Ashlee Vance about the Sun/IBM deal

Ashlee Vance (Do you know, what you did to the Register with your resignation there?) writes in the New York Times:

I.B.M., which competes against Oracle in the software market, also comes under new threats with the deal. For years, I.B.M. has used it homemade servers as leverage for selling higher-profit database and business software. With Sun, Oracle opens up the same opportunity and gains access to thousands of existing Sun customers.

I think this is the essential point of this deal: Oracle wants to have it´s own hardware division. At foremost to have better access to the customer but at second to have in-house technology in the hardware sector.