Sun to buy IMP in $96M deal

Electronic News, March 25, 1996

Mountain View, Calif.--In a deal valued at $96 million, Sun Microsystems agreed to acquire the assets of Integrated Micro Products (IMP), a supplier of fault-tolerant computing products for the telecommunications market.

Based in the U.K., with offices worldwide, IMP will operate as a new business unit within Sun Microsystems Computer Co. in Mountain View, Calif., a systems unit of Sun Microsystems. IMP's CEO Mark I'Anson will become VP and GM of the new business unit. The deal is expected to close by the end of June.

This purchase will extend Sun's highly scaleable serves by adding IMP's binary-compatible family of fault-tolerant computers to Sun's family of servers. "We bought IMP for its fault-tolerant architecture," said Edward Zander, president of Sun Microsystems Computer. "Our goal is to replace every proprietary mainframe out there. We asked ourselves, 'what could we do if we could get fault-tolerant capabilities?' So this purchase is a way for us to get faster time to market without having to build the technology ourselves."

The purchase will provide customers with a path to migrate from proprietary fault-tolerant systems to those based on a standard operating system, thus enabling customers to develop applications and deploy them without making modifications.

Sun claims the acquisition is a natural fit, because IMP's flagship product ft-Sparc is based on Sun's Sparc/Solaris platform. "We won't have to move our architectures, change our operating systems or retrain our sales force, because they already know both platforms," said Mr. Zander.

John Shoemaker, GM of Sun's Enterprise Server & Storage Group, said the company's initial strategy will be for IMP to continue selling its current line. In the meantime, Mr. Shoemaker said both companies will work together to utilize IMP's technology, selling products on a direct basis for the most part, as well as through systems integrators. They plan to target the Internet, wireless communications and switched networking markets. "Our telco people are already making sales calls," said Mr. Shoemaker.

The deal will also expand Sun's presence in the telecommunications market, a business in which the company sees continued growth. The telecommunications industry is IMP's core market. The company's installed customer base includes giants such as Motorola, Fujitsu and NEC. IMP reported revenues of $11.5 million last fiscal year, ending September 1995. This year, IMP expects revenues to reach $25 million.