Multi-Million Dollar Merger for IBM and Sequent

IBM and Sequent Computer Systems have announced that they have entered into an $810 million merger agreement. IBM will pay $18.00 in cash for each outstanding share of Sequent common stock, and will begin selling Sequent's product line worldwide upon completion of the merger.

"Sequent will be able to extend its customer base by taking advantage of IBM's global presence and partnerships," said Casey Powell, chairman and CEO of Sequent. "With IBM, Sequent becomes part of the worldwide leader in server sales and enterprise computing, and a major force in filling the fast-growing demand for commercial UNIX systems."

Sequent is a leader in NUMA [non-uniform memory access]-based systems, which allow large numbers of processors to operate as a single system while maintaining the manageability of a small system. It has developed technology in which UNIX and NT interoperate on a single system, allowing customers to run UNIX and NT applications on different processors within the same system, and to share data between the two applications.

"NUMA will be a defining technology for early 21st century UNIX and NT servers," predicted Robert M. Stephenson, IBM senior vice-president and group executive of the IBM Server Group. "Increasingly, customers want servers that can scale quickly to manage unpredictable workloads or spikes in online traffic. NUMA is an elegant solution, combining industry leading scalability and excellent manageability.

"We're impressed by the people and technology at Sequent and look forward to working with them," he added.

Sequent has worked with IBM in the past, when they were a founding member of the IBM-led Project Monterey, an initiative to create a high-volume, enterprise-ready, commercial UNIX system supporting both IBM and Intel architectures.

The merger will help to accelerate work on Project Monterey, and will enable IBM's servers to incorporate Sequent's NUMA technology. IBM will also market and sell Sequent's NUMA-Q 1000 and 2000 worldwide, while providing middleware support for Sequent's current product line.