IBM is reportedly in talks to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion (4.6 billion).
Citing people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal said a deal between the pair would boost IBM online - an area many expect to grow as cloud computing takes off.
The rumoured price would mean IBM is paying a premium of 100 per cent over Sun's closing price yesterday of $4.97, the paper noted.
The deal is still under discussion and could fall apart, the sources warned, and neither Sun nor IBM commented on the story.
Sun has apparently been looking to be bought out for the past few months, and the paper suggested a Sun-IBM pairing would be strong competition against rival HP - which recently took a hit when its partner Cisco decided to enter the server market.
With additional reporting by Reuters.
