server and storage products.

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