Data General Corp briefly became the subject of acquisition rumors Friday, after a Business Week report had the company in the sights of companies including Storage Technology Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp. Data General chief executive Ronald Skates attempted to quash the takeover talk by telling Bloomberg that the company isn’t for sale. Skates said the company can clearly make it on its own and that it fully intends to do so, although he did note that the deal would make sense for HP and StorageTek, both of whom are already major customers. StorageTek itself has been the subject of speculation that IBM might eventually snap it up. Data General shares rose as much as 12% after the report was released, on volume of 3.3 million – more than eight times its daily average. The notion that Data General can remain independent was given some credence by its surprisingly solid fourth-quarter results. The company says its full Fibre storage products – the transition to which has caused a fair amount of financial trouble for the company – represented 40% of overall Clariion sales for the recently- completed quarter, and should rise to 50% next quarter. They are expected to fuel 30% growth in the storage business, although some analysts are worried about the ability to attain that goal if the relationship with HP goes south after that company re- evaluates its storage options. The company’s relationship with Dell Computer Corp is just beginning in terms of shipments, according to Data General, but it would make no projections on that arrangement. On the server side, the company says that it is still committed to Unix and has no plans to become an NT-only shop, even as two-thirds of its business is now in NT systems. On the issue of its relationship with The Santa Cruz Operation Inc, now that it has cozied up to IBM for its 64-bit Unix. Data General says it is evaluating what the impact will be, and has made no decision about moving to the IBM Monterey AIX kernel that SCO is rolling over to.
