THE WRAP: IBM moves on Sun, Cisco moves on data centers

This week saw movement in the data center business, and Ericsson's copper speed record.

IBM offered nearly $7 billion to buy Sun Microsystems, attracted by the former high-flyer's server business and its Java and Solaris technologies. Cisco unveiled its new unified architecture aimed at challenging IBM and HP in the data center.

Ericsson is reportedly looking to exit the Sony Ericsson handset joint venture, and Sony is interested in buying out its stake. Ericsson created a new benchmark when it demonstrated 500Mbps data transmission over copper.

Vodafone's Qatari joint venture hopes to raise $963 million from one of the world's few planned IPOs, scheduled for April 12.

The rollout of new cables in Asia has driven down Asian bandwidth prices as much as 30% already this year.

In its third round of layoff in recent months, Nokia cut another 1,700 jobs. It closed down Mosh, its content sharing site, apparently because of porn and illegal material being posted to the site.

Palm, still waiting for the debut of its Pre device, posted its seventh successive quarterly loss.

Intel accused AMD of breaching an eight-year-old licensing agreement between the two firms. Discovery sued Amazon over the Kindle e-reader.

The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors is causing mistrials in the US justice system.

Apple previewed the iPhone 3.0 operating system. The iPhone landed in Indonesia. Microsoft launched IE8 and Google released its Chrome Experiments.

Orange and Vodafone UK signed network outsourcing deals. Hitachi planned a restructure to shave $5 billion in costs. Verizon Business won a $2.5 billion Pentagon contract.

Australia's competition watchdog threatened a crackdown on rogue telecom operators.

Mobile phones topped the list of Chinese consumer complaints. China Telecom began commercial 3G trials.

The UK government was accused of wasting taxpayers' money  with a $29,000 site on Second Life. An opposition MP said the government was 'living in a fantasy world'.

African mobile leader MTN launched what it hopes will be the world's largest mobile banking service.  Online banking fraud in the UK increased from $33 million to $76 million last year.

Dell unveiled what it says is the world's thinnest laptop. VoIP firm Jajah won another $2.75 million in funding.

And a Telstra staffer was revealed as being behind the Fake Stephen Conroy Twitter feed, masquerading as the Australian communications minister.