The founders of SAS "changed their mind" about a possible sale to Broadcom, according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news on Monday of the discussions between the two firms.
While Broadcom previously acquired enterprise software firm CA Technologies, the potential purchase of SAS baffled analysts, who said there isn't much benefit for a chipmaker to become that deeply involved in enterprise software-as-a-service.
"I don't believe that semiconductor companies aspire to be full enterprise software [providers], to go way up the stack in that way," said Forrester principal analyst Mike Gualtieri. "I don't know what Broadcom is doing. When I look at Broadcom, it's two companies under one umbrella. I don't see a winning hand where they say: 'If you have to use this software, it has to run on our chips.'"