Pipex, the web hosting and internet access company with a significant number of small business clients on its books, is on the verge of announcing the buyer of its access network.
A number of interested buyers have shown an interest in taking over this part of the Pipex empire, including Cable and Wireless, German company, United Internet, the UK’s Thus Group and a private equity firm Oakley Capital run by former Pipex boss, Peter Dubens.
If a deal is clinched, reportedly thought to be worth around £130 million, it will leave Pipex to concentrate on its web hosting and business broadband activities. Some industry watchers, however, believe the remaining core activities are also up for sale.
The downsizing of Pipex began last year when the consumer broadband and voice services were sold to Tiscali in September for £210 million. The wireless division was also spun off into a joint venture with Intel, now rebranded as Freedom4 and emerging as one of the leading companies in the UK pursuing long-range wireless connectivity, WiMax.
It is expected that any new deal for Pipex interests will be concluded before the end of February or early March.
According to the Financial Times, Pipex has a market capitalisation of £214 million. Money market analysts, Goldman Sachs on Thursday upgraded Pipex from a neutral to a buy and retained its buy rating on Thus.
Meanwhile, the database that launched a thousand web sites, MySQL has been bought by Sun Microsystems. The most widely used open-source databases in the world, MySQL was developed by a Swedish software company and grew to become an unofficial standard across the internet. MySQL grew its $15 billion database market by offering the package as a free download and offering fee-based support deals. The business model worked well and MySQL quickly became a major player in the face of stiff competition from rival software heavyweights, Oracle and IBM.
The purchase is believed to have cost Sun Microsystems, who wish to reinforce their position in the enterprise IT market, over £500 million. It had previously been thought MySQL were planning to become a publicly listed company.
Sun Microsystems’ own server and operating system software are free too, with the 32,000-employee company relying on sales of hardware and support services to make its money. They plan to expand the MySQL database more widely into the mission-critical business market where fears over support have hampered adoption. Sun are banking on their reputation in the enterprise market to overcome this obstacle and use existing distribution agreements with Sun vendors such as Intel, IBM and Dell to crank up sales in the lucrative corporate market.
