IBM's $7bn (£4.7bn) bid to takeover troubled Sun Microsystems is expected to be announced this week raising questions about the deal's impact on the Scottish operations.
As analysts report that the takeover is "a done deal", Graham Spittle, IBM's UK and Ireland vice-president (software), will tour the plant at Spango Valley, Greenock.
He will bring his Scottish colleagues up-to-date on the deal. Cash-rich IBM is r
eported to be paying between $9 and $10 a share for Sun Microsystems, based at Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley.
A takeover of Sun, which has a plant at Linlithgow, could be announced as early as tomorrow. Linlithgow is Sun's largest operational facility outside the US, but the company has struggled since the dotcom bubble burst in 2001.
One analyst, Shawn Wu of Kaufman Brothers, predicts the link-up between two such large technology businesses will kick-start a new wave of recession-fuelled consolidation across the global IT sector.
"Big Blue", as International Business Machines Corp is nicknamed, with global headquarters in New York, first started casting an acquisitive eye over Sun Microsystems as early as August 1998.
The takeover gives IBM almost half of worldwide server-computer sales plus Sun's Java largely open software portfolio, including its Solaris operating system.
Sun's extensive client base includes AT&T and China Mobile.
Buying Sun would give IBM a clear lead at the high end of the $45bn overall server market, which it fights over with Hewlett-Packard.
The deal would also broaden IBM's software portfolio and add storage products that vie with EMC Corp and Network Appliance.
Kim Caughey, an analyst with Fort Pitt Capital, which holds IBM shares, expects IBM to generate efficiencies through moving production of Sun's high-end computer chips to IBM's own plants and dropping Sun products with low margins.
Sun is best known for its high-end Unix servers favoured by big financial services firms, telecommunications carriers and government agencies.
One technology industry source said: "Key to this done deal is that it signals IBM's ambitions to take head-on other heavyweight Valley competitors like Cisco and Microsoft.
"The gloves are now off, as each tech giant vies to capture new business from identical areas in the highly lucrative corporate, public and small to medium-sized sectors."
Regulators are expected to closely examine the implications from an "anti-trust" competitive standpoint, and this is likely to delay the takeover going through.
However, the market expects the deal to occur. IBM and Sun have each refused to comment throughout the duration of the takeover negotiations.
