IBM and Sun Microsystems are believed to be involved in advanced level of talks and a formal announcement is likely to be held next week announcing the deal. Further reports say the deal if materialized may lead to massive job cuts at Sun.

IBM is reported to be evaluating Sun’s software portfolio and as per reports, while IBM foresees a strong business case for Sun’s open-source MySQL database, Java, and Sun'''s Solaris operating system, it is not interested in the generic open-source development work of Sun Microsystems.

IBM has cut down its offer price to $9-10 per share as opposed to the earlier offer of $ 10-11 per share.

Further reports estimate that if the deal goes through employees in Sun Microsystems are certainly set to be affected and it may lead to possible lay-offs primarily due to overlapping of job responsibilities along with IBM employees. Upto one-third of  job cuts or possible sale of Sun’s business divisions may also take place.