VMWare already was borged...
... by EMC (*).
Why would EMC part with their cash cow?
(*) And from former and current VMWare employees in Palo Alto, the corporate culture has been going downhill ever since.
What connects Research in Motion, VMware and Juniper Networks? They're on a list of 14 companies Larry Ellison's M&A behemoth Oracle could Borg next, according to Software Advice - a company that claims to match software buyers to the right products. Crazy thinking? The 14 companies do, after all, lie just outside of Oracle's …
Given that EMC own VMWare, I doubt it's on the market partcularly as EMC are flogging their V-block solution which relies on VMWare ESX server. Also, Oracle already have virtualisation options in XEN et al, although I suspect the management/admin toolset could be improved.
You suspect right, the management tools are still a pile of [insert whatever] even though they bought Virtual Iron over a year ago. Compound that with the extra complexity of, for instance, OCFS as the VM storage so you can get high cost support contacts sold and vaunt that you have the only enterprise Xen available and you have two steaming piles.
May be wrong about this, but aren't they still semi-owned by EMC? You know, as in Oracle would either have to buy EMC, or buy out EMC before getting their mitts on VMWare... that would up the pricetag by a helluva a lot, you know?
(IIRC VMWare are still owned by EMC as a semi-independent division).
Your article neglects to mention the fact that VMware is almost wholly owned by EMC.
Even in TFA, Software Advice ('Free advice for software buyers') list them as separate companies, confirming that you get what you pay for.
So either EMC would have to be willing to sell VMware, which is rather unlikely IMHO (Cisco would probably have first refusal anyway), or Oracle would have to stump up $40b plus to buy EMC - and perhaps Cisco would decide to get involved in that too.
But don't forget, Oracle didn't buy all of Sun for all their assets, they bought all of Sun because that was the price tag for a few diamonds in the rough (I'm thinking Java and MySQL primarily)
It's not so far-fetched to see Oracle borging something big if the big has a big enough diamond that it's worth the price tag, particularly if it's something that they can quietly bury the rest out back, as they seem to be starting to do with Sun assets they didn't really want.
El Reg, we really need a Borg icon, kthx