Myriad Genetics has chosen Sun Microsystems to provide the computing infrastructure for its protein-mapping venture with Hitachi and Oracle, according to two sources close to the deal.
Myriad had recently narrowed the field of computing power providers to Sun and Compaq, eliminating IBM, one source said, and would announce Sun as the winner this week. Bill Hockett, a spokesman with Myriad, confirmed that the company had decided upon a vendor, but declined to comment further. A spokesperson from Sun declined to comment.
One source, who asked to remain unidentified, said that Myriad gave the bidders, which included IBM, Compaq, and Sun, less than one month to complete their proposals to provide computing power for analyzing and mining the data from the proteomics project. When Myriad eliminated IBM, the source added, the competition between Compaq and Sun quickly boiled down to price.
Both Compaq and Sun offered significantly discounted bids, the source said, but Sun’s estimated $3 million-$4 million price tag for a high-performance computing platform, typically sold at higher margins, dramatically undercut Compaq’s bid.
— AB and JSM