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Less than one month ago The Wall Street Journal broke the news of an ongoing acquisition talk between IBM and Sun.
virtualization.info reported about the early involvement of Cisco in the bid for Sun, a rumor never confirmed by other sources.
Earlier this week the New York Times reported that the discussion between IBM and Sun has ended and that IBM withdrew its $7 billion offering.
If Cisco was really interested in Sun, now it may be a good moment to reopen the negotiations.
As many pointed out, if Cisco really wants to emerge as a leading player in the server market, it needs all the experience, the credibility and the customers that it can have.
Building all the three things from scratch may take several years, even for a giant like the networking vendor.
Sun can provide all and a virtualization portfolio that may become useful if, for any reason, the intimate partnership with VMware gets compromised.
And by the way, after this failed bid, acquiring Sun is probably much cheaper than one month ago.
Update: It seems that the discussion is still open between Sun and IBM.