IBM in Talks to Buy Sun in Bid to Add To Web Heft

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123735124997967063.html

by sown • 17 years ago

95 78 17 years ago

online.wsj.com

alexandros• 17 years ago

It would be a sad day if Sun stopped being independent, but IBM does seem to be the best match that will preserve the most of Sun. Maybe they can even fix some of the JCP and OOo policy problems. On the other hand, NetBeans will probably go the way of the dodo..

stcredzero3• 17 years ago

A friend of mine pointed out that commoditizing someone's product was a great offensive move. He thought that was why IBM funded so many open source projects, many of which were in the Java space. He pointed out that Eclipse is one of the slickest Java IDEs, and what is an Eclipse, but an occlusion of Sun?

tome• 17 years ago

Joel wrote "Commoditize your complements":

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

briansmith2• 17 years ago

IBM and Microsoft have taken two different tracks. IBM is trying to everything except custom software development and support contracts because those are the most profitable short-term. They give away low-quality software that is difficult to use and missing important features; then they charge every user the full cost of fixing these problems. Basically, IBM wants you to rent expensive people to run your free software.

Microsoft is trying to make custom software development and support contracts unnecessary by selling quality, feature-full software. I'm sure lots of people want to say something snarky about Microsoft's actual software quality, but at least recognize that it is the plan. Basically, Microsoft wants you to buy software that ends up being much cheaper than renting people. Ultimately, they want you to computing appliances that are powered by their software and which don't require any maintenance or custom coding.

By the way, there is nothing slick about Eclipse. I am using it every day to write S60 applications and I hate it. I am using IntelliJ IDEA 5.1 (three or four years old, three major versions behind) and IntelliJ is much, much better.

rbanffy7• 17 years ago

Reminds me of the day Compaq announced they bought DEC...

Evolution needs diversity.

adrianwaj6• 17 years ago

Sun were a good 5 years too late open-sourcing their software stack including Java and Solaris, and should have made their hardware easily licensed for cloning.

I was saying this in 2002.

Only the most adaptable survive.

davidw2• 17 years ago

I love open source, and if I had the money, would work with nothing else. That said... for a big business like Sun, would that really have helped? Maybe their stuff would have been more popular, but it would have required a wrenching transition to services that might have hurt them very deeply.

adrianwaj6• 17 years ago

I think they should have taken this alternate Open path and coupled it with business-as-usual in the rest of the organization.

So they lose revenues in the normal part of Sun because those customers now pickup their SW for nothing essentially, and instead of Sun then laying off employees, they are shifted into services. One area goes down, another goes up.

Hardware at Sun then becomes less focused on manufacturing, and more about building a community of external implementors by providing good HW designs and support.

I'm thinking theoretically.

rbanffy7• 17 years ago

They are a hardware company. Why would they want people to clone their hardware is beyond me. The IBM PC was cloned and the result is that IBM is a relatively minor player in the PC arena and one that has no meaningful power (much unlike Intel and Microsoft).

adrianwaj6• 17 years ago

It was Intel that gained from cloning, and IBM then suffered, you're right. But MS had the APIs into it for Windows so it gained.

The idea was that Sun becomes a designer of and licensor of state-of-the-art HW designs (which it may or may not implement). The designs come with software APIs too that different companies may want to implement.

The difficulty is that SPARC International is already a different organization to Sun. So, I don't know if they could've done this legally.

geuis2• 17 years ago

All I can say is Timer Warner / AOL. Not a popular opinion, but I really hope Sun dies. I'm probably not up to snuff on their product lines, but I know they've developed and promoted the atrocity that is Java and I think they're quickly killing Mysql. IBM, on the other hand, has proven itself as a company that can reinvent itself over and over and have been doing some very cool things. They're one of the few classic companies that still do actual long term R&D without the requirements that they crank new products out in the next 2 years. It would be really bad for them to buy Sun.

Dobbs2• 17 years ago

Sun has some amazing engineering staff. They produced such wonders as Dtrace, Sparc, and ZFS. If IBM were to buy them and take the good portions it would be a huge boon to IBM, Open Source and the software/computing community.

adrianwaj6• 17 years ago

What should IBM do with the Sun brand once it cherry-picks all the good parts?

delano• 17 years ago

Dtrace is an incredibly technology. Debugging performance problems in production is literally a dream come true.

j2d2• 17 years ago

These people will find a good home elsewhere. Sun, as a company, has been floundering since the dot com crash. Their most popular stuff is free and many people choose cheap linux boxes over heavy duty sun boxes. The investment bank I used to work for is a good example of the heavy computing world dropping Sun.

A merge with IBM would solidify their irrelevance if you ask me...

tptacek10• 17 years ago

Say what you will about Java-the-language, especially after the world has moved on to higher-level languages, but it's hard to deny the extent to which Java has been a force for good in enterprise software development. The de facto standard for companies that didn't adopt Java? C++.

geuis2• 17 years ago

Yeah, I can deny it. I've worked in java shops for 2 years. The "good for enterprise" argument is bunk. All its lead to is inefficient and disastrous technology decisions, an inability to be agile and flexible in software development, and a general dumbing down of any smart engineers that happen to be stuck working there.

As a language, the best metaphor I can imagine is that Java is like the language of some Amazonian tribes. They don't have the concept of numbers bigger than 2. Its not about their brain power, just the way their culture and language has shaped their minds. That's basically what Java does to software engineers.

sireat• 17 years ago

Sun was undervalued and even at the price IBM appears to be offering, Sun is a good value.

Why? Sun still has elaborate R&D, strong balance sheet, multiple revenue streams. Granted, it had overpaid for many acquisitions(I am looking at you MySQL) and hasn't figured out exactly how to leverage all that OSS into income.

tptacek10• 17 years ago

"Elaborate" does seem like the right word here.

whatusername• 17 years ago

A few thoughts through the SUN product line: (Anyone else got ideas that I missed?)

SPARC - likely gone.. IBM will probably stick with Power.

JAVA - might be good for it.. IBM are big supporters of java, with Eclipse, IBM JRE's, etc

MySQL - interesting dilemma - IBM have DB2 CE or whatever it's called as a free DB engine - mysql is not at DB2 level (yet) by any stretch - but if it's good enough - then is it a revenue threat

Solaris - IBM have an awesome NIX variant in AIX. Of course - that's why they now push Linux so much.. :P Not sure what would happen to solaris here...

DTrace - obviously kept - maybe linux/aix porting? (we can hope)

ZFS - again - you'd assume they would keep it.

Disk Storage - The thumper, etc seem like pretty good products.. IBM have some storage kit developed internally (DS8000 etc) - and some I believe is OEM.. I think that some gear like the Thumper might be able to replace the OEM gear... (Would also be quite nice behind an SVC)

StorageTek (Tape Drives) - These will need some consolidation (although again - some of IBM's kit is OEM) - but at the top end - I would have said that the SL8500 (Sun's) trumps the TS3500 (IBM's) at the high end - so that could be dramatic..

Intel/AMD based servers - I'd guess they'll keep them seperate for as long as they can - eventually standardising down to one of the two lines? (Or perhaps spinning some/all out to Lenovo or someone like that?)

OpenOffice - since IBM are pushing it (or a badged variant of it) as Lotus Symphony - you'd assume it would be sticking around...

HPC - I can't see IBM dropped BlueGene - but I've got no clue what Sun are really doing in the space... (from wiki: In 2006, Sun built the TSUBAME supercomputer, which was until June 2008 the fastest supercomputer in Asia. .... Ranger has a peak performance of over 500 TFLOPS, and is currently the 6th most powerful supercomputer on the TOP500 list (November 2008).)

And Wikipedia has a nice listing of all the goodness of sun hardware: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sun_Microsystems_hardw...

alecco• 17 years ago

IBM is focusing on services, this is all about getting those juicy support/operations contracts.

razzmataz• 17 years ago

I could always imagine the solaris code base being dumped on a group like ISC or something...

tptacek10• 17 years ago

Why is that a win? Roughly the same group of people are involved in BSD.

gtufano• 17 years ago

Solaris is way better than AIX, and a Power port is half done (historically there were a Power version). I don't know really, but IBM could choose to drop linux or, my hope, merge solaris and linux... this would be terrific, if backed by a behemoth like big blue.

rbanffy7• 17 years ago

That's about all the good I could see coming from this marriage.

I hope Sun gets back to its feet by itself.

adrianwaj6• 17 years ago

There is a whole vendor ecosystem around high-end SPARC/Solaris systems, especially in financial services and telcos. It could take a number of years for these corporations to move onto IBM gear if that was the key.

Dropping SPARC completely would be foolish, better just rebrand everything to IBM and take it from there.

Think Compaq, now think Sun.

tptacek10• 17 years ago

That's been true of every other architecture that was inexorably marginalized by x86. You're right that IBM isn't going to unceremoniously drop it. But it's dead, and good riddance.

mrbuwch• 17 years ago

Agreed. Remember, IBM already has quite a few different hardware platforms: x86 based servers (running Linux or Windows), System p (formerly RS/6000) servers running AIX, System i (formerly AS/400) servers, System x (formerly system/390) mainframes. Adding Solaris Sparc to that would be just be adding one more to a long list. I don't think IBM would have trouble supporting Solaris for a very long time so long as customers still want it.

For me, IBM has looked likely to buy Sun for many years, because doing so would give IBM two things that would be very valuable to it

1) Java 2) Sun's Solaris customers.

jwilliams4• 17 years ago

Dropping SPARC completely would be foolish

There are other SPARC vendors (e.g. Fujitsu) that they could sell off to and focus on their own lines (probably with a provision to use the IP they see useful).

Edit: Btw, the ecosystem around SPARC is slowly eroding. Fin Svcs are going x86 more and more. The problem with SPARC is they aren't growing in new markets - it's becoming marginalised.

nailer5• 17 years ago

Enterprise Linux variants are the strategic Unix platform in the City of London (world's largest financial services market), and have been at most places for a few years now.

Just finished up working for IBM at a major ex-state-monopoly Telco, working at the worlds largest hedge fund right now.

rjurney2• 17 years ago

I'm a huge fan of the SPARC architecture, and I would LOVE to be able to run 32 threads simultaneously on one machine but unless Sun gets that stuff in the cloud it is dead to me.

rjurney2• 17 years ago

ZFS - you'd hope they would set it free! Linux Kernel inclusion ftw!

rbanffy7• 17 years ago

CDDL is already free. I would love if it were GPLv3, but, again, this wouldn't help Linux a bit.

snorkel• 17 years ago

JAVA - Can we please have SWT controls built into the standard JRE? Or at least add some new controls to Swing?

ShabbyDoo• 17 years ago

Yes, this will put an end to the absurdity of the Sun/IBM Java fights. I predict that NetBeans will die and SWT will win out over Swing.

What about Websphere vs. Glassfish?

jwilliams4• 17 years ago

IBM should turn Sun into a cloud division. With Java/J2EE, MySQL and their storage/data center expertise it seems like a good match?

A full featured J2EE cloud solution could get a lot of traction with all the many corporates heavily invested in Java and looking to reduce costs (IMHO).

IMorgothI12• 17 years ago

IBM probably should drop AIX for Solaris.

If IBM were smart they would enable a machine compilable version of Java to destroy C++.

lallysingh2• 17 years ago

Or even better, a good language to replace them both.

osipov• 17 years ago

Owning VirtualBox virtualization software is a great reason for IBM to buy Sun. IBM is trying to be a major player in the cloud computing space, but it relies on Xen and VMWare for x86 virtualization technology. IBM doesn't have much influence on Xen and its open source development community. Obviously IBM has even less influence over VMWare. So buying a solid x86 virtualization stack like VirtualBox would make IBM a serious contender for cloud computing deployments built from commodity x86 boxes.

greyboy• 17 years ago

Solaris also has zones, which has been tremendously powerful for our customers.

tptacek10• 17 years ago

I suspect you could have made Xen (on the high end) or Jails (on the low end) equally as powerful. I'm not a fan of Zones, and of all the Solaris innovations of the past couple years, I think Zones have the least staying power.

wmf2• 17 years ago

IMO VirtualBox is the worst virtualization tech available today (that's not to say that it's bad, just that the others are better); they just added 64-bit support recently and I don't know if they even have SMP guests yet. You probably shouldn't even ask about SR-IOV. IBM already has KVM.

indiejade• 17 years ago

Smart move. One of IBM's core competencies is hardware (assembly); one of Sun's core competencies is software (esp. virtual space software) and innovation.

The danger, of course, would be in losing that innovation when/if the acquisition occurs. If IBM does end up acquiring Sun, it would probably be a good idea to let it maintain as much independence as possible. There seems to be an inverse relationship between size of an organization and its ability to adapt and innovate.

Xichekolas2• 17 years ago

Except that IBM has been selling their hardware units off for years... hard drives to Hitachi, laptops to Lenovo, etc. IBM's core competency now is consulting services supporting software.

I think Sun makes sense for them to acquire (their business models are becoming quite similar already)... but IBM's days of having a hardware focus are over.

TJensen• 17 years ago

Do you think their HPC and server hardware will go, too? I'm guessing they'll stay in whatever hardware business is not commoditized, which means a lot of Sun's hardware fits into IBM's portfolio.

aagnihot2• 17 years ago

This article quotes the acquisition at around $6.5 billion(http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE52H1GS20090318). StorageTek acquisition was $4.1 billion(http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/09/01/HNsunstortekcomple...) and MySql AB acquisition was around $1 billion. That makes $5 billion. So is rest of the Sun worth $1.5 billion? Clearly, it seems that these acquisitions have decreased Sun's valuation, rather than increasing it. Also, I didn't see any point in buying MySql AB for $1 billion.

pstuart• 17 years ago

AMD has a market cap of 1.70B, they could fold that in too.

aagnihot2• 17 years ago

Moreover, there is an important lesson to learn. Open source is not the solution for poor revenues. Sun has OpenSPARC, OpenSolaris, Java, OpenOffice, MySql and what not...But in terms of revenue, it hardly made a difference.

IBM in Talks to Buy Sun in Bid to Add To Web Heft

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