Market gossip that IBM might be interested in acquiring Stratus Computer Inc was good for $2.75 on the Stratus share price at $33.125 on Wednesday, and while the Marlborough, Massachusetts company’s director of investor relations acknowledged he had heard the rumour – from three separate analysts – said of course as a matter of policy we have no comment on anything like this: IBM has been marketing Stratus fault-tolerant supermicros for about four years now, but the move was always intended as a stop-gap measure while the company added fault-tolerance to its own major product lines; it would be an indication of total disarray in IBM’s product strategy if it were now to seek to acquire Stratus, and Stratus is unlikely to want to sell out.
